RIM is a world-class Canadian company that is now a world-class Global company. We have a hard time as Canadian's praising our children.
Once you get to be the size of RIM, you have the priviledge of being attached on all fronts. Who could not be losing ground to the likes of Apple. Their iPhone is brilliant and has set the soncumer standard for smartphone innovation. The Google's Android platform is also gaining share as its powerful operating system, and zero cost to channel partners, makes it an attractive solution to sell.
Consumer polls that are measuring product desirability consistently favor the iPhone and the Android is now squeezing Rim as well.
What should Rim do and is doing?
1.) Remember the line - Focus on your Core.
RIM has a powerful enterprise niche and must retain its high margin and loyal customers. To do this, enterprise services must always be ahead of the Apples, and Androids (whose dominance is more consumer)
2.) Expand footprint into the consumer garden but not at the expense of preserving the core.
It is easy to have Apple envy, however, my belief is it is better to have a strong foothold and preserve /fight to keep the core strong, as dilution will only erode the foundation on all sides.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment I had was RIM went to market too early on its new iPAD like product (The Torch), it did not deliver product superiority and shipping has had its challenges.
In summary, RIM may have its unique challenges, what it needs to do is not compare itself to Apple or the Android and look beyond these otherwise they are caught in a cat and mouse, function feature game, here are some ideas:
1.) Bring together the brightest engineers (top engineer from each university around the world (say 20) and offer them a $ prize to invent a new product to extent the Torch to levels unimagined (4 month co-op assignment)
See what unfolds - great PR and recruiting benefits, new ideas will emerge as with diversity comes more wisdom.
RIM is highly concentrating with R&D based in Waterloo and increasingly in the valley. It is now a global company, yet when one tests for harmony of culture and vision alignment of what the future holds, there is a worrisome level of concern by RIM employees (the enemy is now us is in RIM's tent), and their practices for engagement (doing business) is well understood to be plagued with difficulties.
All this aside, RIM will find a smart pathway forward, but it has to start with its internal engineers believing they can solve the challenge. This confidence is critical to evolution, feeling like you are in a shadow will breed mediocrity and erode confidence.
If Jim andMike spent one week each working side by side with their most brilliant engineers - some new energy would be unleashed, sometimes as executives we caught up in internal or external meetings and what is really important is ensuring our talent believe in the dream and know they are making a real difference.
Showing posts with label Culture Assessment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Culture Assessment. Show all posts
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, October 6, 2008
Innovation and Culture - Getting a Baseline is Key to Your Innovation Strategy Execution
Introduction
Every organization has a unique culture that supports an organization's capacity to execute. Cultural capacity from one organization to another vaires in its: form, degree, depth, speed, and self- learning mechanisms. An organization's culture is not always unified but an institutional culture is the “collective personality” of your organization. An organization’s culture consists of deeply imbedded values, beliefs, philosophies, attitudes, and operating norms, artifacts, symbols, essentially boils down to “how things are done around here - that are more often than not captured in stories.”
One of the initial steps any organizational leader that wants to tap into developing an innovative culture to improve their current state. Having a position on currrent state innovation health will be a key success factor. Below is an extract of some of Helix's Innovation and Culture assessment web enabled tools to help provide the leadership forum participatns with a snapshot self assessment that can provide some quidance on how innovation is working in the context of your organizational boundaries. I like this as managers can also use this to have a conversation with their team(s) and facilitate increased awareness of strengths or gaps in working teams.
The most important factor in getting underway is simply to start with a learning orientation and having a conversation. Love to hear how this goes if you use some of these questions, if you want more information on more robust toolkits to measure innovation, just ping me atcindy@helixcommerce.com.
Innovation Culture Assessment
1. Do employees have a clear understanding of what innovation simply means? Does your organization’s vision, mission, and key strategies align to innovation capacity development? How would you describe the current innovation culture of your organization?What would you change to make it stronger to support innovation development?
2. How supportive is your culture to these behaviors: a) risk-taking, b) continual ambiguity, c) responsive implementation of ideas? d.)tolerance for failure e.)curiousity and experimentation? f.) complexity and non linear thinking? g.)openness and transparency? h.) knowledge sharing i.) Tolerance for reflection and holding still vs rushing everywhere? j.) enabling high performance teams and empowerment...
3.What are the real motivating factors that your organization uses to recognize individual and team activities? What effect(s) do they have on employees being more creative and proactive? Do you have any visible innovation awards?
4.What are your organizations' policies, rules, procedures, norms, methods, and leadership behaviors that inhibit innovation? How can they be eliminated, minimized, or modified?
5.What factors or types of “successes” determine how front-line employees, managers, and executives are recognized, rewarded, and promoted?What are your people penalized for? How does or has this impacted your on-going innovative efforts?
6.How does your organization view: a) daring (even far-fetched) ideas, b) ultra-visionary concepts, c) calculated risk-taking, and d) unavoidable mistakes from creative endeavors that didn’t pan out? Is failure generally seen as a learning or a (career) limiting experience?
7.How does your organization deal with frequent change? Historically, what’s been the resulting consequences and impact? What causes change and who typically drives it?How is change planned and executed?
8.What is the ratio between your employees focusing on problem-solving (“fighting fires”) or ("continuous improvement') vs opportunity-seeking (exploring for breakthroughh or disruptive, major changes and new opportunities) for your organization?
9. Do employees feel appreciated for their ideas and recommendations? Do they perceive their personal benefits to be aligned with your vision for innovation capacity/skills development? What causes employees to stop their flow of ideas and drop out from actively pursuing innovation?
10. Does your organization have a structured innovative process that’s regularly used to generate ideas (from mild to wild) and implement them effectively and efficiently? How do your track your ideation process and is this an accessible process to all employees, and managed, measured effectively? How much flexibility do people have in going outside of their normal job descriptions? (Note Helix has ideation capture sw that is world class).
11. Who typically comes up with ideas? How are they usually created--by individuals or teams, in formal brainstorming sessions, or informally and spontaneously? What percentage of ideas are implemented and how long does it generally take? How are potentially blockbuster ideas evaluated?
12. How would you describe the overall communication climate in your organization? To what extent is it open, honest, frank, positive, and supportive versus closed, adversarial, or chain-of-command driven, for example? How does communication affect the way people react to ideas and work together to approve, and implement them?
13. To what extent does your organization invest in sufficient employee training for: a) creative problem-solving, b) imaginative thinking, c) innovation concepts and application, and d) synergistic team-building techniques? Are employees given adequate resources (materials, time, funds, etc.) to pursue steady innovation?
14.Are team operating standards and individual performance criteria specific and clear enough to guide creative activity? Are they periodically reviewed and modified?
15. Is your organization more forward-looking than dwelling on previous successes and doing the same, even with diminishing returns? Does your culture permit a carefully tuned balance between short-term returns (tactical mode) and investments of time and energy for long-term gains (strategic mode)?
Summary
Culture is a major determinant of an organization’s ability and desire to innovate. Understanding what your culture is now, and how it needs to evolve, will help map out a way to produce even higher octane levels of performance in your organization, whatever its size and makeup may be. So, how do you rate your organization’s culture as it relates to innovation?
Every organization has a unique culture that supports an organization's capacity to execute. Cultural capacity from one organization to another vaires in its: form, degree, depth, speed, and self- learning mechanisms. An organization's culture is not always unified but an institutional culture is the “collective personality” of your organization. An organization’s culture consists of deeply imbedded values, beliefs, philosophies, attitudes, and operating norms, artifacts, symbols, essentially boils down to “how things are done around here - that are more often than not captured in stories.”
One of the initial steps any organizational leader that wants to tap into developing an innovative culture to improve their current state. Having a position on currrent state innovation health will be a key success factor. Below is an extract of some of Helix's Innovation and Culture assessment web enabled tools to help provide the leadership forum participatns with a snapshot self assessment that can provide some quidance on how innovation is working in the context of your organizational boundaries. I like this as managers can also use this to have a conversation with their team(s) and facilitate increased awareness of strengths or gaps in working teams.
The most important factor in getting underway is simply to start with a learning orientation and having a conversation. Love to hear how this goes if you use some of these questions, if you want more information on more robust toolkits to measure innovation, just ping me atcindy@helixcommerce.com.
Innovation Culture Assessment
1. Do employees have a clear understanding of what innovation simply means? Does your organization’s vision, mission, and key strategies align to innovation capacity development? How would you describe the current innovation culture of your organization?What would you change to make it stronger to support innovation development?
2. How supportive is your culture to these behaviors: a) risk-taking, b) continual ambiguity, c) responsive implementation of ideas? d.)tolerance for failure e.)curiousity and experimentation? f.) complexity and non linear thinking? g.)openness and transparency? h.) knowledge sharing i.) Tolerance for reflection and holding still vs rushing everywhere? j.) enabling high performance teams and empowerment...
3.What are the real motivating factors that your organization uses to recognize individual and team activities? What effect(s) do they have on employees being more creative and proactive? Do you have any visible innovation awards?
4.What are your organizations' policies, rules, procedures, norms, methods, and leadership behaviors that inhibit innovation? How can they be eliminated, minimized, or modified?
5.What factors or types of “successes” determine how front-line employees, managers, and executives are recognized, rewarded, and promoted?What are your people penalized for? How does or has this impacted your on-going innovative efforts?
6.How does your organization view: a) daring (even far-fetched) ideas, b) ultra-visionary concepts, c) calculated risk-taking, and d) unavoidable mistakes from creative endeavors that didn’t pan out? Is failure generally seen as a learning or a (career) limiting experience?
7.How does your organization deal with frequent change? Historically, what’s been the resulting consequences and impact? What causes change and who typically drives it?How is change planned and executed?
8.What is the ratio between your employees focusing on problem-solving (“fighting fires”) or ("continuous improvement') vs opportunity-seeking (exploring for breakthroughh or disruptive, major changes and new opportunities) for your organization?
9. Do employees feel appreciated for their ideas and recommendations? Do they perceive their personal benefits to be aligned with your vision for innovation capacity/skills development? What causes employees to stop their flow of ideas and drop out from actively pursuing innovation?
10. Does your organization have a structured innovative process that’s regularly used to generate ideas (from mild to wild) and implement them effectively and efficiently? How do your track your ideation process and is this an accessible process to all employees, and managed, measured effectively? How much flexibility do people have in going outside of their normal job descriptions? (Note Helix has ideation capture sw that is world class).
11. Who typically comes up with ideas? How are they usually created--by individuals or teams, in formal brainstorming sessions, or informally and spontaneously? What percentage of ideas are implemented and how long does it generally take? How are potentially blockbuster ideas evaluated?
12. How would you describe the overall communication climate in your organization? To what extent is it open, honest, frank, positive, and supportive versus closed, adversarial, or chain-of-command driven, for example? How does communication affect the way people react to ideas and work together to approve, and implement them?
13. To what extent does your organization invest in sufficient employee training for: a) creative problem-solving, b) imaginative thinking, c) innovation concepts and application, and d) synergistic team-building techniques? Are employees given adequate resources (materials, time, funds, etc.) to pursue steady innovation?
14.Are team operating standards and individual performance criteria specific and clear enough to guide creative activity? Are they periodically reviewed and modified?
15. Is your organization more forward-looking than dwelling on previous successes and doing the same, even with diminishing returns? Does your culture permit a carefully tuned balance between short-term returns (tactical mode) and investments of time and energy for long-term gains (strategic mode)?
Summary
Culture is a major determinant of an organization’s ability and desire to innovate. Understanding what your culture is now, and how it needs to evolve, will help map out a way to produce even higher octane levels of performance in your organization, whatever its size and makeup may be. So, how do you rate your organization’s culture as it relates to innovation?
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