Innovation Article cont’d

Improving PD Performance: Taking the Organization through the Change Wickets

"It isn’t the will to win that is important. Everyone has the will to win. What’s important is the will to prepare to win." - Bobby Knight

Many organizations treat product development/management performance improvement like the weather. There is nothing we can do about it .. so why worry about it. Just accept it. Everybody is like this." They want to win the product development race but don't want to train to get there.

Thiscan be unfortunate since most professionalslike to improve and will focus efforts on improving if the desire to improve is nurtured. In considering the root cause of the “weather philosophy” of product development we are reminded of the mantra of software sales gurus. Sales people are taught that to generate (as opposed to take) orders you need to convert latent pain into real pain and pain into hope via a vision. Perhaps jump starting your improvement efforts can profit from borrowing a page out of the solution selling methodologies.

It's our theory that to build momentum for PD improvementan organization needs to move through a specific set of wickets in a specific order. Before change will happen the following ingredients are required:

Latent Pain Becomes Pain

  • Management needs to believe that PD performance is below expectations -- or better (worse) yet below the competition. This means of course they need to pay attention long enough to have some expectations.
  • Furthermore, management needs to believe their expectations are reasonable.
  • Finally management needs to believe this sub-standard performance is hurting the company in important ways. (Costing us real money; losing customers; wasting time and energy.)

When the above three beliefs are present you've gotten their attention.

Pain Becomes a Hope through an Attractive Vision

To translate that pain into action the organization must be able to see the future. Build hope by:

  • Helping managementto believe a solution is available which applies to us. Basically they need to believe something can be done about this pain -- we needn't live with it. Usually this means they believethe solution can work because:
  • it correctly frames the problem
  • it addresses the root causes of the problem
  • nothing important is omitted from the problem definition

If all three of the above tests aren't met, management will turn it's attention to seemingly more tractable issues.

  • Next management needs to also believe that the organization is capable of implementing the solution/improvements-- that it has or can procure the necessary resources, skills and culture to make it work. Basically they need to be able to envision the new state and the benefits of that state. This envisioning involves a consistent, specific easily remembered view of:
  • who will be doing...
  • what things (tasks)...
  • when (in time)...
  • how. (using what methods, tools products or services)
  • Finally, management, and anyone else capable of stalling progress, must believe that the solution won't "hurt" them. Without this ingredient progress may appear imminent but never materialize.

If your organization is on a Product Development System treadmill you may need to look at the above prerequisites for change -- to see if some are missing.Prematurely describing a set of actions before the proper climate exists can give a false sense of progress without any improvement.

Product-Masters

11977 Harbortown Drive Suite 2 Cincinnati, OH 45249

Phone: 513.683.1911; Fax: 513.683.6126 ; E-mail:

1|Page