Tag: "alignment"

Bridging the Gap Between Marketing and R&D

Ever wonder why the R&D function has trouble “sync-ing” with the Marketing department. Marketing should drive most innovation because marketing has the pulse of the consumer and a sense of consumer trends, and R&D can introduce new technologies that can justify some new product development. Just based on differences in timing alone, Marketing historically can develop product concepts faster than R&D can formulate them for commercialization. It isn’t surprising Marketing and R&D often act as separate silos.

In the bigger picture, Marketing and R&D each have responsibilities towards other parts of the whole corporate organization. For example, Marketing, with feedback from the sales force, has to inform the manufacturing function which products to make and R&D needs to formulate the products in a manner that enables the manufacturing function to make the products efficiently. So common responsibilities to other third-parties within the organization should provide them some common ground.

Sharing essential information between R&D and Marketing and understanding respective needs goes far to “de-silo” Marketing and R&D. For example, R&D will understand pricing and profitability,value identification and maximization, and differentiation and positioning, and Marketing will understand regulatory constraints, product quality, and processing and stability issues. This common understanding of separate needs will help provide syncrony between these functions.

Effective coordination is putatively viewed as a key success factor in competitiveness. For successful companies, new product development represents incremental sales of at least 10% or more depending on the product sector.

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Jan 30, 2011 | 0 comments View Post

Global Steps in Innovation

Many folks liken the process of innovation to a baseball diamond:

First base – Vision

Second base – Strategy

Third base – Ranking priorities

Home – Alignment of resources: people, places, services.

We need the relevant people who share a common understanding of the vision and the strategy, accept the validity of that direction, and have a passionate commitment to make it work. We also need senior executive leadership support, a comprehensive, adaptable communication plan, a contract for buy-in to goals & direction, a creative focus on the few highest priority initiatives, as well as a governance process for investment (priorities), aligned pay-for-performance metrics, group leadership development, values-based goals, milestones & metrics.

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Jan 15, 2010 | 0 comments View Post

Leadership as Visionary Servitude

Delicate Arch 2006

Nature's size is humbling

Much has been expressed about leadership in the written and video media. Much of what is expressed is how to establish a roadmap for your tenure, to direct those to walk that road, and to interact with peers and other stakeholders to facilitate alignment with your plans.

My experience enables a view of visionary servitude. Yes, leadership takes vision, but what about servitude? Most everyone can understand the need for servitute down the totem ploe. Yet, the individuals who are best at sustaining their leadership role believe and act in a manner to serve others around them–up, down, and across from them in theorganization. It takes inner strength and humillity to gain and maintain an attitude of servitude, especially when so many competing interests create challenges to this state of mind. Keep in mind that humility has always been distinct from a state of humiliation. Servitude works best when it pervades the organization, from top to bottom.

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Sep 27, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Leading Teams to Sustainability

Were you ever a member of a team that did not work?  Were you part of the problem because you provoked or avoided conflict within the team?

Teams are constructed to provide deliverables of value to the greater organization.  They can be based on a project, product, or administer a department.  Many of us understand through our experience that the leader is ultimately responsible for the outcome of a team, yet it is the membership that should be called on to guarantee the success of the team (as in the analogy of all hands needed to keep a ship afloat). 

Establishing a team with a defined scope and purpose is a major key determinant of success.  Getting the right members on the right seats of the bus is another determinant.  Most often in practice, it is the leader who sets the direction and membership, and that direction is modified by inputs of team members.  These modifications help build cohesiveness and alignment within the team. 

However, alignment of direction should not be confused with a diversity of viewpoints.  The healthiest and most sustainable teams possess disruptive opinions that challenge ideas and viewpoints when discussed in a constructive manner.  It is the responsibility of the leader to reign in “constructive disruption”  to maintain progress toward team goals.  Sometimes, an outside influence, an HR person or team coach, is helpful to monitor team progress and to help the leader with membership and progress. 

These determinants of alignment and constructive disruption help build and maintain sustainable teams with value-added deliverables.

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May 16, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Leadership Styles in Differing Corporate Cultures

captain-planet_www-txt2pic-comLeadership and management work in concert to shape the path and then drive the organization along that path. This is just as true for innovation environments yet with the added dimension of fitting in with the corporate culture of their organization. Innovation environments are comprised of technical leadership and those relevant stakeholders in the company that enable commercialization of novel goods and/or services.

In one viewpoint, innovation environments need to adapt to the culture of the corporate host. Put this way, the technical leadership of the research department and relevant stakeholders must understand the needs of the greater organization. What type of research organization fits best into a particular type of corporate culture? To answer this, it is best to define the corporate culture that “hosts” the research organization.

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Apr 26, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Leadership at the operational level

Leadership is the key ingredient in the success of any endeavor. Excellence or failure is a reflection of the top because the environment is a product of the people who lead and drive the effort. Attracting and retaining the best–often those better than the hiring manager–is a cardinal sign that an organization cherishes leadership, excellence, and sustainability. Getting the right people into the right places helps to build sustainable innovation environments in which all internal stakeholders and intrapreneurs can align towards strategic goals.

Intelligence, sound judgment, and the capacity to anticipate are characteristics that set front runners from the rest of the crowd who are also expected to possess integrity, a high energy drive to get things done, a balanced ego, and loyalty. Organizations fail because of the caliber of people involved, not just because of strategic and operational plans, endeavors, or management theories and fads.

Colin Powell extolled multiple lessons about leadership from his experience whereby these lessons apply universally across institutional and industry sectors. Perpetual optimism as a force multiplier is also a clear motivating factor to those across the organization. It helps define and mold strategy, it helps everyone cope with the pace of business and change, and it sets the tone and operational level for the whole organization. Taking educated risks is another multiplier that enables everyone in the organization. You don’t know what works until you give a try.  Some fast lessons:

  • Keep it simple
  • Be approachable–it allows you to find the real problems
  • Organization charts tend to freeze movement and communication across heirarchical divides–so mix it up often
  • Keep looking at the details for the facts and rebut the experts to keep them on their toes–it keeps you grounded but your head in the clouds of strategy
  • Lending your ego to a position only diminishes your pride when the position fails
  • Leading, managing, and governing properly help most folks and anger some others.

Above all, we work so that we can provide for and support our loved ones. Spend sufficient time with your loved ones to recharge your cognitive batteries and your maximize your memory. Being close to your loved ones keeps the loneliness of leadership at bay. By being in diverse situations, it cross-trains your brain to enable you to look at issues with multiple perspectives and viewpoints.

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Apr 16, 2009 | 0 comments View Post

Leadership

Road to CommercializationWhat more natural a subject to first talk about than leadership, both personal and organizational. Everything flows from the top; this is true for our own lives and for the life of an organization.

Simply, a leader leads where others will follow. A leader creates a vision, and aligns colleagues’ input to build a strategy to go forward. Tactics and operational goals follow.

Just the same for innovation environments, whether they be mature research departments or venturesome headshops. The strategy and tactics can be program-, project-, or goal-based.

The leader understands a necessity that needs to be satisfied, and creates a path to fulfill that necessity. The necessity could be a customer need, client need, process need, a change, or technological fix.

A leader sets up an environment where folks can flourish. Guidelines and mutually understood values pervade the environment rather than rules and unwritten rules. Otherwise, the motivating factors, such as educated risk taking, that foster creativity become evasive and the shop atrophies.

Staffing a research team is like building a puzzle, where each puzzle piece represents a different discipline to construct the research picture. Doing it right requires thought and gut instinct and a good understanding of the needs and goals of the operation. Once staffed, if every member of a research team is viewed as critical and contributing, then turfiness, zero sum gain attitudes and intra-competitive behaviors are naturally kept to a minimum. Overstaffing often leads to the demise of a creative atmosphere, and reorganization typically results in the formation of a new research team.

Each of the points above will be discuss at length in future postings. At this time, …on the vanguard hopes to provide heuristic topics worth your comment and advise.

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Apr 06, 2009 | 0 comments View Post