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006 – Improve Your Company’s Culture w/ a Social Enterprise Network

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Feature Segment: Improve your Company’s Culture with a Social Enterprise Network

 

In this episode Adam discusses ways to improve your company’s culture

 

As was said last week, there are at least four types of employee reactions to the prospect of adding social enterprise network at work. There are advocates, users, agnostics and detractors.  Asking employees to teach is one management strategy for winning over detractors while stimulating collaboration in your culture.

 

Social Layer Segment: Three Pillars to Healthy Innovation

 

I think there are three pillars to healthy innovation, this content is taken from my May 13, 2013 blog post here:

  1. Teaching, spontaneous employee-to-employee teaching is one sign of a highly innovative company culture.  Knowledge silos can limit the growth and success of a company.  Breaking down knowledge silos can improve the speed and overall competitiveness of any company.
  2. Collaboration
  3. Organizational Health

 

I will cover the 2nd and 3rd pillars in later episodes but for today lets look at the concept of intentional teaching as a strategy to help your culture.

 

A great strategy for breaking down knowledge silos and converting some of your social business detractors into users is to ask employees to teach other employees using the company social network, such as blog posts or simply sharing files generated by the employee.  It is not too much to ask an employee to teach, most companies expect employees to teach already through other tools like: monthly reports, research reviews and patent filings.

 

Be patient and persistent because being social does not come naturally to everyone.

What are some other ways that social enterprise software can improve a company’s culture?

 

Next episode I discuss crowdsourcing, please send any crowdsourcing questions or content to adam@sociallayerpodcast.com

 

Please rate this podcast in iTunes here, please reach out with feedback via email or Twitter @Colliers2

 

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002 The Science Layer Podcast – Interview with Phil McKinney

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Want to learn more about innovation and R&D? well you’ve come to the right place with this episode!

This great interview with Mr. Phil McKinney of Cable Labs and PhilMcKinney.com is a perfect introductory interview for this podcast.  Mr. McKinney did not disappoint with fascinating insight and commentary about the use of science and technology in the private and public sectors.

Phil McKinney is President and CEO of CableLabs. He heads the research and development organization responsible for charting the cable industry’s technology and innovation road map.

Prior to joining CableLabs, Phil was the VP and CTO of the $40 billion (FY12) Personal Systems Group at HP.  He was responsible for long-range strategic planning,  R&D and product road maps for the company’s PC product lines, including mobile devices, notebooks, desktops and workstations. In addition, McKinney was founder and leader of HP’s Innovation Program Office (IPO). The IPO was chartered to identify, incubate and launch adjacent and fundamentally new technologies, products and services that would become the future growth engines for HP.

 

Interview Notes:

Phil shares how he began podcasting with his Killer Innovations podcast even before iTunes and it was primarily as an outgrowth of his blog and in response to people seeking him for advice in how to lead innovative teams to come up with great ideas that turn into profitable products.

Phil is excited about the future of display technologies and the new enabling technology that next generation displays are enabling.  Check out Corning Inc.’s A Day Made of Glass video here or part 2 here

Phil suggested that it might be a good idea to be in the top quartile of your competitors in R&D spending.

Phil pointed out the healthy role between government and science. President Kennedy set the vision to travel to the moon yet he let it to the scientists and engineers to actually get there. Kennedy did not attempt to pick the technological winners and steer funds to any one technology.  Kennedy only set the vision (BHAG, Big Hairy Audacious Goal) and made the way for resources, he did not attempt to guide the scientists and engineers in the technology or strategy of how they successfully made it to the moon.  See Kennedy’s speech here to Congress from 1962 challenging the nation to strive for the moon.

Check out Phil McKinney’s website here.

Check out Phil’s Killer Innovations Podcast site here. Or search for Killer Innovations in iTunes, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Purchase Phil’s Beyond the Obvious Book Here (affiliate link)
Beyond The Obvious Book

The opinions expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of my employer or the employer of my interviewees.

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Innovate with PATIENCE

I have a tendancy to become impatient, however like many people, the older I become the more patient I become. Patience is useful in life, I see it in my 5-year-old, impatience makes him give up way too soon, impatience makes him treat people poorly, impatience causes him to lose focus and act on fear or anger rather than principles.

Patience also is useful for innovation organizations engaging in R&D, patience can sometimes make or break these types of organizations.

It is important to in grain patience into the organizational culture for at least 3 reasons:

  1. Markets for technology are on a different timeline than technology invention. We should invent continuously and (sometimes) wait for markets to demand the inventions.

  2. Impatient organizations give up on highly talented employees before they can contribute their full value. Some employees are brilliant, creative and intelligent, some of these employees develop slowly.  Their brilliance, creativity and intelligence are highly valuable but they may not be on the same timeline as are the markets.

  3. Patient organizations communicate better because they stay focused on their core principles longer, they do not get distracted easily by hot markets, by 2-year recessions, by technology fads, or by toxic politics that come and go like the weather.

So how do we create patience in our innovation centered organizations? I think there are at least two ways, first make patience a core value, leadership should all agree that patience is valuable to the organization, then document and communicate this value often, very often, more often then you think is reasonable.

Another way to encourage patience in employee mindset is by creating a culture that values people and teams that actually get to know one another. Leaders can create promotion criteria that rewards collaboration, rewards cooperation rather than cause internal competition.  Employees and managers who have relationships with one another are more likely to be patient with one another and put up with one another’s weaknesses.

Over time organizations will see a return on their investment in patient innovation.

Is your organization patient?

Please comment on this post on twitter @Colliers2 or email me at colliersengineering@gmail.com!

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