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How many books, articles and case studies have you read on how to innovate?
There are literally thousands of pundits espousing various methods of creating something new.
The plethora of methodologies rain down:
- brainstorm.
- explore technological capabilities.
- benchmark what the competition is doing.
- track social media conversations.
- explore the possibilities of being contrarian.
- cognition tools.
Whatever process you decide to use, make sure you have a context for creating new ideas.
It’s not about the new idea in and of itself, it’s about the problem it solves; the strategic context it operates in.
In my experience leading a startup organization to A BILLION IN ANNUAL SALES, the innovative source that is underexploited is the frontline.
The strategic context they ‘play in’ is customer engagement, hiking long term relationships and enhancing loyalty.
And the creative juice they can supply is enhancing the customer experience; making the experience delightful, mind blowing and ‘gaspworthy’ so the customer will never leave the organization and will tell others how unbelievable and great the organization is.
Meaningful innovation is created by frontline people charged with the responsibility of delivering memorable moments for others.
Why are frontline employees rarely asked to be the engine of innovation?
Leaders don’t want to hear this, but my observation is that it’s because the frontline generally is not viewed as a high value asset that has the power to either dramatically improve the performance of an organization or destroy it.
The way forward to meaningful innovation is to engage your frontline. Take your strategic imperatives to them and ask for their help creating new approaches, new ways and new methods.
This is a leadership issue.
Don’t leave it to middle management to do it. They won’t. They don’t understand the strategic importance of the frontline.
Leaders MUST put their personal fingerprints on this to make it happen.
Leaders… DO IT. NOW!
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