The

5 Principles of Communicating for Innovation

The 5 Principles of Communicating for Innovation

In classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said How well he spoke. But when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, Let us march!! Communicating for innovation is about creating the conditions where people say, Let us March! The kind of communication it takes to lead a team or organization towards innovation is often quite different from communicating for keeping the organizational engine running or merely reaching out to or connecting with employees. Innovation journeys are riddled with uncertainty and often selfdoubt. How leaders manage and navigate this uncertainty and keep the momentum going in the face of the inevitable dark nights that innovation journeys face is often a function of how well they are able to communicate with, and align the team or organization. In working with innovation teams, or really in any transformation area, the way you communicate can often be more important than the resources you provide. Because teams will always find a way to deal with lack of resources but they find it extremely hard to deal with communication that disables or at the least doesnt actively enable. In working with innovations and innovation teams for over a decade, Ive found the following 5 Principles to be among the most effective when it comes to communicating for innovation or transformation. Adlai Stevenson (as quoted by Tom Peters)

1. If youre not occupying space in your targets mind, someone else is. Communication isnt about just saying things. Its about occupying space in your targets mind. The problem with this space is that it is very prone to squatters coming in and occupying it. Too often innovations fail because the innovation teams mindspace is filled by doubts, by others in the organization expressing caution and warning the innovation team members that their careers could be over if the innovation fails. For instance at one organization the innovation project head, Jayant Desai (name changed), was constantly afraid of losing ground vis--vis his peers in the organization. The innovation project was one that could transform the organization and its industry but he was consumed by a message that well-meaning people had planted in his mind: youre being shunted off to this innovation project to get rid of you and make space for your rival. What should have been a complete and dedicated focus became a constant looking over his back and his fear of being sidelined was so great that he scrambled to hold on to his older responsibilities. In the project he certainly took no steps that had any degree of uncertainty out of fear of making a mistake and looking bad. Obviously communication had failed here. The leadership team just hadnt bothered to ensure that the real estate between his ears contained no encroachments. They made half-hearted attempts to tell him that the project was important, that he was important, but

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The 5 Principles of Communicating for Innovation

that was it. There was too much space left over in his mind for others to come in. And what could have been a world-impacting innovation spluttered and petered out. As my friend and communication expert Rajesh Vetcha says, Mind space is like a vacuum and nature abhors a vacuum. And if any vacuum is allowed to exist, it will be filled in by someone else and then you have to scramble for a toehold. 2. Pre-Inoculate. In an innovation or transformation journey its always vital to pre-inoculate team members around what theyre going to face at every stage of the innovation journey. Even if the journey begins with a bang, the ideation stage is going to have a number of emotional downs and its vital to address this before the downs hit. Team members need to be pre-inoculated so that when the dark nights do hit, the emotional impact and feeling of drift is on a far lower scale because they had been told that it will happen, that it will be a stage thats expected and that they will get through that stage. The link is important. The dark night experience must be shared as well as when the dawn is likely to appear and what it will look like. When youve told them that something will happen and it happens, credibility increases that the next stage promised will also happen. Of course this has to be backed by real experience. There are very predictable stages where emotional dips and dark nights are likely to occur. One is the ideation stage, another is when you go back to stakeholders with initial ideas and propositions, a third is when the larger organizational engine gets involved, a fourth is when the idea/solution is experimented with in the real market and all projections fall off the charts. Successful innovation journeys arent so much about ideas as they are about handling these dips and dark nights. Pre-inoculation is equally vital in organizational communication. Take Infosys. After NR Narayana Murthy (NRN), as members of the public we all knew that Nandan Nilekani would take the helm. We were pre-inoculated around that. NRN lost no opportunity to speak about him glowingly. Then Kris Gopalakrishnan came in and we were pre-inoculated about this though not as much as when Nandan came in. Pre-inoculation with Kris was a bit less and with Shibulal, it was comparatively non-existent. We werent pre-inoculated. And when Mohandas Pai quit, suggestions that he quit because Infosys had become a nepotism of founders and that foundership rather than ability had become key to being CEO found a ready reception. No pre-inoculation had been done and that space was left free for adverse suggestions to come in. Inoculation has to be done at every stage of transition. In innovation teams this could be when moving from one stage of the project to another. In organizations its when moving from one leader to another or during major initiatives that inoculation becomes key both within and outside the organization. Jack Welch was a master at this. Look at the way we were pre-inoculated around his successor by the detailed way in which he shared the succession process and the front-runners and the media kept track. When Immelt was chosen, the process had been so widely shared that there was little doubt in anyones mind that he was the best man for the job. The search for Ratan Tatas successor was similarly pre-inoculated with the focus being on the search teams credentials, on the duration of the search and on the list of attributes that Ratan Tatas successor should have.

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The 5 Principles of Communicating for Innovation

Again at GE, the strategy shift about being Number 1 or 2 was so well pre-inoculated that when it happened it went through as a matter of course. Just 8 months into his role as head of GE, Welch spoke about his strategy shift about being Number 1 or Number 2 in every business. He spoke about this everywhere, shared the story about emerging with the idea over a cocktail napkin and so on. By the time he rolled it out, everyone was pretty much inoculated. And this was true for almost all of his better-known initiatives. By the way, pre-inoculation is also what top sales people do. They think through all the post-purchase regrets the buyer is going to face and share them upfront and the best ones also pre-inoculate by telling the buyer that that people are going to criticize his choice no matter what he buys and that he should be very convinced in his mind that this is the right product to buy because hes done the research and only then go ahead or else hes going to feel a sense of regret when people say negative things about his choice. And as you can imagine, this pre-inoculates against post-purchase remorse because every time someone criticizes the purchase, the buyer in his mind has already anticipated that. Hes been told that this would happen. 3. Communicate in Memes. Memes are simple but powerful messages that are extremely sticky and suggest exactly what is intended. Malcom Gladwell describes a meme as an idea that behaves like a virus it moves through a population, taking hold in each person it infects. Memes are usually simple seeming messages that are repeated and followed up on. The challenge for any communicator seeking organization-wide transformation is to create memes simple messages that are sticky. For instance GE under Welch was a hothouse of memes Boundarylessness, Work Out, Number 1 or Number 2 are all memes. They were sticky because they were simple and they were clear about the expected course of action. Closer home, LR Natarajan or LRN as hes called, is head of Innovation at Titan and Director at Tata Ceramics, and hes made Titan Jewelry a manufacturing powerhouse by driving innovation through the organization. Hes made it one of the most productive jewelry manufacturing entities in the world and whats more, has also opened out a new line of business selling his innovations like automated diamond bagging machines across the world. Manufacturing is on the cusp of moving from being a traditional cost center to becoming a profit center thanks to its own lines of business. Couple this with the fact that when he took over, Titan Jewelry manufacturing was on the verge of closure. This remarkable transformation occurred when he decided to drive innovation through the organization at every level. And he used memes to do this. Some of his memes are: i. ii. iii. iv. 3-Day Miracle reduce inventory from 30 days to 3 days. 1-day wonder Manufacture jewelry in 1 day from the earlier 15 days. 2-1-2 2 days of raw material, 1 day to manufacture and 2 days to reach stores. Mr. Perfect transform the life of the Karigar (worker at the contract jewelry manufacturer) who lives and works in very poor conditions. Rather than summarily punish units for using labor under poor conditions the way many MNCs do, Titan understands the conditions contract manufacturers face too and rather than send a diktat, directly works to help the worker achieve a better quality of work life.

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The 5 Principles of Communicating for Innovation

The above are specific challenges as memes. He also has annual initiatives that bring out amazing innovations. The initiative for 2004 was called Whats New?. Its simple to just announce an initiative. But to make it a meme, LRN drove it day and night. Every single person he met every day, he made it a point to ask them What are you doing thats new? He got each department to create a separate section on their notice board and each week write on it whats new and what were results of the earlier weeks whats new initiatives. Soon with constant repetition it became a meme with people actively seeking out something new to do. And one of Titan Jewelrys first major innovations that actually helped pull the factory out of the red came from this initiative. Stone setting in pieces of jewelry is a bottleneck across the world because its an extremely manual operation. At Titan Jewelry, as a result of the innovation, stone setting moved from 150 stones being set per person per shift to 1800 stones being set per person per shift. It enabled a quantum shift in the scale of jewelry manufacture. And this has never been done in the industry worldwide. Similarly an initiative for 2007 was Simplify and Automate and as usual LR Natrajan made it a meme. An innovation emerged using robotics that has again transformed jewelry manufacturing productivity and quality. The company also estimates that there is global market of around one billion dollars for these robotic machines that they can cater to. And its not just LR Natrajan. Take VP Nalian head of Momentive India. Nalian uses memes to great effect. After a talk on Leapfrog Innovation that I had given at his company, Nalian took Leapfrog as a meme and drove it in all parts of his organization. And as a result in one instance his team crashed the set up time for a new factory from the usual 18-24 months to just 9 months by using Leapfrog as a mindset. Nalians other memes that have been extremely effective are his 2-5-10 meme for his sales team: go after 2 new growth initiatives, get at least 5 competitor accounts and protect your top 10 customers. 2-5-10 is drilled down to every vertical and every geography. 4. Ignite through stories of People Like Us. This is a concept shared by Daniel Coyle in his book The Talent Code. Heres a quick question: whats common between malnutrition in Vietnam, boxing in India and tennis in Russia? Each of these had breakthroughs happening when stories of people like us ignited whole populations. In Vietnam, malnutrition in children was endemic until Jerry Sternin arrived on the scene. He began by searching out in every village, examples of people who though poor had children who werent malnourished and got others from the village to speak to these folk about what they were doing differently. And when villagers learnt from their own neighbors what they were doing, they began doing it themselves. In less than a decade, moving from village to village, malnutrition was eradicated. Villagers were ignited by people like us doing it. If someone externally had come in and said that they should do the very same things they would probably have been ignored. When you see people like us do remarkable things, it breaks many of the rationalizations that would otherwise arise like their conditions are different, it wont work with our people, in this industryin this country/state/city. And so on.
Porus Munshi

The 5 Principles of Communicating for Innovation

Till the BBC came in, we believed that Indians could never compete in contact sports at a global level. We Indians dont have the endurance, we dont have the right kind of muscle fibre, we dont have the right mindset, we dont have the genes and so on. Then the BBC came in. And BBC here is the Bhiwani Boxing Club. A small boxing club in a small town in Haryana has created Indias boxing heroes who are now recognized as contenders at the world level. Once a few of the BBCs initial students went on to win at international levels, it ignited a whole generation of youngsters who watched people like us being able to break onto the world stage. Akhil Kumar, Vijender Singh became heroes and triggered an almost mass movement into boxing. And all of a sudden the very logical sounding gene based explanations about why Indians couldnt box have fallen by the wayside. This story repeats across the world. As Daniel Coyly writes in The Talent Code, when Anna Kournikova won Wimbledon in 1998, she came from a small tennis academy in Moscow called Spartak. And once local Moscow girls watched Anna the girl who was just like them win Wimbledon, they were ignited. And just a decade later 5 of the top 10 women and 7 of the top 20 players in the world were from Moscow, specifically from Spartak tennis academy. The entire US at the time produced only 3 of the top 20. In innovation, when teams see one team in the organization create a breakthrough, it produces ignition. Bosch India experienced this when they created a breakthrough for diesel engines, Titan Watches experienced this when they create the worlds slimmest water-resistant watch. Its widely accepted that it takes about a week to learn how to juggle 3 balls. But at workshops I teach juggling in just 20 minutes and I use Ignition people like us. I look for just one participant getting it and encourage him till he finally cracks it. Then I put him on the stage so that other participants can see it happening. In moments theres fission one person gets it, he goes on stage, then another and another. Time after time, if just one person cracks it, it creates a ripple effect. If not even one person gets it in the first 10 minutes, no ripple effect happens. Ignition works best when we believe it is People like us who are doing it. As long as we believe that those who make breakthroughs are not people like us, we dont make breakthroughs happen and instead rationalize about talent or MNC culture or environment or resources. So a key step to steering change, transformation or innovation in organizations is to constantly share stories of People Like Us: Ordinary people from within the organization or industry or geography who have done the extraordinary. 5. Reach everybody Individually. In their 2008 book The New Age Of Innovation, CK Prahalad and MS Krishnan share the concept of N=1 when it comes to consumers and co-creating experiences with each consumer. As they write, Value is based on unique, personalized experiences of consumersthe focus is on the centrality of the individualone common experience at a time. Its no different in communicating with stakeholder internally or externally especially if the goal is transformation. In a small, cohesive innovation team N=1 might be easy to achieve in terms of communication. But what if the goal is to reach out to the whole organization?

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The 5 Principles of Communicating for Innovation

JK Tripathy as Commissioner of Police at Chennai, runs a 20,000 strong police force. Hes creating change in a notoriously rigid, hidebound organization like the police. His intent is to bring down crime, transform police-public relations, drive decision making to the front ranks where the policeman connects with the public, ensure probity and transparency in the force and get the public to take greater responsibility for their city and immediate environment. These seem like diverse goals, but the route to all these is the strategy of community policing that hes done so well with at Trichy as Commissioner of Police there. And the key elements here are of course the community and the police. As Tripathy says, when transformation is the agenda communication cant happen through regular channels alone. There has to be one-to-one connect using various forms. Tripathy is always on the go sharing his message. He visits police station after police station, makes field visits to policemens beats, all the while both constantly sharing his message and listening to their challenges and constraints. Its also not unusual to see him at busy junctions directing traffic in his trademark polite manner. He does it himself, demonstrating that every job is key but doesnt do it in a manner thats shouts Demo. He just does it in a hands-on, business-as-usual manner. And this perhaps speaks far more powerfully than anything else. Tripathy estimates that around 60% of his time is spent in communicating with people down the line. Tripathy says he makes hundreds of communications in a day and each communication has to hold interest by linking meaning for his target group why they should do it, how they benefit. Thats using communication strategically. He uses the police radio not to just give orders but to talk, to connect. And when he has to send written messages to the field, his standing instruction is that they are not to be just put on the notice board, but to be read out to the Police Station team before being put on the board so that the personal connect is still maintained as far as possible. All this is also done with the community. There are neighborhood groups created that meet every Sunday with the police and other departments too attending where issues are discussed and shared. NGOs are involved, people are constantly asked for inputs and ideas and there is an overall sense of connectedness at all levels. N=1 is alive and well and it is done through different methods using NGOs, using the press, using police radio, one-on-one meetings, publicizing the commissioners mobile phone number so that anyone can reach him, field visits, and so on. Its not surprising that the transformation of Chennai Police is gathering steam. Tripathy reaches everyone individually. ***

Porus Munshi