Why do so many companies falter, even while led by innovation champions and ceo’s that are inspirational, hard-working, smart, driven, and expend major time and effort trying to get it right?

One often forgotten imperative in Robert’s Rules of Innovation ® is TRAINING AND COACHING. Proper training and coaching in the new product development process is essential and the way to create, reinforce and enhanced company culture and mindset.

Proper hiring, training and coaching is essential to finding and keeping the right people for the right job – and having them trained in their role and processes on the NPD team in order to perform their personal best. According to Jeffery Pfeffer in “What were they thinking?,” poor business choices arise when leaders:

• Fail to consider the unintended consequences of their actions.

For example: When companies get into thick water, the first things to go are usually research budgets, benefits, hours, and even staff. In the short run, this helps cash flow. However, in the long run you have a much higher chance of losing top performing employees and even customers when your quality, service, and innovation are sacrificed.

• Rely on naieve theories of human behavior.

Many of the key reasons for derailed innovation programs tie back to culture, and to people related issues. Many executives fall prey to the idea that if you want employees to do their jobs well, you have to actively manage them and impel them by financial rewards or even threats. In reality, people have more than one motivating force, which is important to understand in order to achieve optimal performance. Financial rewards are always nice, but for some creative folks, recognition may be an even more powerful driver.

• Ignore obvious answers

As Pfeffer says in his book, “Many principals governing organizational behavior are simple and powerful – but companies fail to capitalize on them”. One such example is managers that over multi-task while engaging in face time with their employees. Executives that arrive late to meetings, read emails during conferences, or looking through papers as they talk to employees, send a strong message that the employee, or the reason for the meeting is simply not as high priority as they next email or phone call.

Here are some Training and Coaching tips to help your product development process:

• Over-Communicate – One big corporate myth repeated time and time again, is that over-communication is somehow unhelpful, or ineffective. I am convinced that you can almost never over-communicate. Share the good and the bad. Communicate what is working and not working.

• The One-On-One Touch: Individual coaching provides the privacy and attention that breeds success.  I’ve found that discussions regarding areas for improvement are received and acted upon much better in a private session, away from peers listening in.  This can be especially critical with new employees and/or team members. When you are in a meeting, make that your priority. Treat your employees with courtesy and respect and you will earn their loyalty. Identify and support mentors and champions.

• Basics First: Persistence Pays. Train for continues improvement and don’t forget to train the new comers. Make certain project management basics are taught, applied and re-taught.

For more information about Training and Coaching for sustainable innovation, see “Robert’s Rules of Innovation” by Wiley, March, 2010.

Innovation is constantly taking place around us, from the mundane and simple, to the abstract and grand. Last night I was watching a video for Samsung’s newest screen prototype, the oled bendable plastic screen under the Youm brand name.

This morning I am sitting in a coffee shop using webbeams – free Wi-Fi provided with coffee drinker’s in mind. I especially love the language used on webbeams website. “Serious Coffee, Serious Wi-Fi. You have things to do and coffee to drink. The last thing you need is sad, sluggish, unresponsive Wi-Fi. Our Wi-Fi is always in a good mood, fast and reliable, so you can enjoy your drink while you do what you need to do.”

Today, reading this, I am reminded of the importance of creatives in business. By “creatives” I am referring to the highly charged creative people, who are often the source of truly momentous innovation breakthroughs.

How does your company foster innovation excellence?

Read more at:  http://www.innovationcoach.com/2013/03/innovation-leadership-re-invented/

Innovation is key to a company’s survival, regardless of the size or type of organization. But there are many myths and common misconceptions when it comes to how innovation is achieved. Many people think innovation is all about generating ideas, or ideation. While it’s true that every innovation must start with an idea, it is actually the delivery and execution of processes that lead to sustained Innovation. In fact, when it comes to achieving a culture of innovation, execution may be the biggest challenge.

This Forbes articles offers some food for thought regarding other common myths about innovation:

1. A great leader never fails at innovation. This is certainly a myth because without risk, there can be no innovation and that means failures will inevitably come along the way. Innovation is too much for one leader to tackle alone, so in turn leaders should practice a tolerance for failure and an enthusiasm for risk taking throughout the organization. Make failure a learning experience!

2. Real innovation happens bottoms-up. Innovation efforts require a formal commitment of time and resources. Innovation needs ownership – a champion within the organization – to convince others to step up to the plate. Ideally, the innovation champion should be an officer or executive/management member with respect, authority and the time and passion to drive the project forward.

3. Initiating innovation requires wholesale organizational change. Actually, innovation only requires targeted change and it can be effective to use dedicated teams to take on the task. With the proper training and coaching, designated team members can structure innovative efforts.

Now that we’ve debunked some innovation myths, you may have some questions surrounding how to get started.

• How do you set the policy?
• How do you build a quality team and an environment that fosters teamwork?
• How can you make organizational changes needed to facilitate your efforts?

The ten imperatives in Robert’s Rules of Innovation serve as a guide for starting, nurturing and profiting from a culture of sustained innovation in the workplace. Robert’s Rules of Innovation gives easy-to-implement and immediately useful ideas for setting and reaching goals like bringing “at least one new product per year to market.”

For creating a company culture and mindset focused on innovation, it starts with proper training and coaching from the high ups of an organization. Team members need to be trained and coached to constantly improve their skill set, and this attitude should be continuously reinforced. It’s important for the entire company to be innovative, and not just a designated “Department of Innovation.”

Successful, sustainable innovation depends on a natural curiosity and open-mindedness from all members of an organization. To gauge your company’s training and coaching program, ask yourself:

Do you coach champions and project leaders?

Do you have standardized project management in place?

Do you constantly look for new ways to improve your products and processes – even the successful ones?

Do you share best practices among teams?

Setting these frameworks into place can help motivate your organization as part of an ongoing training program. Here are some tips for developing an effective training and coaching system.

• Pick the right coaches. Not everyone has the psychological makeup to be the coach. Knowledge is key, obviously, but the coach needs to be able to motivate, create camaraderie, and evoke sense of selflessness.
• The one-on-one touch. Individual coaching provides the privacy and attention that breeds success. I’ve found that discussions regarding areas of improvement are received and acted upon much better in a private session, away from peers listening in. This can be especially critical for new employees and/or team members.
• The coach’s creed. The ideal coach has to have self-discipline, superior skill sets, a wide and deep understanding of the innovation program’s goals, and first tier communication skills, in order to address both group and one-on-one situations. A coach with these skills can quickly develop acolytes that, in time, become coaches themselves. And that is the dream scenario: the coach/leader who ultimately cultivates future leaders.

This should all be part of an ongoing process, and don’t forget to train any newcomers to the organization. For more tips on training and coaching, see “Robert’s Rules of Innovation: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival.”

In order for any company to meet its goals and to achieve sustainable Innovation , proper training and coaching is an essential though often overlooked imperative. But how can a New Product Development (NPD) team represent the philosophy of its organization if the attitude, culture and processes are not continually reinforced? Proper hiring, training and coaching is essential to finding and keeping the right people for the right job – and having them trained in their role and processes on the NPD team in order to perform their personal best.

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Smart companies often pride themselves on training programs that introduce or enhance employees’ knowledge of corporate business practices. They promote mentoring initiatives that pair seasoned execs with rising talent. They create booklets or PDFs on corporate policy – and implore staff to read them.

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