There are few well-recognised, acknowledged tools for success in business, but one of the most important is innovation — the company that fails to innovate is setting itself up for disaster, no matter how successful it might be right now.
The same competition applies in the workplace. Supervisors not only jostle for management positions with their peers, but also with their equally ambitious double-degree juniors. Inter-departmental transfers, hiring from outside the company and organisation restructuring all regularly wreck hopes for promotions and career advancement. It’s getting tougher to stand out, and no position is guaranteed.
So how do new, upstart companies beat old, established firms at their game? Certainly not by selling products that are cheaper, or even necessarily better — it would be foolish to try and take on the big guns just on those grounds. No, it’s by being different. The new company innovates, and then changes the game.
If you want to start charting your own career path, then you have to learn to innovate on the job, the same as new businesses do.
1. It starts with observation
Innovation always starts with a need. Someone has a problem (paper flying across his desk), and someone comes up with a solution (Post-It™ Notes!). It may not be perfect, but it works. Then someone else innovates upon the old idea and comes up with an even better solution, and so on, until the perfect fix is reached. But before any of that came the artful eye of observation: an innovator looked very closely at the problem, analysing it this way and that, looking for that all-important need before starting work. This becomes his problem statement.
Observing what your problem is can be a humbling, but ultimately satisfying, experience. It calls for being brutally honest with yourself. If you don’t have the communication skills to be a leader, then it’s best to just admit it. Observe your weaknesses, admit them for what they are, and you have your problems. Write them down on a piece of paper — this will become your problem statement.
2. Think ahead. Then, think backwards
Dreaming up an innovative way to solve a problem is where most of us get stuck. Most people think about their future by starting from where they are now, and deciding how to get where they want to go. This works… sometimes. But here’s a different approach: why not think about where you want to be, and work backwards?
Visualise
If you have your eye on a management position (in marketing, say), first visualise what it will be like up there in that private office. Also, think about your ‘probable responsibilities’ in that post — reducing costs, improving productivity and motivating staff, for instance. Write all of this down. Try to see the end of your journey and not the actual journey itself.
Now, think about what it is you would have had to demonstrate in order to deserve the privilege of managing those responsibilities. Each responsibility needs a skill — prudent management for reducing costs, or leading by example for motivating staff. Your job is to master those skills.
See the future
Working backwards, you might imagine a large project that requires working with limited resources. You might imagine a period of poor sales, or of rising costs. It’s important to note that at this point you are merely trying to envision possible difficulties your company might face… in particular, difficulties that call for skills relevant to the position you’ve been eyeing.
Once you know what those difficulties are, you need to pinpoint real-life situations when these business challenges are likely to arise for your company. If you’ve been with the company long enough, you pretty much already know what the seasons are like — the season of brisk business, the season of poor business; the season of high staff morale, the season of low staff morale. Write down your expectations: these are the coming opportunities you have to display your management prowess.
Jump ahead
Finally, create a plan. By doing everything you’ve done so far, you’re already a step ahead of the competition. What you have are clear-cut opportunities for you to demonstrate your capabilities in the future… and the time to prepare for them. When the moment arrives, it will appear as though you thought of and implemented those solutions in one deft stroke.
3. Don’t just change yourself. Change the game.
First, yourself
Look at your problem statement from point 1, the one which lists your weaknesses. Look for a co-relationship between this list and that ‘probable responsibilities’ list from point 2 — this will tell you how severely your weaknesses will affect your chances of successfully managing those responsibilities, and what you have to do — exactly — to groom yourself.
When innovating on the job, it is absolutely imperative that you have focus. Avoid generalities like “I need to be a better manager.” Better in what sense? Time? People? Resources? Instead, be specific about what it is you need to learn. If you need better communication skills, enrol in a public speaking course. If you need more patience, take up yoga. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to self-improvement. It is a journey of self-discovery, and that is part of the fun.
Change the game
All your competitors — the other employees — are competing in the present. But you’ve just thought ahead and worked backwards in point 3 - are these skills prerequisites to handling the ‘probable responsibilities’ you listed out?
For instance: although you may be an ace salesperson, it does not mean you’ll make a very good sales manager. A sales leader needs to motivate others to sell better, not sell more themselves. You don’t need to change yourself — what you’re going to do is change the game and take the contest to a different level. While everyone else worries about making more effective Powerpoint presentations, you worry about how to keep staff motivated on the job through Christmas.
4. Expect the unexpected
The unexpected can — and often does — happen. Thankfully, because you’re working along the lines of the worst-case scenarios (as opposed to best-case scenarios, which is what people usually worry about), the chances are slim that things will fix themselves. The world just does not work that way.
Your plan is based on challenges your organisation will encounter, not successes. So, they got through one mess. But unless there is a sterling run of executive management, there are bound to be other challenges you can capitalise upon. Start back at point 2, and work backwards again to spot other opportunities — they will be there.
5. Anticipate the barriers
The first barrier you might face is scepticism from the top: how can you have a solution to the company’s problem of staff turnover that happens every January? The second barrier you may face is non-cooperation from your peers, some of which undoubtedly feel threatened by your ploy.
Anticipate these and other barriers, and start coming up with ways to deal with them now. For instance: if you get top management on your side at the outset, you automatically deal with the second barrier — they will have to give the instructions to the gang, not you.
6. Be quick. Very quick.
Once you have started implementing your idea, be quick about finishing it up with you in the lead. All too often, good ideas are put into place by good people only for others to step in and take the credit for them later. Don’t let that happen.
7. Is it enough? Nope.
You have successfully found a way out of one pickle for your company, and the top management has dutifully sat up and taken notice of you. But is it enough?
Sadly, no. Innovation is about constantly evolving, making solutions that are better than previous versions. The best you can do is to think ahead again, and then think backwards, and look for more opportunities to show your management mettle. It won’t take many first-rate innovations before your bosses — or other companies — have to reward you for your effort.
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