| How can we measure success differently? How do you really get some idea of how innovation impacts your business, and what works so you can do more of that stuff and stop doing the pointless worthless stuff? .The UK being the UK, our obsession with ROI and payback can be a major barrier to true innovation. However, skirting around the logic of the payback opens up the ability for individuals to emotionally engage. We just have to frame the word success in something other than monetary terms. This is a Great Question for adjusting the mindset of all the budget controllers and manipulators. It's a big leap as your average manager is so focused on that figure on the bottom right of his business unit spreadsheet as the soul measure. Consider other non-monetary measures like: How many staff do you loose per year? What is your churn in customers? What is their level of satisfaction, How many calls you get for product support? ... the list goes on and on... da da da. The beauty of this question is that opens the individual and organisation mindset to the pain points and focus on the improvements to products service and services that will, could or won't alleviate these. Then, if you still have to count and arm wrestle your FD and their logic path, ask them to add up the recuitements costs, tech support manning costs, and the additional marketing activities that need to replace the loss and the churn of customers. And if that doesn't make them mildly curious and get their erasers melting, as a final note to any CFO, gently remind them that 65% of the net worth of any company is held in its intellectual property. 'Success' is exactly what to you??? |
