Innovation vs. Best Practices: Which Side Are You On?
| by Steve Flick | ||||
Let’s face facts. Most companies are never going to be innovators, and that’s fine. Most would rather lead their respective categories, anyway, and they lead by doing most of the important things — all coming under the heading of “customer needs and wants” — consistently better than their competitors.
What are the important things? Give your customers what they want (which varies from one customer to the next but can be lumped into one category, “value”). Give it to them when they want it and don’t make excuses.
Value translates to “quality”, which you can give a customer from the outset if you’re lucky. Anyone can get it right at least once but what most of us call “quality” comes about only through establishing consistency in a process. And consistency can only be determined over time.
So, how do you ensure consistency? Keep working at the process. Keep refining it. Implement “best practices”. This will, at best, let you “keep up with the Joneses” (and Toyodas and Fords, etc.).
What if keeping up isn’t good enough? Yes, the silver medal is nice but wouldn’t gold…or platinum…be even better? How do you get ahead of the pack? How do you differentiate yourself in a way that really matters?
Well, what’s the difference between a company that successfully meets or exceeds most stated customer requirements — again, not a bad place to be — and companies that go beyond the known and measurable? The difference is marked by a willingness not to be defined — or confined — by conventional thinking. Innovators don’t think a subject to death: they act decisively.
Of course, they get it wrong a lot of the time but they don’t fret about their mistakes. They learn from them, and they keep moving.
Sure, “mistake-proofing” has its rewards. Mistake-proofed organizations are more certain, they’re more measurable, and they’re often profitable. Innovative companies aren’t afraid of mistakes, because they know that’s how we learn best, as companies and as individuals.
In fact, it’s when we get into a “rut” of consistency that we often lose our gift for innovating. Consistency is not necessarily better than creativity, and vice versa. Consistency and creativity need not be mutually exclusive, either…so we’d like to think. After all, innovation and change can go hand in hand. What do you think?
Can innovation and “best practices” coexist?
* * * * * * *
For More On This Subject…
- “How to Kill Innovation: Keep Asking Questions”, by Scott Anthony, HBR Blog Network (25 Feb 2010) – http://blogs.hbr.org/anthony/2010/02/want_to_kill_innovation_keep_a.html
- “Does Repeat Collaboration Really Kill Creativity?”, by Andrew O’Connell, HBR Blog Network (1 Mar 2010) – http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/03/if-repeat-collaboration-kills.html
Categories:
Customer Quality
Tags:
customer satisfaction • innovation • quality procedures
Bizmanualz has been at the forefront of deploying business best practices since 1995 delivering Policies, Procedures and Forms; quality systems implementation; and strategic business process improvement to help business owners achieve the growth and expansion they envision.
Learn more about Bizmanualz solutions:
Originally published in 2010 by Bizmanualz, Inc. under the title Innovation vs. Best Practices: Which Side Are You On?. All rights reserved. Reproduction permitted with attribution only. www.bizmanualz.com
Leave Your Comment
