Innovation Talks - Pilot

Speaker A: Welcome to Innovation Talks with Pete and Shaz. Powered by the Applied Innovation Centre, this is a podcast centered around conversations with business leaders to discuss impact strategy and experiences while delivering innovation. We will be discussing million dollar mistakes and lessons learnt, what has worked and what has not worked. Uh, this series of podcasts will take you through multiple conversations that touch hearts and minds. And we will be talking to business leaders to discuss the impact strategy and experiences while delivering this innovation and change. So thank you for co hosting with me, Peter Newman. Welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thanks Sharon. Um, for our listeners, um, perhaps you can give me a very brief and give them a very brief uh, view of what you bring to this.

Speaker A: Okay, so my career experience over the last 30 years has been predominantly people focused. So I have um, developed a business in the natural therapies industry. But that has then taken me on to delivering training, uh, delivering um, talks, public lectures, things like that. So that's it in a nutshell. I am very much people, ah, focused. So I think that's what I bring. You probably bring the mind and I bring the heart.

Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know about the mine, but, um, yeah, well a bit about myself. Um, I founded the Applied innovation centre in 2004. I was prior, uh, to that I was about 35 years in management, uh, change, uh, consulting. But I always had this view that innovation, workplace change can be far better put into an organisation in a structured approach rather than a piecemeal. So over the last 15, 16 years we've been putting together intellectual property to assist our clients and my own consultants to deliver a structured process on innovation and workplace change that can be sustainable at all levels of the organisation. Innovation, uh, does not just happen by, uh, chance. We found that a structured process is needed to make sure you do things in the right order and get the full value for your client. Um, we've spent a lot of time refining our consulting and when we started out we did a similar thing talking to people and that was very invaluable for us to learn what organizers want, what they need to do and that's how we've built our ip. Um, and I'm pretty sure from this series that we will get a lot of information that we can incorporate into our business to give our clients an even better level of service and um, help us understand innovation better and workplace change.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And so you've had a lot of experience uh, in your own consulting firm with innovation and change. You've also had experience with that, um, as an employee per se. Would you care to Elaborate on some of that experience.

Speaker B: My government experience was very much at the change management uh from the highest level strategic um I was responsible for implementing um, uh corporate planning into public sector agencies in the 1980s. Uh implementing information management in as well and um my range of projects from process re engineering right through to strategic planning and also developing whole of government uh automation systems which Even then in 1981 we introduced barcoding and optical disk into the uh records management system which set the task for um future versions that you now see on records management. Yeah so yeah I've had about 25 years of change management in the government from uh, uh doing functional reviews that's really looking at what products that are producing services are they needed. Um a uh lot of uh productivity measurement, a uh, lot of uh KPIs and a lot of uh very heavy workplace change. And also uh, a number of years as the government's go to person to when things crashed in government. So I've had a great experience.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: And um, the work uh Water Corporation where I did most a lot of the big change management. So it's um, a good background which I've now been able to use when I'm developing all this IP that um, put together and hopefully from these podcasts. Yeah I'll get a lot more information.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so you've had the practical experience as well as the um, the knowledge.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's on the ground knowing how to run projects, knowing how to uh, integrate people, integrating uh policies really a lot of changes policies and the uh. Handling the politics.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Because that word comes up a lot, doesn't it?

Speaker B: Well it is. It's about managing the change process and understanding who the people are, the key stakeholders and managing them as much as your team. And when we look at this, we were looking at our initial research told us that we had two, two key drivers of innovation, workplace change, uh leadership and culture. And I'm um also very conscious of Albert Einstein's comments that no process or problem was ever solved by the consciousness of creator. So basically we're trying to talk to our clients about how they manage that and how they set up the blueprint for the innovation workplace change, how they develop culture, um, um to support that and then all the stuff that goes in underneath that is the glue which we would call organisation development. But as you know it's a very wide topic so we're very interested to know what these people are going to come onto our podcast, how they've handled the change process.

Speaker A: And it's interesting because uh, from our discussions I've actually learned a lot about innovation and change management. And from what I've been hearing around the subject, it's something that is uh, relevant to everyday life for people. Also small business. But you are predominantly working with the larger corporations because I guess they're probably more difficult, um, not to handle, but more difficult to naturally have that innovation and change happen.

Speaker B: They've got to have the politics, the change, be change ready. They've got to have all these in line. Otherwise if you embark on change and you're not controlling those things, you're setting yourself up to fail. And we want to work with organisations and the reason we've picked uh, medium to large to work with predominantly, but we'll work down to about organisations to about 150 people. But it's because we've given, with our business innovation toolkit, give them a blueprint of how to bring a structured approach in.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: But that's basically on the basis that these people have in house expertise. Uh, so the toolkit modules give them the, the key points to do. Um, if they don't have that in house, we will support it.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: All around the world with Zoom consulting and all that.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Uh, we have specialists for each of those 10 modules. So we want our clients to come and get the best approach. Best bang for buck.

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.

Speaker B: In terms of the innovation workplace journey

Speaker A: and of course have the outcome that's the best approach.

Speaker B: Um, and best outcome. Yeah, um, that's our starting point. Our clients must get the best outcome.

Speaker A: Definitely.

Speaker B: That's why we don't sell them IP and leave them to swing in the air. We're backing it up through right around the world companies. Right around the world. We're backing them up with the information to supplement our toolkit.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Great module.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yep. So it's a double handed approach.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's important. And uh, one of the things we're doing is looking at this change readiness and we have now got questionnaires uh, to see is your organization ready for change.

Speaker A: Yeah. Great.

Speaker B: And if they don't, and that's mainly on the leaders first because if they're not, we can actually run the organisation through a leadership, uh, innovation leadership program to get the leaders ready and they know how to then introduce it to their people.

Speaker A: Yeah. And from everything that I've seen, um, through talking to you, through uh, looking at your website, meeting the people that you work with, you've got all bases covered there. So anything that any organization would require in terms of innovation, change Management, uh, culture, leadership. You are the guys that can definitely.

Speaker B: Yeah, we're trying to be a one stop shop and impart knowledge. For instance, um, you can go onto the web and buy an idea management system, you know, automatic automotive and. But what we're teaching people is that you need to have a whole process. Just buying an off the shelf computer program is a recipe for disaster. So we're really talking to them about what you need to put in place around that idea management system. So A, you get the M ideas but you process the ideas, manage them, commercialise them and if it's a very good uh, aspect you actually register your patents. Mhm. And bring it to market. So we're very much about a holistic approach to everything we do.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's great. And um, it's also about making or tailor making that program uh, specifically to each individual organisation as well. So it's not just a generic thing. This is what you have to do. You look at that, you look at the organisation and ensure that those ideas, um, that structure, whatever, it has its foundation but it's also tailored to suit the organisation.

Speaker B: Yes. And that's why we developed the benchmarking tool on innovation. Workplace change is about. Most organisations we talk to believe they've got a, uh, structured approach to innovation and usually find as an ideas management system a bit of training and a bit of adaptive innovation which is continuous improvement. And we're about making sure that there's 43 elements we've identified if you really want an innovative culture and innovation processes. And we've got a thing called Business Innovation and Creative Indicator. It's a benchmarking tool which you can actually do before you go into your workplace change. It'll tell you what you're doing well, what you're doing starting to do well and what you're doing terrible. And that helps you determine the blueprint on where, what you need to do as an organization instead of stumbling the way through. And that's come about by the knowledge has come from a couple of very well known organisations, the Centre for Creative Leadership, Sunny University New York, their innovation program. But it all was little pieces and with our innovation approach and ip we're trying to connect all the dots and put it to, to our clients in a way that it makes sense, it's structured, it's logical and it's step by step. So it's like just adding water.

Speaker A: Yeah, just add water. I like that analogy. Um, if you don't mind Pete, I thought I would take you through some of the questions that we will be asking our future guests, just so that listeners uh, to this pilot podcast will have a bit of an idea about the strength structure of upcoming podcasts. Is that okay?

Speaker B: Yeah, that's wonderful.

Speaker A: So the first question I would like to ask you is what are your experiences with innovation across your career? I mean I know you've spoken about that briefly but if you can elaborate a little bit more.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think now if I went back to my career and applied what I now have in place m I did it all very badly. But uh, one of the uh, aspects I've always done and lived by is if I had a green site, how would I establish a company? What process would I do?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: That stood me in, uh, great stead. Mhm. A lovely thing called common sense.

Speaker A: Well it's not so common these days, is it?

Speaker B: As a few of my consultants have told me and basically is that you break it down. I've done some very big projects like ministerial review of Fremantle Ports, uh, commercialisation, estate printing, uh, teachers, credit collapse finding, lessons and process and a whole lot of stuff. When you get it, you need to do a lot of planning up front, you need to use a lot of common sense and you need to get your team um, structured. And a lot of organisations put the their teams together but they're not looking at their preferences in terms of the creative problem solving. Um, they're not looking at their uh, mix m of skills. And so if you put a team together and you find they're not working, they usually got one of the four career problem solving and some other aspects like the people who are about clarifying, very strong clarifying. Put all those together. They'll be trying to define the problem till the cows come home.

Speaker A: Yeah. And not really looking at the solution.

Speaker B: And so we've got uh, another product called Foresight, which is from the Centre of Creative Leadership which looks at people's preferences in a project. Very powerful when you're putting a team together or doing team building.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's like profiling them essentially.

Speaker B: Profiling their preferences. We've tested it in the market, so we've done the profiling, we've run a facilitation session.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: It's very easy. You look at the profiles and you see someone out the front when they're clarifying, they're all hustling around, participating. Then when you get to the ideation stage you see some of these people just drift back and disengage. So it's a very powerful and tested process.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's a lot more in depth and business focused than the colour profiling, isn't it?

Speaker B: Yeah, well I like practical stuff that actually has been tested and worked in the, in the workplace.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah for sure.

Speaker B: We try and make those sessions for a lot of fun. We have palm trees and everything else

Speaker A: and look, we all learn better in a fun environment, don't we?

Speaker B: Yeah. Most of my consulting is fun. Most people ask me you're a consultant Peter, why are you laughing and smiling? And I say if I'm not doing that I won't be consulting.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Well I know I have a lot of fun when you're around so I'll testify to that. Um, moving on. What roadblocks and challenges have you faced in implementing an embedding innovation?

Speaker B: Yeah, the main one is not um, the buy in by the leadership group playing lip service.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But employees in the process soon pick that up. The other one is being risk averse. Mhm. So you really gotta change the organisation to be able to run with risk in a managed process.

Speaker A: Yeah. Okay.

Speaker B: You've gotta have your push people coming along with the process. So you've got to have your people involvement.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And there's a whole lot of list. We have checklists. So before we take on a client we want to know if they got all these uh, uh dots in the road.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So would you say playing it safe isn't always a way forward then?

Speaker B: No. As I keep on talking about Albert Einstein, um, you know people engage us to do a culture survey uh, and develop their culture. But I really saying get what you want your organization to be. Mhm. Um, how do you want it to be? What do you want to achieve? M what are the products and services you're going to do? And we've got a methodology to help people to change with business paradigms.

Speaker A: Yeah sure.

Speaker B: That dot on the horizon.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Kodak. And so we look at all these aspects and pick up if they're ready for it. If not we'll step them back and do leadership innovation, leadership training. We'll do uh, training in the organization in general innovation. We'll talk about their change readiness. So sometimes you've got to go back before you go forward.

Speaker A: That's right. Back to the drawing board almost. So you really do have all scenarios and all bases covered there, don't you?

Speaker B: Yeah, well it's from the school hard knocks that I've learned along the way in 40 odd years of change management. And uh, uh that's why when I first started this out the Stuff from the Centre for Creative Leadership and the stuff from Sunny University in New York were touted as the way to do innovation. And I kept on saying no, it's part, it's a very good fabric to build on. Um, but we need to build a structured, logical, holistic approach so organisations can tick off all the boxes and know that they've got a sustainable innovation workplace change at all levels of the organisation. And it's got to be the strategy we do. We actually break it down the organisation so that we define the high level strategies on people, process, product and press, which is the environment. We bring them down to interpret what they mean to the major programs. Then people from the business users come up and pick it and that allows them to have a very consistent approach from the high level strategies down to the business units. It makes it easy for the organizations to monitor effectively and if they want a more macro they go back to the business Innovation uh, creative indicator and they could run that benchmark tool every two 18 months, two years and it'll tell them what progress they've made in the meantime. So we've got a lot of things to monitor, measurements.

Speaker A: But I really like the holistic uh, approach, you know, the combination of the creativity as well as the logic and the intellect And I think most things in life we need to find balance between the two, don't we? M not just business but across the board.

Speaker B: It's not only that when you talk about innovation, innovation blows people away but if you talk to it in terms of workplace change or radical workplace change and uh, business transformation they're all very similar tools and people tend. We picked on innovation because since then we've learned there's more ways to skin a cat.

Speaker A: Absolutely. And it really is about the language, isn't it? You could mean the same thing, uh, but use a couple of different words and people have a completely different outlook on it, a completely different concept of it.

Speaker B: We've written for our ah, clients a business creative and innovation for Framework. It's about a 67 page document. I think we've got about 10 or 20 definitions of innovation.

Speaker A: It all means the same thing, just expressed differently. Yeah, um, that's because people are also different.

Speaker B: That's right. M what I tell you, you interpret from your learning.

Speaker A: It's through all of my filters. That's correct. That's correct. So can you tell me what role culture and leadership has played in implementing and embedding innovation?

Speaker B: Well to me I have a different perspective because I want to set the blueprint uh, so uh, what the organisation wants to be, how they want to get there and what are their key strategies. So you've got a blueprint which you're going to work within the next four or five years, unless that little dot in the raisin changes the business paradigms.

Speaker A: Well, and it does from time to time.

Speaker B: And so from that, once we've got the blueprint, we can then develop the culture m that we want or the organisation needs to support their innovation and their workplace change. And from that, then once you've got that and embed them into your workplace policies, corporate policies, embed it, edit that content culture into your organisation, then you've got the best chance of success. Uh, are you going to bring 100% of your employees along with it? No. And that's why we're very experimenting at the moment with the readiness for change at all levels of the organisation. And if the readiness isn't there, uh, what training programs can you do to help the employees?

Speaker A: Yeah, because leadership and culture can be as much as disrupt us sometimes as it can be a way to progress.

Speaker B: Well, that's it. As, uh, our research when we started out was indicated, the two key drivers of innovation, workplace change, business transformation, leadership and culture. And that's why in our first three modules, we put a lot of, uh, effort into dressing those.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Once you've got them, all the other stuff falls into place. A lot of hard work. But, uh, you then start doing all your organisation development stuff, you know, measurement systems, training, all that, uh, that comes in after you've got your blueprint and your culture.

Speaker A: Right, of course. So what do you feel is a recipe for success, successful innovation and change, then what would be if you could give somebody a recipe?

Speaker B: The recipe is the cookbook called the Business Innovation Toolkit.

Speaker A: Awesome.

Speaker B: It's just like you buy a lovely work. Pete, A recipe where you make a cake. Yeah, of course, if you put the wrong ingredients in at the wrong time.

Speaker A: Yep. Or in the wrong amount.

Speaker B: The wrong amount. Oh, you leave them out, you're in for disaster. You end up with a pancake instead of a cake. So we're very strong on doing it in a structured, holistic way that makes the organisation flexible and agile so they can respond to change and they're the organisations that are going to survive. Uh, if you're not agile and you're not flexible, uh, you're not risk averse, but you're looking at the environment and understanding what your customers want. Uh, or if you're in a support industry, what's changing in the Main business that you support, uh, if you're not aware of that, you're not going to be around for long.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's about being responsive as opposed to reactive as well, isn't it?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's about getting on the front foot and that's why we put a lot of emphasis on the press of our 4Pmodel is that we want the companies to look, look at what is on that horizon. That's going to change that business paradigm and that's changing the business paradigms is speeding up. It's getting faster and faster. Therefore people have got to be far more responsive and agile to change. I uh, was talking to a company who's in the travel industry and whilst it's all doom and gloom in uh, March, April, they look like losing everything. They have now been very agile, changed. They're now in a position where they're stronger than they were prior to Covid and when the borders come down they get the influx of other travellers. They're in a very strong position for next year. And that indicated to me the value of being flexible and agile and being able to change very quickly.

Speaker A: And about having the perfect recipe, which is something you said you can actually provide.

Speaker B: Yeah, well this one's a very small organization so probably don't need the structure. Um, as you get bigger you need more structure and structure can inhibit and it can help. It's same like the old cake recipe. You gotta have it in the right

Speaker A: amount most definitely and in the right order. And speaking about recipes that um, makes me think of a recipe book. So I would like to ask you a bit of left of centre question then. Um, have you come across a book throughout your many years that's changed your life in some way, whether that be personally, professionally?

Speaker B: Um, I was a Great student of Organisation 3 Theory When I was doing my economics degree and my TAFE diplomas. But what I found that sometimes pre learning inhibits creativity. Uh, so that is why I probably not a great student these days of old theory. It's a bit like Albert Einstein. There's a lot of theory out there which cause problems and when you address those problems, if you use the same thinking, you don't get the ultimate creativity and innovation. So my approach is look uh at it, understand the problem m that you've got to solve and then use a lot of common sense and let your creative juices flow. Don't uh, be inhibited by pre learning and that stands us in very good stead because you solve problems that other people can't. Solve.

Speaker A: Yeah. And that reminds me of another great Albert Einstein quote. I think it's something along the lines of imagination is more important than intellect.

Speaker B: Yes. And that's why we've got very good programs on facilitation, creative problem solving. Because, um, my facilitation trainer and he facilitates sessions for ages at different organizations, he's got about 20 different ways of getting those creative juices flowing and if one hits uh, a roadblock he just switches to the next and getting the activity and creatively flowing from that. Once you've got all those ideas M, then you can uh, sift them through, rank them, then work on them.

Speaker A: And he's an engaging fellow as well.

Speaker B: Um, yeah. Well the one thing we have with our consultants is they've been there, done they. So they've been in management positions, they've been in training positions and they're experienced. M. You won't see a uh, young graduate consultant coming out to your property.

Speaker A: And perception really um, is key as well a lot of the time isn't it? It's the same as if you were going to um, a counsellor for marriage guidance, um, and you're a middle aged or more mature couple. It would be difficult to take that advice from 22, 23 year old fresh university graduate, wouldn't it? So I assume it would be the same.

Speaker B: Depends on the experience and their knowledge.

Speaker A: But it's not all book learning that's the thing, it's practical experience.

Speaker B: My previous very early career was in family uh, service type organisations and I could see the effectiveness of the old uh, family welfare officer who's been there, had kids and the theory by social work straight out of university. Um, I won't go into some of the things I found but I can

Speaker A: tell you that's a um, subject for another podcast potentially.

Speaker B: It's mostly uh, the graduates, social workers who hadn't have the life skills that the experienced guys have been in clerical positions run, had families, they could bring

Speaker A: the lived experience wisdom probably.

Speaker B: We've all been through bringing up families, we know the problems

Speaker A: definitely. Well thank you so much Peter. It's been great to hear a little bit more about your experience um, through the years, particularly with innovation and change management. So like I said, thank you very much for sharing that with us. Special thanks to the Applied Innovation Centre for sponsoring the production of this series and we will begin to bring further episodes soon that will be sharing new learnings, insight, challenges, mistakes and triumphs. So you can find us on LinkedIn by connecting with Peter Newman from the Applied Innovation Centre and Sharon Sims from the Embassy of Life and Equipoise Group. So that's it for now, guys. Stay tuned. We will be back with you shortly.

Speaker B: Thanks.

Speaker A: Bye, Pete.