Is your business or organization really designed for innovation?  Are you sure?  Every day I speak to leaders who swear that their businesses are designed for innovation, but in my opinion, this is usually not the case. Why? Because they are stifling open debate, shooting the messenger and making it unsafe for people to voice their opinions.

If your business or company is truly an innovative one, your doors will be open for debate, and your culture will be designed to make it psychologically safe for both employees and customers to voice not only their suggestions, dreams and goals but their concerns, complaints and frustrations.  A recent article in Harvard Business Review: The Customer-Centered Innovation Map is a must read for any business that wants to thrive in the future.  The article comes from the perspective that when a customer buys a product or service from your company, they are actually hiring you to get a job done.  This “job to be done” could be to make more money, look more beautiful, live a more healthy life, move into a dream home, become more credible or build a better relationship.  At each step of the process of the job getting done, both your employees and customers are going to experience both successes and struggle points (and some people will struggle more than others.) By carefully mapping the job a customer is trying to get done, you can find golden opportunities to innovate as you help the customer through your process.   Along the way, you will want to ask questions such as “How can we do this much more efficiently?” and “What struggles and inconveniences are our customers experiencing?” and “How are trends affecting the way the job gets done?” and “What causes execution to go off track?”  As you move through the life cycle of working with a client, looking at each and every compliment, complaint and challenge can open the door for your company to provide a new product, offering or level of customer service that will set you apart from your competition.

This is a very thought provoking article by Tamara J. Erickson. I have mentioned a few posts on HBR by Erickson.

Many of us are asking this question these days. I have three kids in college. My twins will be Juniors this fall, and my son is a sophomore. While I still think a college degree gets you in the door at an early age, I am not convinced it is what makes you successful. There are so many skills not being taught in our education system today (or if they are, they are elective courses), such as public speaking, how to network effectively, how to market yourself or your business, how to write a great article, how to save and invest money, and the list goes on.

I want to say that I believe that college is well designed for some people but not for everyone. It is a big world out there, and the street smarts quite often outweigh the book smarts.