Reigniting front line entrepreneurialism.
Winning back ‘entrepreneurial mojo’ with quantifiable revenue gains generated by bottom-up innovation.
Problem.
A global gaming company had created a new subsidiary. Although the new venture grew rapidly, the CEO was concerned the company was losing its “entrepreneurial mojo”. He expected to see many small but in aggregate high impact ideas being surfaced every day - but these had dried up. How could they identify the cause of this change, and reignite intrapreneurship across the organization?
What we did.
Identify the Cause
Through interviewing and a proprietary diagnostic, OneLeap zeroed in on a cycle of behaviours resulting in innovation fatigue:
Senior management launched a well-publicised company-wide idea-system that searched for innovative ideas from anywhere in the organization. To emphasis openness, these could be on any topic.
Initially, this generated a strong response from an engaged tech-dominated workforce.
While they valued the suggestions, senior management were simply overwhelmed. Few ideas could be progressed as they didn’t relate to strategic priorities agreed with the board. In most cases they were not able to provide feedback to those who submitted ideas.
This was interpreted by the wider company as a lack of genuine interest, and cynicism set in. Those ideas that seemed to progress apparently did so outside the system, based on relationships.
Consequently idea submissions dried up, leading the CEO to assume the organization had lost its mojo.
Responding to the challenge: re-empowering the front line with a presumption against escalation
Once the cause was identified, the OneLeap team proposed a reversal of the “filter up” system by which innovations were currently selected. Instead, the goal was to reduce, as far as possible, the travel time between a front line worker with an idea, and running a quick experiment.
Introducing the 70/20/10 rule
Under the new system OneLeap co-designed with the client, 70% of ideas were expected to come from the front line and - at least for initial testing within that unit - could be prioritized and decided on (within agreed bounds) by a small, flat team within that unit. If they were a success, these ideas could then be 'exported'.
20% of ideas required cross-departmental work before testing. Representatives from each department were empowered to OK these ideas within clearly defined bounds. To justify the heavier time investment on these ideas, they had to have a higher potential ROI than those in the 70% bucket.
The final 10% of ideas needed to be sent to the top early on. To qualify, these ideas had to be strategically informed. Therefore, rather than using a suggestion box format, these ideas were sought in response to a specific strategic question set twice a month by the senior management and C-suite team. For example: "Here is my challenge - I need suggestions of how we can do X?"
OneLeap’s role as “Co-pilot” in re-establishing intrapreneurship
Critical to the success of the new design was that it be a living experiment, adapting as the organization learned, and that it be owned by the organization.
OneLeap co-piloted a driving team model in which all levels of the organization were represented. This team co-built the new system, coached line managers and their teams in using it, and collected feedback used to iterate and improve it. Starting with 2 or 3 teams, the model was soon expanded until it was owned in each team across the organization.
Results.
Re-establishing grass roots ownership and efficacy not only recharged jaded innovators, but instantly generated measurable increases in revenue. One “small” front line idea (from the 70%) almost immediately drove a $2M increase in annual revenue. The program was successfully rolled out internationally, garnering excellent feedback from teams.