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EP 206: [Solo] Innovation Strategy gathering - HIQA-Human Innovation Questions Answered with Jens Heitland

Welcome to HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

Today we will cover the topic of Strategy gathering as part of preparing for Scenario workshops which will enable an organization to find out what problems the innovation team will focus on.

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More about the  phases in the Podcast Episode 163: How to build a Innovation System here

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Human Innovation Academy: https://www.heitlandinnovation.com/human-innovation-academy

Heitland Innovation: https://www.heitlandinnovation.com/

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Transcript:

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 Human innovation questions answered. Life. Off we go. So today's episode, I want to go a little deeper into. Stakeholder management, but focusing the stakeholder management. When we look into preparing for scenario building, so scenario building is one of the milestones. If we look into what problem does an organization want to solve?

When we look into the total ecosystem of innovation, I went deeper into describing the whole phases in episode number 163. So if you're interested and want to go broader, which goes more into the phases, have a listen have a watch, episode 163. You can find it on YouTube, you can find it on the podcast, or go to jensheitland.com and you will find everything there. Today I want to go into how do you gather the internal strategies? And that sounds very, very, very simple. But because we talk about human innovation, I want to go deeper into this and explain how I did it in the past, and then how as well teach others.

For example, in the Human Innovation Academy or how we do this when we go into clients, how do we help them linking this to the human part because it's not just, let's build a list and write down all the strategies we have. Yes, that's part of it. But let's go deeper. So outcome of the scenario part, which is the first phase of the total ecosystem I am talking often about is what is the problem we want to solve?

Why do we want to solve this problem as an organization, as an innovation department, structure supporting organism in the organization and where when we look into markets. That's the broader perspective. Let's directly zoom into how do we get the internal strategies mapped out, and how do we approach this with the human perspective?

So every larger organization has a lot of strategies. You might have a business, a sales strategy, a market development strategy. You might have a product development strategy. You might have a sustainability strategy, you might have an innovation strategy. You might have a lot of different strategies.

So my advice when it comes to the human innovation piece to get prepared for scenario workshops, which I highly recommend everyone to do. Go into your intranet, large organization, have an intranet. You can find all the strategies, get yourself prepared, and build a huge list of all the different strategies, but as well strategic initiatives that's going on. And then go deeper. If you can find that the roadmaps and as well the owner of the strategy. So who is the owner of the sales strategy? Who is the owner of the brand strategy?

Who is the owner of Initiative? X, Y Z. There are a lot of things that are written down and sometimes they're not written down, but you know, there's an owner, there's department head, there's a vice president, depending on the company structure. Who is owning a specific piece of that?

Prepare yourself. Map this things out. Go deeper and have a list, have a small summary. You need to understand the strategy. Very, very important. So if you have a strategy, I did this years back. I was reading the strategy, I was taking notes off the strategy. I was looking into what are the key points I, as the head of innovation at that time, need to understand.

and what are the things I have questions to, because then. You book meetings. So I'm not going into stakeholder mapping because that's another video and I will do a deeper video. I think I did one already, somewhere in my ecosystem. You can search for it on my YouTube channel, but I will not go too much into how do you map the ecosystem?

How do you map the stakeholders? I will do another video like this where we go deeper into that that's most properly more helpful. But if you have defined your stakeholders, if you know whom you need to talk to. Of course, prepare yourself that you have your notes ready from the stakeholder, from the strategy you want to talk about, and then really ask questions, meet the stakeholders.

Try to meet several stakeholders, if there are several stakeholders involved when it comes to a specific strategy like business development strategy expansion strategy. There will be a lot of people who are involved, so meet with a couple of them. Key stakeholders are very, very important, but often it's very helpful to meet with contributors.

So people who have done major parts and have written, have contributed to that strategy because they will be able to give you even more granular level because sometimes the owner of the strategy has changed and was not part of establishing the strategy. Ask them who was involved, who was involved building the strategy, who was key influencer of building the strategy Example when I was working with a very large project inside of the IKEA ecosystem, couple of years back.

Think that was around 2012, 2013. I was trying to understand who was writing the sustainability strategy at that time. Who was leading the project in writing the strategy? Who was contributing in which way, but as well, who was executive sponsor and how was the political landscape at that time to understand.

Who contributed. He was a little bit maybe against it, who has used it to do in different ways for their strategies as well. So that's really what you need to try to find out. Of course, ask them what's the strategy about, and not the things you can read in the strategy. It's more about what do they see in the future with that strategy?

What do they see contributing to the business landscape? How do they see the way forward when it comes to the strategy? What are the things that are changing from their perspective when it comes to that strategy? Sometimes strategies are already three years old and they will be revised in the future, so the owner off that strategy often knows already where the wind is blowing, where they're heading, where they want to go with the strategy and or things changing in the organization so that you can pick that up straight away. Ask as well, what is the timeline when it's an older strategy, where are they in their roadmap?

What is the roadmap? Try to understand details of the roadmap. If they have a document of it, which they're willing to share, gather it. All of that will help you in this scenario, workshops and this in the deep dive. When you look into what is the problems you want to solve for the business with the innovation team, very, very important.

Look into what are the challenges and ask them about that. What are the challenges that they're facing when it comes to the roadmap? What are the challenges inside of the organization, which are holding the strategy movement back. Let's say you look into an expansion strategy. What are the challenges in specific markets?

Why do they think these challenges exist? Are there internal challenges? Are there market challenges? Are there economical challenges? Really try to understand all their details because all of that is super valid input for you as an innovator and as well when you look into solving a specific problem.

As said, look into who are the people involved. Really deep. That's key part when you meet with this person, take notes and every single bit. Very important. A good idea is recording. Ask if you are allowed to record that conversation, because then you have basically a transcription.

And then you have the whole documentation of that interview, and then you have all the details in a written form.

Really go deeper as well. What is important for that person? Try to understand that person as a human being. What's going on with that person? What is going on with that person in relation to that strategy, but look as well ahead.

You should focus on looking into the future with that person, using the strategy as an asset to have a conversation. Very important because you will learn. So when you have taken notes, when you have recorded, you have finished the interview. What's coming next? First of all, of course, thank the stakeholder for the time, for the effort.

When you go out of that meeting, number one thing I highly recommend everyone to do, and I'm not going too much into details, how you set that up, I can do a video of that if your interest, let me know in the comments. Get your. Stakeholder record, which in my eyes is a deep understanding of your stakeholders.

What are their personal topics? Are they married? Do they have kids? These are the things you need to know. They're playing tennis. Do they play golf? Are they into football? Do they love beer? Do they love wine? Because you are building relationships with people inside of your organization. I can highly recommend to do that. And if you do that over time, it's not that you always need to look into your notes, into your record, but you remember a lot of things and it's always helpful if you come back, Hey, how is Mary going? She was sick when we met last time. If Mary is the wife, they're impressed that you remember the name of the wife. Very, very simple human elements, making huge difference when you are capable of doing that with a couple of simple tricks because you will meet the stakeholders over and over again on the journey when you are innovating and they can be your raving fans and supporters as well, and tough negotiations going forward.

So get that updated. Get as well your main stakeholder mapping. Ask for people who are involved, like I said already. Put this stakeholder into your broader ecosystem mapping and update that and ask as well, to whom should you talk on top of that interview, if they know someone

, you should definitely talk about, uh, talk two, not talk about talk two, go deeper.

Um, really map that all out. Say thank you and then. Wait for a day. Wait for a day and send them however you are connected to them. Maybe in a large organization you have Microsoft Teams. Send them a teams message. Always more personal than an email. If you in other organization have other messaging tools, send them a message and or an email. Sent a message and say, thank you very much for this conversation.

If you have something, oh, that's, that's a big one. I forgot. Before you leave that conversation, ask them if you can help them with anything. If you can be of any service to them, if they have a problem, if they have something you can build leverage on without you saying that, obviously. But if they have a problem, which you can easily solve, try to help them solve it, because that's, again, winning an internal stakeholder over in a very easy way.

So if you have something that helps them solving this problem, as an example, you have read a book, which is awesome, send them that book inside of the thank you note. Thank you very much for this interview was very, very, insightful for yourself. You really loved about learning whatever you learned.

And by the way, I, I read this book when you have talked about this point, I was thinking about you, so here I would love to share it with you. If you have a physical copy of it, even better, you can bring that in person to that person if it's a physical environment. That is key part of gathering the strategic insights of a strategy inside of a large organization, small organization is the same.

And this is just a tiny, tiny, tiny piece. When we look into how do you build scenarios for your business, which is the input for what problems do you want to solve? Why do you want to solve these problems in which markets? Which is that input into how do you source the ideas for your innovation funnel?

If you have questions, let me know in the comments. If you're interested in learning how to do that in more details, go to heitlandinnovation.com there's the Human Innovation Academy where we go deeper into this and an eight week program.

If you need help inside of your organization and you would like externals to help you over at least six months, you're welcome to go to heitlandinnovation.com as well, because that's one of the service we do. We go deeper into organization and we work with you on problems for minimum of six months. And up to two years.

That's it for today. Thank you very much for either listening, watching the video. Really appreciate you staying until the end. If you have questions, as said, reach out to me. Wherever you can find me, you're welcome, and I'm trying to help you as much as possible. Thank you very much and don't forget to innovate the human way.

See you next time.