The Hindu Business Line : Dancing in the dark

MANISH (name disguised on grounds of he-will-kill-me-if-I-tell-you-his-real-name) is a young manager at a large consumer company we will not name (on the grounds ... you get the idea). In his earlier job, I had worked with him closely for weeks, on a new opportunity project. Manish stood out from among the rest with his maverick ideas, and bounding, zestful nature. He was an experienced brand manager, and when he left the organisation to join another company to head its new product division, we missed his creativity and initiative.

So it was with some shock that I faced this new avatar while waiting at the airport - it was like the Dementors (if you don't know what that is, you need to stop reading business supplements and read Harry Potter instead) had sucked the energy out of him. It was over a year since I had met him and he seemed drained and dispirited. His old enthusiasm and can-do spirit had vanished, and he seemed coated with a patina of cynicism and "what's-the-point-anyway."

We got chatting - delayed flights help in bonding - and at some point I asked him how his new role had panned out. It was an experiment in that company, he explained, creating a new product development head - earlier, each business unit had done development on its own. And it wasn't a very successful experiment, as I could gauge from his experiences.

There were familiar themes to his narrative. The CEO was passionate about innovation ... up to the point where he had to confront a risky move, at which point all ideas got nixed. His speeches espoused bold moves aimed at creating new markets - yet most ideas that Manish threw up got nixed as being unsuitable strategically. "I don't mind them that, it just that I don't get what would work," he said, dispiritedly kicking his laptop in what was clearly a case of anger transference. I moved it out of his reach unobtrusively and tentatively advanced my opinion - "Perhaps you need to check if you are aligned with strategy? Maybe your ideas don't dovetail with the overall plans ... "

Manish snorted, "What plans? If they told me what they want to achieve, I could explain how my plans fit in. And if they told me why they were killing my projects, at least I would know what the shortcomings are, and how to fix those when I prepare the next proposal. As it is, I feel I am shooting in the dark. And when there is some sort of grudging go-ahead, I am never given the resources to help me out."

Later, I mulled over how Manish's different experiences revealed another complex facet of the innovation process. In one environment, he was bubbling with creativity, and celebrated as the ideas-man. In another environment, the same effortless creativity was stifled and he felt frustrated.

Part of the problem, of course, is with the change in roles. It is so much easier to ideate and brainstorm in macro terms when the project is someone else's responsibility. But then, pure creativity, without the attendant attention to detail and rigour, cannot propel a new business case forward. So Manish, who flourished in brainstorming sessions, found himself at sea when faced with the expectation of creating a new baby and nursing it to health in an uncertain environment. Innovation is often confused with creativity, when, in fact, creativity is a necessary but not sufficient element in carrying an idea to commercial success.

And then, there were conflicting messages from the top. The CEO wanted evidence of zany creativity, "out-of-the-box" solutions, something that had not been tried or experimented with before. But when Manish came up with "business unusual" ideas, they were countered with "business as usual" objections, often inconsistent in their concatenation: can you ensure that it will be wildly profitable, ramp up to a massive scale very quickly and not risk losing any money on it? It was as if the irresistible force of his ideas collided heavily with the immoveable walls of the company's strategic boundaries.

As I dug deeper into Manish's troubles, I came to believe that the responsibility in Manish's predicament lay with his CEO, and the rest of the top management team. Forget conflicting signals and unclear expectations - the main problem seemed to be that Manish was the wrong manager to take charge of such a complex task. For one, he simply did not have the business experience that would have enabled him to zero in on the right ideas to mesh with the overall strategic path. Second, shepherding a project from ideation to commercialisation is a demanding symbiotic process, with co-ordination needed from several departments and managerial levels. Not only did he lack authority, but as a newbie to the organisation, he also lacked a history and networks, which an older hand would have used effectively for rapid execution. True, he brought in fresh perspective, but after the ideation process is completed, the marginal benefits of this are ... well ... marginal.

It is true that new product development is fraught with risk, with the numbers leaning towards failure more often than not. Any analysis will throw up the usual suspects - lack of market research, technical issues, distribution problems, competitor reactions, ... and what have you. Let me add one more.

Show me a company where the responsibility for growth through new products or businesses has been placed on the unseasoned shoulders of a junior manager, and I don't need to be a tarot card reader to prognosticate imminent failure. Almost all CEO surveys show that the key concern is growth, and also that they expect growth to come from new products or businesses. Then, it is only logical that innovation and new engines of growth should be the responsibility of the CEO: only from his vision and leadership can the organisation derive the culture and strategic direction to drive its innovation efforts. And equally important, his backing ensures that things will happen.

What Manish's organisation needs, then, is to first introspect on the role innovation and new product development plays in its quest for growth. The team needs to understand how important it is to move creativity from the merely zany to game-changing market behaviour. And if this is important enough, it needs to come onto the CEO's personal agenda. Finally, execution needs to be handed over to a manager of sufficient seniority, with the strategic maturity and organisational networks to help him take the project forward. Otherwise the innovation programme will be a rudderless process, focusing more on generating ideas than translating those ideas into reality, and ultimately, running out of steam.

(The writer is a Chennai-based management consultant. Karate-gy is the proprietary name of strategic management exercises conducted by Paradigm Management Knowhow.)