Permission to Innovate

Realizing the potential for process improvement requires making sure that those who are part of designing the change are empowered to find the best path.

The Promise of a New Software Tool

Recently, my medical device startup has been preparing for our initial product launch. In the regulated world, among other things, that means having all the procedures in place to meet regulatory requirements.  As we were working on getting everything set up over the past few months, we realized that some purpose-built software would likely improve our process efficiency and effectiveness.  So we defined our needs, identified three options, evaluated each product, picked our favorite, negotiated the terms, signed the contract, and were now ready to implement the new system.

Our team is excited about the expected benefits of this new system. Last week, our chosen software vendor set up a series of kickoff and implementation meetings at which we met several of their team. They were eager to learn about our existing processes (which were mostly manual and designed to meet the regulatory requirements), so they could help us get up and running swiftly.  As I listened to them, I realized that without intervention, they would bend to our existing processes, and we would end up forgoing many of the benefits we were hoping for from the implementation of a new software tool.

Process Improvement Challenges

The situation reminded me of parallels I had seen during my eight years as an operations improvement consultant. I had worked with many clients breaking loose the ossified processes and forms that had accumulated over time within their organizations. What I noticed is that often these stale processes crossed over organizational boundaries, and therefore, no one felt empowered to improve them. That was why outside consultants were hired. We were a mechanism to empower and facilitate cross-boundary process improvement.  And now, in my startup company, we were facing the same sort of problem.  The software vendor’s team was prepared to help us implement a new tool and improved processes. Still, without empowerment, they were more likely to lock us in by automating our existing manual processes rather than taking advantage of the improvement opportunities the new automation could enable.

Realizing Potential

From my experience, I knew that what we needed to do was to understand and then go with the grain, the design intent, of the new software tool whenever possible.  We needed to adapt our previously mostly manual system to leverage the power of a fast-developing software tool. To do that, we needed the creativity and knowledge of our vendor-partner’s team combined with the creativity and knowledge of our own team. 

As I listened to them in the kickoff process, I saw the signs of a team that was accustomed to being forced to implement sub-optimally by their clients.  They were eager to make us happy. The challenge is that to really make us happy required leading in innovation. For that, we needed to empower them.

Empowering the Team to Innovate

To do this, I took time as we met each new team member in each meeting to tell them how excited we were about their product. I took a few moments to share that “We choose you because you could make us better, and we want to take advantage of all the effort that you have made to make your product more flexible and enabling than any other option.  That makes it a good fit for us.” I explained that “ Yes, we have invested in developing procedures (most of their other customers have not…), yet we want to look at them together to see what adaptations might be needed to make the whole system work well.” I went on to emphasize that “We want your ideas, your innovations, and your input on how our current practices could be made better with your tool.  We want to understand your design intent, what new features are in the pipeline, and we want to collaborate with you to maximize the benefit.”  In other words, I laid out the goal of process improvement and explicitly gave permission for the entire team to propose changes that would streamline all of the processes.

I knew I was striking a chord when one after another of the customer success team members sighed and said enthusiastically, “You know, that is music to our ears!.  It is seldom that we find our customers willing to change to take advantage of our software.”

In fact, one of the vendor engineers told a brief story of a client software engineering team that firmly explained that they had four tools for tracking different elements of change control and no interest whatsoever in changing any of their existing practices. Talk about eviscerating the potential benefits of the new system!  The disappointment in our vendor team’s voices as they described this was palpable. Other examples were offered as well. 

All of this was an excellent reminder of how important it is for startup leaders to make sure that our extended team feels challenged, invited, and empowered to make things in startup better. We also have to control our kneejerk resistance to change and allow improvement to happen. This is how we realize the potential of the investments we make in tools and process development. It doesn’t just happen by accident.