Blog Post 3 - Practitioner Article

This blog post is intended to fulfill a requirement for Professor Voelker’s Strategic Management Seminar course (MGMT 6731) at University of Houston Clear Lake this Fall 2012 semester.  The requirement in question is to provide a review of a peer reviewed academic article associated with an assigned topic area, in this case relating strategic management and innovation.  To fulfill this requirement I have chosen what I have found to be a very interesting practitioner article from Financial Executive published by de Jaruzelski in 2012 entitled “Building a Culture That Energizes Innovation” the copyright for which is held by Financial Executives International.   

This article conveys the importance of relating the culture inherent at a firm with the strategy for innovation they are attempting to implement.  If the firm mistaken seeks to implement a high risk path embracing innovation when they do not have the cultural foundation that is necessary, then they are more than likely doomed to fail.

The author lays out a “culture evolution framework” to help guide practicing managers in setting the appropriate strategy for innovation.  First the author emphasizes taking time to truly understand the existing culture at the firm.  And when doing this understand how the organization and people truly behave when it comes innovation.  Do they embrace the possibility of failing or are they afraid to death of the embarrassment that doing so may bring?  Then the author emphasizes defining the “few critical behaviors” that provide the biggest bang for the buck.  Idea here is to not dilute yourself trying to tackled everything all at once.  But to focus your energies on where you can make a noticeable and hopefully substantial difference to how your organization behaves relative to innovation.  As their third major part of the process the author emphasize comes from a “cultural evolution program.”  This is where as the initial movements towards changing behavior are expanded upon and reinforced, both through formal as well as informal process.  Informal process could mean simply how individual decide to work together to most efficiently and effectively achieve the near term objectives.  More formal aspects could be a pay for performance reward system that helps reinforce behaviors with tangible lasting rewards.  And finally as the fourth and last point of emphasis the author emphasize implementing a system for measuring actual progress in quantitative terms.  This helps keep the focus on what the organization is trying to achieve, shows exactly which factors are deemed most important, what levels for those factors the organization believes not only are achievable but also important to aspire to, and sets a time table for making the accomplishments by.

The most important implication that I believe a practicing managers should take away from this article is the need to truly understand whether the culture at your company will embrace a strategy related to innovation before setting such a strategy in concrete for implementation.  Just because innovation may be a hot topic today for staying ahead of your competitors does not mean it is something that your company will be successful at.  Make sure you know yourself and what you are capable of when setting your strategy.

Citation

Jaruzelski (2012). Building a Culture That Energizes Innovation. Financial Executive, V28, No.2, 32-35.