Name: Building an innovation team in three simple steps
Uploaded: 2021-06-29T15:47:48.769Z
Duration: 1559.98
Description: Building a successful innovation team can seem like a daunting process, but what if you could remove the guesswork with a simple, step-by-step strategy? Christopher Bailey, Senior Product Manager & Innovator at Exxon Mobil, pulls from his experience and discusses the three steps he thinks are integral to build an innovation team.

SIZZLE How to Build an Innovation Team in 3 Steps_V5.mp4

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English

I'm Jordan Thorne, I am the content lead
and I'm here today with Christopher Bailey.

Chris, can you tell me a little bit about your background?

So, I've been a product manager and innovator within ExxonMobil
for the last 10 years or so, in some places focusing in on

helping them build the practices and the tools to innovate,
and then doing that myself in various product management

positions, mostly that's in new product development areas.

So I've been doing that for the last little bit, mostly in IT.

So building technology products,in order to, help
us succeed and, create really exciting ventures.

Chris, so today we're talking about building an innovation.

Let's talk about the why of building an innovation team.

So, you know, what are the important
kind of pieces around choosing a purpose?

I actually get quite a number of new innovation managers
within ExxonMobil, or even outside that will come

to me and say, you know, I've just been tasked with
building a team and, you know, what do we need to do?

And that that sense of purpose is the thing
that I always focus in on at the beginning.

Primarily  there's a choice that you have to make at the start
and it's,  are you going to be an innovation enablement team?

So sort of enabling others to innovate, or are
you going to be an innovation execution team?

So, you've got projects that you're gonna go work
and, you know, products that you're going to deliver a

services you're going to deliver associated with that.

And what I found is that teams that tried to do both of
those things, end up and up struggling because there's just,

there's typically not enough capacity or they have the wrong
skillset on the team to execute both of those effectively.

So making, making that decision up to
that at the very start is really key.

The other thing that's, that's really closely tied to this
an understanding of what problem you're trying to solve.

So the, the organization has asked you to
come in and, and, you know, set up this team.

You'll be able to easily make a distinction between which one of those
two types of teams you're going to create based on questions back

to those stakeholders about what problems are you trying to solve?

You've asked me to come into here and do this like, is
there new market segments that we're trying to explore?

Is it we're trying to expire in inspire the workforce?

Whatever those things may be are, are super key.

So I think that's foundational to, to get right at the start.

You mentioned, kind of identifying some of the reasons
why some of the problems you might be trying to solve.

How do you identify once you have those problems,
who your customer is or who your stakeholders are.

Some of that can come just through
those initial stakeholder conversations.

So if they start to bring up, well, we need everybody to innovate.

Well, let's talk about like, who exactly is not innovating right now?

Where would you like to see those first pockets?

Particularly when they say, you know, everyone or everybody,
or all, all those kinds of things are really dangerous because

that's sort of visionary like that's where they want to go.

It typically comes because there's a unique circumstance that they're
aware of and so if you can target that, it makes it really easy to

pinpoint who that initial customer is for this and then, and, and
start asking them about like, what's blocking them from doing the

thing, or if you're more on the execution side,then it may be like
we're looking for these new products or these customers of ours.

You know, don't have the services that they need in order
to do XYZ and so we need to come up with novel solutions.

So through, through those initial conversations
with those stakeholders, you should be able to

pinpoint it down to like just a first example.

Who's, who's the first follower who's, who's the, you know,
most recent example that they have that we can pull from.

The other thing too that's that's closely related is the
stakeholders and you want to make sure that that's really clear.

That's, that's one of the biggest, mistakes that I made early on was
focusing so much on our customers and pleasing our customers that

didn't even think about the stakeholders who were actually paying us
to do the thing that, you know, they, they didn't see the success.

They weren't really, you know, excited about
those things our customers were and so we ended

up,  losing some funding associated with that.

So something that, that we learned from that, like, oh, we
need to keep both of those there's there's needs on both.

The customers will stakeholder side, that you have to explore.

That's really interesting and actually just makes me think of a
question sort of around, you know you've mentioned where you've been

given this task to create an innovation team, but if maybe what if
you're in that kind of reverse role and you are wanting to create an

innovation team and you're maybe trying to build that case for doing
so, I imagine kind of getting the stakeholder buy-in is a big thing.

But sort of, is there any other kind of different
angle that you'd have to approach in that way.

That's an intriguing question, because it sort of puts it into the
intrepreneurs hands, sort of the internal person that's excited about

making change for the organization and a lot of those people may not
actually have any authority within the company to, to enact change.

And I think the process that they would go through and do that
sort of spin up a team or say, hey, we should create this.

Is actually the same as doing any other kind of innovation,
so that they would want to be thinking about a pitch.

There are, I would probably use a lean canvas s,
as a tool to sort of map out the different areas.

So in there you've got your customers, the problems you're
trying to solve the solution is the innovation team.

Which that that's only one of those boxes when we tend to think
about, oh, well, we just need the, the innovation team to do that.

We forget about all the other boxes that are on something
like a lean canvas that helps you think more broadly.

So I think filling that out, going through each of
those different areas helps you put together that pitch

to say, here's the benefit that we're looking for.

Here's what we're trying to solve and really create
a stronger case for, for that kind of change.

So I imagine people are the most integral
part of building a successful innovation team.

What kinds of people do you need to acquire in an innovation team?

This is one that took us a while to really understand and
just all the different lenses that are needed for this.

Because, you, we tend to think about innovators in
sort of this single box and while they're creative and

they they're go getters and all these kinds of things.

But there's, there's a lot of different types of attributes
that you need that are not your typical high energy kind

of person that you're trying to bring in to do this and
so you want to think about sort of a range of attributes.

Thinking like a scientist, so this would be
somebody that is focused in, on experimentation.

They're looking and open to pivot, they think in terms
of iteration of you know, getting, getting an experiment

out the door so that you can learn based off of it.

You know, they're, they're open to being wrong, so that
those kinds of mindsets and attributes are really important.

The second one is thinking like an anthropologist,  which
is more of the person that's there to, to observe and

understand and appreciate the way that, you know, the
need is your, your customers are actually working.

And so they're going to value things like behavior over and over
some sort of speculation or a survey that you send out, like

they're, they're going to help your scientist with figuring out
how to actually create an experiment that generates behavior and

not just postulation of know what people think about your product.

They're also going to be very empathetic they will be able to
help you with creating personas and all that kind of stuff.

The next one that we tend to look for is the politician and I
honestly struggled with even putting that one here in the mix,

because there's a lot of negative connotation with, with politics.

What we'd like to take out from this is, is
the good things that come out of that mindset.

You know, a really good politician is somebody who is able
to build a consensus, somebody who is able to take a lot

of wide ranging thoughts and say, let's go this direction.

They're, they're very persuasive they're able to
build a coalition to, to go out and do something.

So there's, there's a lot of really healthy, valuable,
behaviors that you can pull out of that politician mining step.

So we're, we're looking for somebody that is, resilient and
tenacious they're, they're really super knowledgeable in their field.

They're sort of an expert in that area and so, there's
a various range of attributes that we're looking for.

In addition to things like, you know, a balance of
archetypes or different roles that you might pull on.

Let's say that you built a team, that has
all the different kinds of attributes.

Sometimes you may, over-rotate on certain kinds.

Also  I should cavea, you're not expecting that every person
that you bring into the team has all of those attributes.

Expert Insight

Building a successful innovation team can seem like a daunting process, but what if you could remove the guesswork with a simple, step-by-step strategy? 
Christopher Bailey, Senior Product Manager & Innovator at Exxon Mobil, pulls from his experience and discusses the three steps he thinks are integral to build an innovation team.

Innovation

Disruptive innovation

Strategy

Leadership & Teams

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9cfa9426-1a1e-42aa-90c5-ebd105407250.jpeg

Christopher Bailey

Principal Professional Services Consultant 

The Business Model Analyst - Lean Canvas.pdf

Christopher Bailey, Senior Product Manager & Innovator at Exxon Mobil explains his role and background. 

Chapter 1: Introduction

What's the importance of choosing a purpose?

The sense of purpose is something to focus on at the beginning and identify, whether or not you are an Innovation enablement team or innovation execution team. Understand the problem you are trying to solve. Christopher goes into depth a guide to getting internal buy-in to build an innovation team.

Chapter 2: Purpose 

What kinds of people do you need to build an innovation team?

Christopher breaks down the nonconventional attributes that are needed for an innovator and explains 4 different archetypes areas and how they are important in different ways to balance a team. Also explained in-depth are the roles and skills that are important to bring into an innovation team.

Chapter 3: People 

What is the process of building an innovation team?

Every company is different and therefore different factors need to be taken into consideration. Christopher explains a few processes that can aid in building an innovation team, e.g. Enablement team vs the execution team, and breaks down how each can be a great process.

What opportunities and metrics are needed to understand success within a company and with your customers. 