1 How To Farm Lightning: sustainable innovation Brendan DunphyAssociates 1997-2014 v1.8.

The H2FL Culture Assessment Tool

Assessing innovation culture is a useful way to identify strengths you to build
upon and the conflicts that may inhibit achieving business goals via
innovation.

This simple 10 minute assessment tool gives a quick result but it should only
be taken as indicative: our full diagnostic tool provides a more comprehensive
and actionable assessment.

Contact us for details on +447906816327 or bed@brendan-dunphy.co.uk.

When to use

Use at a staff meeting, an innovation or product development forum, a
company-wide event or as a part of an initiative to improve innovation
capabilities or respond to senior management demands for more innovation!

It can be used for a company-wide assessment or a single business unit or
function.

Its also a good way to get external partner perspectives, either from other
business units or across the partner eco-system.

The assessment must not be edited in any way and trademarks and copyright
restrictions acknowledged and respected.

Feel free to share results with us and contact us for help with analysis &
recommendations.

Instructions

The more perspectives the better so get at least 2 or 3 other colleagues to
complete the assessment making sure you have agreed to scope (company,
business unit, function etc.).

Agree the scope and answer all the questions in Section 1, ticking any of the
statements that apply. There are no right or wrong answers, just as there are
no right or wrong innovation cultures. Leave the box blank where you are
unsure or disagree.

Add the total number of ticks per column, complete the summary on page 3
and then read Section 2 for the analysis.

2 How To Farm Lightning: sustainable innovation Brendan DunphyAssociates 1997-2014 v1.8.
Section 1: Personal Assessment Name:
Question
A B C D
We have a formalised idea generation process

We have successfully run an Innovation Challenge

We have collaborative skills training in our training portfolio

Our performance management rewards good ideas

We have a leader who created the organisation

We have centrally controlled processes

Ideas emerge from across all staff levels of the organisation

Strategy is formulated by the leadership

There is no organisation-wide strategy generation process

We report against a wide-range of metrics

We use Six Sigma,TRIZ or other product development methods

Most of our leaders have an engineering background

Cross-functional collaboration is encouraged or rewarded

We outsource a lot of non-core activities

Constructive dissent is encouraged

We regularly engage customers and partners

Very few individuals know the strategy

Customers, suppliers & partners are embedded into our processes

Direction and priorities frequently change with no given reason

Groupthink prevails and dissent is not encouraged

We use a software platform to input, filter & select ideas

Employees are encouraged to use external social media

We use social media to enable collaboration internally

Creativity training is available

We have specific innovation metrics and report against them

We have an Innovation management process

Cross-functional collaboration is rewarded

Our performance management rewards collaboration

Leadership call for and enable collaboration

All employees have profiles on the intranet

Customers are regularly engaged in idea generation

We actively seek diversity

Our leader is described as entrepreneurial

We have no formalised idea generation processes

Process are frequently abandoned to achieve short-term goals

Customers and partners are not engaged in innovation activities

Collaboration happens at all levels within the organisation

We profile, resource and train for innovation roles

Before joining an innovation project members take innovation training

We constantly fine tune our products/services to meet customer needs

TOTALS

3 How To Farm Lightning: sustainable innovation Brendan DunphyAssociates 1997-2014 v1.8.
Scoring: There are 10 possible points for each box, one point for each tick.
Transfer the totals for each of the 4 boxes above to the boxes below for each
survey participant and add the totals.


Name A B C D














Totals
Culture IDEAS VISION RIGOUR COLLABORATION


TIP: Having read the explanation that follows you may want to come back and
take another look at the individual survey scores above to identify where there
is CONVERGENCE and DIVERGENCE.

Asking why this is the case can be an invaluable source of information and it
may help to reveal not only inevitable differences in interpretation of the
survey questions, but perceptions of how innovation actually happens, the
tools available, responsibilities etc.


4 How To Farm Lightning: sustainable innovation Brendan DunphyAssociates 1997-2014 v1.8.
Section 2: Interpreting the results

The highest score represents your PRIMARY innovation culture and the
second-highest score your SECONDARY innovation culture. The definition,
strengths & weaknesses are:

IDEAS: There is a constant search for new ideas up and down the hierarchy
and across the breadth of the organisation and value chain, they are actively
seeded and nurtured, glorified and implemented and the source of all
improvement, growth and revenue:

+ Open, engaging & inclusive, this culture can tap the knowledge & skills of the
whole organisation and potentially beyond

- Framing and directing is key to generating the quality of ideas that have real impact
and execution and ownership are key

VISIONARY LEADER: Responsibility for the future firmly resides at the top of
the tree, is closely guarded and may change frequently, seemingly at a whim.
The organisation exists to execute best as it can:

+ A true visionary is a rare God-given asset that simplifies the innovation challenge
and allows the organisation to focus on execution without distractions

- What happens when he or she is wrong, no longer available or fully committed? An
organisation used to being led by a visionary can struggle to fill the void.

RIGOUR: Stability and control are the cornerstones of the organisation,
detailed processes and metrics are defined, followed reported and innovation
is no exception. Constant improvement is the norm.

+ In stable environments this attention to detail eases team-working, communication,
collaboration, management & reporting providing unprecedented levels of
transparency and control.

- What happens when customers, markets or technology changes more quickly and
existing processes cant cope, are too slow and competition more agile?

COLLABORATION: Value is primarily created by effective collaboration
within and outside the organisation, integrating and optimising to differentiate
and seek new opportunities with help of partners and customers.

+ The ability to build trust and work across boundaries both internally and externally
can be tapped to innovate even in volatile or marginal markets.

- Can the innovations collaboration generates be retained, is it sustainable or is it too
difficult to own and share?

5 How To Farm Lightning: sustainable innovation Brendan DunphyAssociates 1997-2014 v1.8.
The combination of the PRIMARY (highest score) and SECONDARY
(second-highest score) innovation cultures gives one of 16 innovation SUB-
CULTUREs below.

Like the PRIMARY cultures summarised above, each SUB-CULTURE has its
strengths & weaknesses and may or may not be appropriate for achieving
desired business goals through innovation. A conflict between what is
expected of innovation and the culture in-place to achieve it may be at the
root of failure to innovate at the SCOPE, SCALE or FREQUENCY desired.

PRIMARY SECONDARY SUB-CULTURE

IDEAS
None No boundaries
Visionary Ideas in-scope
Rigour Ideas well executed
Collaboration Open

VISIONARY LEADER
None Guru
Ideas Democratic Guru
Rigour Paranoid Guru
Collaboration Pragmatic Guru

RIGOUR
None Efficiency Rules
Visionary Feed the Machine
Ideas Enlightened Efficiency
Collaboration Efficient Constraints

COLLABORATION
None Brand Dominant
Visionary Willing Enabler
Rigour Agility First
Ideas Agenda Setters

So What?

Its aint what you do its the way that you do it, (and thats what get results)

So sang Bananarama & Fun Boy Three back in the 80s and little did I know
at the time that this simple refrain would apply to innovation just as much as
the rest of life! There are many ways to innovate and succeed and even within
the same industry and markets we can see competitors taking different
approaches and succeeding (though it is fair to say that many adopt similar
approaches and fail, but that is a different refrain.!).

Understanding the organisations innovation culture is a useful step to
identify whether you are leveraging it or fighting it and whether its the
right one to get where you need to be. Contact us to understand more
about the sub-cultures, the full diagnostic tool and our related
consulting & training services.