You have made it through Ready, you have made it through Set, and now it is time to Go. If all of the ground work has been done correctly in gathering and selling the idea, this part should be business as usual. Please check out Part One: Gathering Ideas and Part Two: Selling Ideas of the series if you have not already done so.
The Chief Innovation Officer’s role in implementation is mostly one of monitoring and communication. You will be responsible for the following:
- Continue Building Excitement About the Idea
- Make Sure the Plan is Being Executed as Presented
- Communicate Short-Term Wins as Achieved
- Document the Process, Stories and Examples throughout the Implementation
That is it. Remember, the Chief Innovation Officer is not the person in charge of the actual implementation in most cases. It is best to put the best people in the right places and let everything fall into place. We are the silent heroes behind the substantial positive change taking place in our organizations.
Editors Note: Don’t miss Tim’s interview with Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER program about the new role of the Chief Innovation Officer.
Really important point here – Remember, the Chief Innovation Officer is not the person in charge of the actual implementation in most cases.
The silent hero “behind-the-scenes” innovator was also a great takeaway from a recent DorobekINSIDER interview with Scott Anthony. He commented that people at big companies who are making the most positive change are not the executives, but the middle of the ladder folks who are influence everyone with their innovative policies and thinking. Empowering for those who think out of the box
I like to think of it as “Stretching the Box” instead of thinking outside of the box 🙂
Confused as to why the Chief Innovation Officer isn’t responsible for implementation…not even a pilot?
Chris, I think in smaller organizations that the Chief Innovation Officer may be responsible or if they have good project management skills they may oversee projects in some capacity. The point I was trying to make was that to make innovation happen, you have to be able to put the right people in the right places. Rarely, does one person have the expertise to take ideas from fruition all the way through Implementation. Now that does not mean that the Chief Innovation Officer will just step away, they still need to play a monitoring role.
I think it also depends on culture. In a culture that does not openly accept innovation, it is good to constantly shift the role of the innovator to different people. If one person is always the one bringing things forward, it only takes one failure or one bad relationship to halt innovation.
But all this is assuming that you only have one Chief Innovation Officer. If there are multiple Chief Innovation Officers then things would be different.