Innovating Under Pressure

 

The epidemic and the associated lockdown and other restrictions have put many product development teams in a difficult situation. They are required to speed up their processes and this often stifles creative work. Innovation requires upfront coordination and synchronisation that takes time which cannot be rushed through. How does an organisation get work done faster without compromising on quality? 

To understand what strategies are effective for fast-paced innovation, the research conducted yielded interesting results.

The failures were the result of two major factors

1. Compressing established processes into a tight time frame  - Most teams import the standard innovation practices to fit a shorter time frame. This is a natural reaction to stick to a familiar process in the face of uncertainty. However, many of the standard processes won't work in a short time frame leading to failure
2. Coordinate fully upfront  - Normally investing time and effort to coordinate and build an understanding of work process makes team more efficient. Under time pressure this becomes even more important, as it will reduce miscommunications. However, this can backfire when it comes to innovation. This impedes flexibility that is needed to innovate under time pressure. One should be willing to try out new, potentially better and faster options to come up with the required solution.

Let us understand what strategy should be followed to successfully deliver products under pressure.

1. Abandon traditional processes - New situations require new methods. Instead of fitting the known method into the limited time frame, it is better to adopt a new method. Embrace ambiguity and uncertainty of the situation and recognise that regular organisational methods will not apply. Instead of adopting a standard product development process, decide through rapid, iterative experimentation.
2. Minimise upfront coordination - make discussion and coordination meetings short. Leave the path to be followed open and resolve to solve the problem. Minimal coordination can become very messy, with redundant, misdirected work efforts that may prove costly in terms of time and resources. But it helps you gain flexibility, repeatedly adapting and pivoting their product direction in response to experimentation by team members.

The team should embrace uncertainty fully. Minimal and adaptive coordination enables a team to experiment collaboratively leading to faster, better results despite hiccups along the way. there could be miscommunication along the way due to minimal coordination but the teams could adapt quickly and deliver the desired results. 

This leads to the conclusion that teams mandated with innovating under extreme time pressure will be more effective if they minimise team coordination and avoid compressing established work process into the new time frame.

It may be natural to seek order and seek familiar processes when things get chaotic but the only way to be successful may be to embrace chaos.

Embrace a Little Chaos When Innovating Under Pressure

by Hila Lifshitz-Assaf and Sarah Lebovitz

HBR 2020/09