Management Innovation is clearly possible. It’s just not very common. Most fail at Management Innovation because they try to use current management methods to create new management methods. In other words, they decide to study lots of data in meetings to think their way to a new way of acting.
Every company Dr. Kenagy studied who succeeded in Management Innovation followed a path of innovation in action. They created, protected, and grew small “innovation incubators” that were designed to create something new. First, they established a small place charged with finding a new way to work. Then they rapidly improved their original ideas in the cold, hard realities of the marketplace. That’s the way IBM developed the personal computer, Dayton Hudson Department Stores became Target, Intel innovated into their semiconductor business, and Toyota teaches the Toyota Production System to new suppliers.
That’s why Adaptive Design always creates innovation incubators called Learning Lines, small places in the organization to learn to work differently. Many healthcare organizations have achieved success with frontline healthcare Learning Lines. (See Designed to Adapt: Leading Healthcare in Challenging Times, specifically pages 72 to 76 and 98 to 104.) Recently, Dr. Kenagy has helped organizations create Learning Lines for management. This process includes an innovation assessment, which quickly evaluates Management Innovation opportunities, and a Management Learning Line, which accelerates Management Innovation throughout the organization.
Successful Management Innovation is not a project or a department; it’s everyone’s work, every day. When you decide that what got you where you are won’t get you where you want to be, it’s time for Adaptive Design. It’s the “enabling technology” that gets you where you want to go in rapid cycles of three simple steps:
- Create Learning Lines that foster effective, real-time decision making that links information to action to results — all focused on the patient.
- Good results engender positive experiences, which starts to change people’s minds. They’re acting their way to a new way of thinking.
- Management Innovation closes the loop by replicating success and increasingly challenging the status quo throughout the organization.
Management Innovation isn’t rocket science; it’s just different. You can make that difference and move your organization forward toward Ideal Patient Care.
