A Job Done Well - Making Work Better

The Power of Innovation

• Jimmy Barber and James Lawther • Season 2 • Episode 43

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In this episode, James Lawther and Jimmy Barber delve into the topic of innovation, dispelling common misconceptions and emphasising its true value in enhancing performance and enjoyment at work. 

They share personal experiences and discuss both successful and failed innovations, highlighting the importance of involving all employees in the innovation process. They then also discuss the necessary cultural and procedural changes required to create a genuinely innovative environment. Tune in for practical tips on generating ideas, testing them, and scaling successful innovations. 

Don't just leave it to the 'Innovation Team', everyone has a role to play!

Got a question - get in touch. Click here.

Speaker:

Hello, I'm James. Hi, I'm Jimmy and welcome to a Job Done Well, the podcast that helps you improve your performance enjoyment at work..

James:

Hello. How are you? Hi James. I'm good. How are you? Fabulous. Thank you for

Jimmy:

Of course. Of course.

James:

Always fabulous. What we talking about today then?

Jimmy:

Today we're going to talk about innovation.

James:

Okay. Did I tell you I was once the international Innovations Project Manager. I was,

Jimmy:

That's pretty cool, isn't it?

James:

yeah. It was until you start really realizing it was about chicken burgers, but you know the job title sound good.

Jimmy:

It does, and that's the thing. So. It is a popular buzzword. It is a trend. Companies all think it's very sexy and all want it, and people get excited by it. But we believe that often it is chased down in the wrong way. So we are going to talk to you about how you can really embrace innovation and make a real difference to your performance enjoyment at work.

James:

I agree with everything you say apart from your point about we think it's sexy. It was sexy. That was me.

Jimmy:

You are always sexy, James.

James:

time. Before we get into innovation and what have you been up to?

Jimmy:

Good question, James. I finally, for those of who, have listened to this podcast a long time, finally had my home claim, for my flooded cellar with a Zurich finally closed after a mere two and a half years.

James:

Two and a half

Jimmy:

Honestly, James, it has cost them an absolute arm and a leg. And the problems were, first off, it's the classic big company, what we are here for. We are here to save our customers when they need us, or we are here to, make money. So let's, find a way of declining a claim. when they finally gave it to a couple of small companies of surveyors and builders to fix it, did a fantastic job. Got it all fixed perfectly. But that was after they had spent two years of faffing around. Anyhow. James, what you been up to?

James:

Um, well, it's not what I've been up to. It's what I'm going to do tomorrow.

Jimmy:

Exciting. What?

James:

Tomorrow I am taking my youngest daughter, she wants to go for a look round Oxford universe. Now admittedly, this is only a look

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

but I'm a bit worried about her parentage'cause she can't be my daughter if she's can to do that, can she? So I need to have a stiff conversation with my wife, I reckon.

Jimmy:

James, you're far too modest. You are perfectly capable of holding your own with those Oxford Dawns,

James:

You think

Jimmy:

check, check your shirt out today. That's Pure Oxford mate.

James:

Alright. Yeah, it's very summery So go on then. Innovation. Talk to me about innovation. What do you

Jimmy:

Well, before we get into innovation, James, we should just tell everyone that next week. Is the end of season two for us as we take a short break over the summer. So, uh, next week's episode will be our end of season finale.

James:

spectacular. Go on then. Talk to me about innovation. What do we mean about innovation?

Jimmy:

so there is a dictionary definition for innovation, which is creating new and better ways to solve problems, improve experiences, or deliver value.

James:

Okay.

Jimmy:

But I think one of the big issues with this subject is that. I am not sure always. That's what, when people talk about innovation, what they actually think about and actually mean.'cause often I think nowadays we think it's all got to be about building, cutting edge products or big transformations. It's often very tech-based. It's what, the, um, Silicon Valley companies do. Or if you just add tech to the end of anything, you know, InsureTech, FinTech, EdTech, it means it's innovation, doesn't it? Whereas, what do we mean by

James:

tech.

Jimmy:

coffee tech? You could, I'll tell you, drink tech. There will be someone out there who's doing drink tech

James:

Clean up.

Jimmy:

anyhow. What do we mean by innovation James?

James:

Well, before we get into that, there is a debate, you know, just'cause it's an innovation necessarily mean it's an improvement.

Jimmy:

No.

James:

I had a quick look and I found some innovations that weren't necessarily improvements. So you go the segue. Do you remember the segue?

Jimmy:

Yes.

James:

Yeah. So there's a fabulous innovation, you think, how clever that is. that an improvement to anybody's life whatsoever?

Jimmy:

Dunno. Do you know what happened to the, uh, guy who invented the segway?

James:

Didn't he run him over or something? What

Jimmy:

No. He, he fell off a cliff whilst riding, riding a segway,

James:

that'd be a lesson to you. Here's another one for you. New Coke. Do you remember New Coke? When was that? Was that the 1990s

Jimmy:

New Coke.

James:

new Coke? Don't you remember? New Coke was Coca-Cola when they had this whole new rebrand and this reformulation and they thought they were gonna

Jimmy:

Oh, I,

James:

loads of it. Just went absolutely flopped. Absolutely. Hideous commercial failure.

Jimmy:

oh, never heard of, never heard of

James:

remember.

Jimmy:

new Coke. I.

James:

And another one. I've

Jimmy:

Yeah. Colin.

James:

is going back. You tell me you remember this one. I wonder how many people remember this one, the beta max. Do you remember the

Jimmy:

Oh yeah. Yeah. VHSB two max. B max was actually better quality than VHS.

James:

So even if it is a better quality thing, we used to have one, my dad bought it was great'cause it was double-sided, which the VH s wasn't. But um, yeah, if you can have this innovation, but if it doesn't hold the market, it's still not worth going for. And I've got an even better

Jimmy:

Just just on that, on that, James, our first video recorder was a VHS, and it was a. It fell off of the back of a lorry, so new to you. And, it got reclaimed by police, came and knocked on our door and, took back our, this whole video recorder was gutted.

James:

And here's another one for you. So it's not just products, services, failed service innovation. So in the 2010s, the universal credit, you remember the universal

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

the. So actually on the face value of it, that was a really good idea.'cause they were trying to simplify, I think there were about five or six different sort of credits that people could get. And just simplify the whole benefits package. But the system didn't work and it was just implemented badly. And, you know, stuff like it was paid in arrears and people hated it. So innovation might be one thing, but actually not necessarily improvement. It really is about what you do it. Do with it and do your customers

Jimmy:

Yeah,

James:

or not.

Jimmy:

so there's lots of examples where innovation isn't necessarily a good thing, but despite that, people generally think it is a automatically a good thing.

James:

How would you define innovation then?

Jimmy:

I, I would go closer to the actual dictionary definition on this one, James. I think it is about making things better, improving performance, solving problems. So it's not just a a sexy tech thing. That's the responsibility of the, uh, what do you call yourself? The International innovation officer. I think it is something that we all play a part in.

James:

I was a manager, not an officer.

Jimmy:

Sorry, weren't that high up, but why do you think innovation is actually important to companies?

James:

Well, I think the first thing is if you are not improving and innovating all the time, some of the bugger will be.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

So you start to lose your competitive edge. You're just standing still if you are not constantly improving.

Jimmy:

I think it's even worse than that, isn't it? Because in this current day and age, if you're standing still, you're actually regressing.'cause the world moves on so fast.

James:

Yeah. And next to that, then, I suppose this is the whole thing about Are you capturing the interest and excitement of your customers?

Jimmy:

And your staff as well.'cause I think that when people are involved in innovation, it can be really exciting. It can be very motivational.

James:

Yeah. There's a bit of a warning on that one though, so

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

It

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

but it depends how it's done. Because if you're sort of standing back and forcing people to innovate Yeah. Then you can do it quite badly. So there's this whole thing about, you know fear of failure or the one I saw was people expecting their team to do overtime

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

work on innovation processes. So it wasn't actually, it was just more work

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

and the staff hated that.

Jimmy:

No, I bet.

James:

And there's a whole thing of fear of failure. And here's a word for you, another one I looked at, but techno stress, you know, you just get this, all this new stuff and if it's forced down people's throats, they don't like it. So I think you're right. I think it can be very motivating for staff, but it needs to be in the right way.

Jimmy:

Yes. And talking of that, there is a real game changing opportunity, which is that how do you create the right environment that all of your people can get involved in innovation?

James:

Yeah, because. Most big companies are busy. You know, they'll have some sort of, I don't know, transformation director or innovation director, or what the hell you want to call it. Yeah. So they'll have that top down, big project stuff going on. But very few companies really engage with all the small ideas and details and nuances of what's going on. But that's where a huge amount of the waste and pain is. So I honestly think there's a huge opportunity to engage your people in driving that sort of

Jimmy:

Yeah, at the end of the day, many brains rather than a few. Don't let it be that transformation director, that innovation officer's job, engage all of the people because not only are there many of them, but they are also closer to the work. They're closer to the issues, they're closer to the things that are going wrong, and importantly, they're closer to customers and want customers really, want, need, what's getting in their way.

James:

Well, and yeah, sorry. Bang on about the customer drum. I think you make a very interesting, it's a very interesting word in the context of innovation.'cause it's only an innovation in the improvement if the customer wants it. So I read a lovely couple of articles the other day. It was about Starbucks. And the first one was they'd have this innovation. Instead of having the baristas, you know, doing the whole, do you want Starbucks noise there?

Jimmy:

Oh,

James:

Yeah. With the

Jimmy:

I,

James:

yeah,

Jimmy:

that for a second there, James. I thought I was in the, in the Starbucks.

James:

Hitting the Starbucks. Yeah. But they've invested in these coffee machines, you know,

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

perhaps the burn grinds. And obviously that's a lot more efficient for Starbucks, but customers hate it because it just. Takes away some of the mystique of it. It takes away the, feeling that you're having something prepared for you. so I can't remember what the chief executive Starbucks is, but they're backing away from it because customers don't like it. But on the other hand, they've also invested in a little algorithm which tells the baristas in which order to make the drinks so that they make them quicker for the, customers. And of course that one the customers love'cause they get their drink quicker. So the point being, yeah, an innovation or an improvement is an innovation or improvement for who. And really, I always go with what your customers think, what's important to

Jimmy:

Yeah, I, I had a, an another good example of that, James, where one company I worked in, we, decided to handle complaints really quickly. So, get back to people. Yeah. The same day. And I. We thought, yeah, that's, people want an answer and they, they hated it. And do you know why they hated it? When we looked into it and we saw that their satisfaction had gone down and that, you know, they were complaining about the process, they didn't feel that they had been given a proper hearing, so they wanted someone to take a little bit of time on their complaint, and if it was done too quickly, they didn't think that somebody had done that. Even if they agreed with them, they still weren't happy. So your, so your, your point is a good one is you can innovate, too much and cut out too much and customers won't necessarily be happy with that.

James:

Yeah, it's a bit like when you go into a restaurant, if you order your food in a restaurant, it's the sort of Goldilocks thing, isn't it? You don't want it delivered too soon.'cause then you think it's been sitting on the side, but you don't be waiting too long for it either.

Jimmy:

Although the, reverse of that can also be true, as in. I was on, our old friend's East Midlands railway last week, and, my train surprisingly was delayed. Obviously the innovation can't actually get the trains to run on time, but what it could do is when I put in a claim for the late arrival of my train, I dunno if you remember previously.

James:

Do they repay?

Jimmy:

Yeah, delay repay. It could take you a couple of weeks to get your money back and you know, it's quite a painful process. I filled in their form online and no, no word of light. The money was in my bank account within 15 minutes.

James:

Oh really?

Jimmy:

That was something that I was impressed by.

Speaker 2:

As well as recording this podcast, we help individuals, teams, and entire organizations achieve outstanding results.

Speaker 3:

If you'd like to find out more about how we can help you, please get in touch email, either jimmy@ajodowell.com or James at ajo dunwell com.

Jimmy:

Anyhow, back to the, back to the. I guess, I guess we think that, you know, if you really engage people yeah, they'll have better ideas than many brains versus the, the few, and you share some of that excitement of innovation. And you, it's not just tech companies or innovation teams that have to do this actually. It should be all of us. It should be all our responsibilities to improve things and innovate within our organization. What's one of your favorite sayings? James.

James:

favorite sayings, we all have two jobs. One is to do your job and the is other is to do your job better.

Jimmy:

And who is that from?

James:

I don't know, actually.

Jimmy:

Just,

James:

to claim that as mine,

Jimmy:

just say it's yours.

James:

not. It's, yeah, it might have been, I'm

Jimmy:

Come on. Donald. Donald Lawther. Just tell us it's yours.

James:

on, hang on, hang. I'm just gonna check that. No, I've Googled it. It might have been mine. is no obvious, um, quote

Jimmy:

It is yours now. That's it, having it. Jay.

James:

But yeah. How do you engage people in getting things done better? That's the real challenge.

Jimmy:

So James, as our AR innovation officer and our general guru,

James:

innovation. Manager.

Jimmy:

sorry, innovation manager accept the promotion. Man, come on.

James:

It was an office better than a manager.

Jimmy:

Of course, it's Jesus. I am positive. James, trust me, if you look at all the officers salaries and the, uh, managers' only, only one winner there.

James:

you have maybe should have asked for a different job title, is that what you're telling me?

Jimmy:

Exactly. Anyhow. If you really believe, as we do that, the big opportunity for innovation is in your people. How do you do it?

James:

Well, I think, and you can challenge me here, I think there are three key things that you need to do.

Jimmy:

Okay, go on.

James:

The first thing obviously is to have some ideas. What is the improvement? What is it you think will be better?

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

next thing, which I think is all important, which people just do not do well at all, but that is test that idea and keep testing it and we'll come and talk about that. And then the final thing is to scale it. So a testing idea is lovely, but actually have you scaled it?

Jimmy:

Yes. So I don't disagree with you, James, but

James:

Say that a bit louder.

Jimmy:

no, because it hurt me the first time round. How do you go about. Identifying or getting your staff to identify the areas for improvement?

James:

well, there are a number of ways of doing that. I think the first thing actually is just go and listen to'em. What's really surprising is the amount of time nobody actually asks them.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

What could be better? It's almost that whole thing about come to work and leave your brain on the hook as you go inside. Just sit there, do what you're told, and then go home later. My favorite, the method that's worked best for me is so come back to this question about purpose, but define purpose. What are you here to do? And your job isn't to, you know, answer the call in 20 seconds. Your job is to, make sure that refunds are processed effectively, or whatever it might be, but then you ask them. What are the things that get in the way of achieving that purpose? And, um, the whole post-it note exercise around that will flush out 1,001 problems that you've got in your organization that if you could fix, would make the whole thing much smoother. So there's one, simply just ask them.

Jimmy:

Awesome. I think another, another good one that kind of links to that is, go and see the work. Go and see the people doing the work because then you'll identify yourself and they'll tell you some of those things that get in the way. You just got to go. Talk to the frontline people, but get'em comfortable with being honest about what's really going on as opposed to just telling you what they think you want to hear. So I think those, those are two good ways of really helping people, unlock their, the ideas and then

James:

Another one. Sorry, lemme

Jimmy:

go on.

James:

another one. to your suppliers.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

Your suppliers will invariably have 1,001 ideas of things you can do better.

Jimmy:

And that's an interesting point'cause when you get to, I guess the comment that we made about unlocking value through your people, I would include suppliers in that,

James:

Yeah.

Jimmy:

people, because they have often unique. Insights based on what they see and also what they see elsewhere and what they know. You brought them in for their expertise and so many organizations bringing suppliers for their expertise and then just ignore them, which is just madness. So, yeah, I agree. Listen to your suppliers as well,

James:

got another one. I got another one.

Jimmy:

they like Columbo.

James:

Yeah,

Jimmy:

more thing.

James:

this one will really blow people's socks off this one. Go and look at your customer complaints. It's obvious, customers will phone in and they will complain about something. Count your complain, see what the thing is. That's biggest that they complain about. Fix it. And people will say, oh, well that's not very innovative, James, is it? And, but I'm not in the, let's create the internal combustion engine here. I'm just in the, what can we fix? It's not working very

Jimmy:

Yeah,

James:

So go and look at your customer complaints.

Jimmy:

well, I think.

James:

but very few people do it.

Jimmy:

No, I think that's very true and, but I think it's wider than that, is just generally listen to your customers I've done things like customer surveys or even focus groups and, that was one of the most eye-opening experiences I had, was actually observing some focus groups where customers talked about their real life problems and their real life interactions with the organization I was working for that really. Change my views on what we needed to to do and what we needed to fix for them.

James:

But then the other thing I would say, and I would say this, wouldn't I, but don't you, this gives you a list of a thousand or one things that you could fix. Really understanding the data and

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

out which one of those things is the most important. Otherwise you end up with a sort of chief executive's wife, complains about something and just'cause his wife happens to have noticed it, or her husband, whatever it might be. But you you just end up fixing the wrong thing. So it's, you know,

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

are the big issues? You get to an interesting cultural thing there, Don, don't you? Which is your chief executives found something that doesn't work terribly well. He starts jumping up and down about it and what you really wanna do is you wanna go up to him and say, for fuck's sake, that's irrelevant. Look at all this shit over here. But

Jimmy:

Yeah,

James:

big career limiting, isn't it? If you do that. That gives you a list of problems.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

But then in terms of solutions, everybody's got ideas of what you can do. So it then is just creating a list of ideas of things that could work. Yeah. So then you've got a list of things to go and try. then leads me onto the next thing I think, which is testing.

Jimmy:

And how do you, recommend people think about testing these solutions?

James:

Well, there's a, there's a thing called the Scientific Methods or Plan Do Study Act, is really well. Here's my plan. How is it working at the moment? Yeah. What am I going to change? Have I got some measure to see if it works or not? Yeah. Then of course, you go away. You do. You run your experiment, you try it out. Yeah. Then the next thing study. Well, did it work or did it not work? Yeah. If it didn't work, what did I learn from it? So I made that either into them rolling out that improvement or. it out and trying the next one. But it's a just a sort of circle of going round and round and round. Constantly iterating, but always knowing what you expect to happen and did it happen or not? So very straightforward, but most organizations, they just need to do, do, do they change something? They change something. They change something, yeah. And they don't really ever get on top of the situation. So there you go. That's testing. I think.

Jimmy:

And then the final thing that you mentioned was scaling, which I think is often where organizations then fall down because they don't then figure out if you've got something that's worked, how do you scale it up into, a size that can make a material difference to your organization. And, we experienced a couple of things here that were quite eye-opening. One was the fact that you have to think about how you're going to sustain the change right from the start. Build it into the design. Don't wait till you've rolled it out and then think, how do we change? How are we gonna sustain this? What's gonna keep it alive? I think another aspect was. Really thinking the what's in it for me through for people.'cause they're only gonna absorb the new change if they really understand the value. And the final thing that I would mention was, whether you make the change optional, and I don't mean at the frontline level, but one of the projects that we did you found a really great way of working that improved one particular business area and our. Our boss showed it to everyone else, and it said it's optional. It's up to you if you want this new, innovative way of working that delivers, you know, multi multiples on your result, it's optional. So, funny enough, half the people adopted it got good results and half of them who suffered from the wasn't invented hair syndrome, ignored it.

James:

Well, I think you really hit an interesting point there. So you've discovered something that works and makes a fantastic difference. Once you know it works, you wanna spin it out as far and as

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

as you can. So the example for me started my career is we probably discussed working for birds. I used to make fish fingers, but birds. I made fish fingers. And then they made chicken fingers and then they made vegetable fingers and they, they put anything in a flipping finger that they thought they could sell once they got the technology

Jimmy:

Yeah,

James:

it. So really a spinning the idea out as far as it will go until it

Jimmy:

well,

James:

I think is

Jimmy:

well, it, it is the classic, you know, find the one best way of doing it and everyone should do it that way till you find a better way of doing it, and then that becomes the one best way of doing it.

James:

totally agree.

Jimmy:

So we've got these three things, idea, test, and scale, but there are probably some other things that you need to do to support the change though, aren't they?

James:

Well, and I think it's all about the sort of processes you've got and the culture that you have.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

Which I mean, so the processes, that's the hard stuff, but do you have an innovation process? Is it clear? If you've got an idea where somebody goes with it, have you got somewhere you can test things? Is there a way of elevating ideas so that people can see them? So there's that whole sort of management process

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

A company that did really well with this, and it's a bit surprising it was Whirlpool.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

there you. Doing one was in washing machines and tumble dryers and things like that.

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

Of course, customs really aren't interested in white goods. It's all a flipping same. But they really went to town on it and I can't remember what the stats were, but they ended up making something like 20, 30% of their revenue every year from new to market innovations. But it was about really getting hot on the process. And then the other thing for me really is the culture. have you provided the space and the time for people to be able to do these things? Yeah, the whole thing about fear of failure, we touched on it, but that's all important. You have, people think they're gonna get slapped about every time something goes wrong. Well, don't be surprised if they're, um, not trying new things. So how do you make it almost an expectation that people are gonna try stuff? Is there anything you'd add to that?

Jimmy:

There's a big cultural spin to this to make it something that people want to do. They know that you're gonna listen to them, they know you're gonna adopt the ideas. You know, it makes the workplace a more dynamic and in interesting place at the end of the day. So, yeah, I can see how both the processes that you have for innovation and the culture around it are going to help either help or hinder your ability to innovate.

James:

Yeah, I did read something quite interesting the other day. It was about efficiency. And they were saying that efficiency is the, um, antithesis of innovation, which actually when you dig into it makes some sense. So if you are held Ben on tying everything down to the last seconds and you don't give people any time whatsoever, you're not accepting any failure, then don't

Jimmy:

Yeah.

James:

if you don't have any innovation. But then that's almost like the death nail for any organization. The minute they get so focused on efficiency that nobody's doing any innovation, then you've got bit of a problem aren't.

Jimmy:

Definitely. So you mentioned Whirlpool James, but anyone else that you know that's, that does this well or that you've done well yourself?

James:

Well,

Jimmy:

I.

James:

of examples of organizations that do this well. I mean, so you've got, now, is it 10% time or is it 15% time? I think it depends who

Jimmy:

10,

James:

to.

Jimmy:

10% time, isn't it?

James:

Yeah. But Google, but interestingly 3M as well are the exactly the same. Approach, which is you give people the time. Now, whether not you actually got the time, I'm not sure, but it was almost sort of an expectation that you would do it.

Jimmy:

On that, James. I think that is that is a great example of a, a signposting. But has a big cultural impact because having visited Google at the time, they definitely didn't give people 10% of their time to innovate, but they did. It was kind of symbolic. It was that everyone should be spending some of their working time trying to innovate. But they had all sorts of things like Gmail came out of somebody's 10% time, didn't it?

James:

Yeah. But you come back to the point here about being an expectation. One of the interesting things about Google is this whole thing about the canteen food in the canteen's. Very good. And

Jimmy:

Yes.

James:

or free? I'm not sure. I

Jimmy:

Yeah,

James:

Google, but all the canteen's are laid out in benches. people are mingling when they sit down, which promotes conversations, which promotes connections, which provokes innovation.

Jimmy:

yeah.

James:

is how you think about it as an organization as a whole.

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Speaker 4:

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Jimmy:

Another example I'd call out was, Amazon. So a Amazon would be well known for the fact that, Jeff did this in his garage, scaled it to one of the world's biggest companies, and now is, uh, going for the most garish wedding you could ever imagine in, in Venice. But what you will know less about them is the fact that they do. Understand the opportunity of getting all their people to innovate, and they do have processes that anyone can follow in any job. You follow the same process to try and develop your idea and it's open to everyone. So everyone was clear on the importance of innovation. It's everyone's job, but how they then go about getting their ideas to the right people who can help them?

James:

Yeah, and I do think there's something about it coming from the top of the organization, so with

Jimmy:

I.

James:

Google and Amazon, that clearly is the case. I do think as well, so we talk about it coming from the top of the organization, but I think there is a question of what you can do in your own bit of the organization. So, all right. Your chief executive might be not very interested in it, but that doesn't mean you can't do it within your part of the business. You just need to provide and cover for people to be able to do these things.

Jimmy:

And I think you're right James. That's where there is a big opportunity for people in organizations, whether it's you as an individual or in a small team or whatever your, you know, unit you're running. You can innovate on how you do things better along with some of the ways that we've talked about doing it today. Anyone can do that. It doesn't need to come from the top. But you just have to make sure you follow that, that ideas test scale, and then think about processes and culture supporting that. So in summary, James

James:

well, I think the key thing for me is. you haven't got all of your people, everybody, everybody's got two jobs. Trademark James Law, Yeah. To do their job and do their be job better. But if you haven't engaged them all in doing their work better, then you're just missing huge opportunities. So I think that is the key point for me.

Jimmy:

Yeah, so don't leave it to. The innovation or transformation teams, and don't just add tech to the back of a word and think that that's innovation. Leverage the potential of your people. But as you say, James, you've got to create the right environment for them to be able to do that.

James:

And yeah, so I think there is a difference. There's a difference between knowing your people have got good ideas, but also creating an environment to unlock that. Um, and if you're hell bent on chasing down efficiencies, then you won't ever create that environment. If you're gonna change something, measure it, see if it works or not, know? Otherwise you just get this scenario where people change, change, change, change, and nothing ever happens. You just bounce about.

Jimmy:

You also get caught in that James in gut feel. I think it's got better, but I would do,'cause it was my idea, so obviously it. So hopefully people have found that useful in terms of our view of innovation and how you can unlock it. Tune in next week for the season finale alright, thanks then.

James:

Cheers now, Tara.

People on this episode

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James Lawther

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Jimmy Barber

Co-host