INNOVATION IMPLEMENTATION: HOW THE HOW MATTERS

1. INNOVATION IMPLEMENTATION:HOW THE HOW MATTERS J. Bradley Morrison System Dynamics Group Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, MIT 30 Wadsworth St., Cambridge, 02142 voice:617/253-8094 fax:617/258-7579 e-mail:<morrison@mit.edu>

2. Motivation • Why is it so hard for people in organizations to make happen what they want to happen? • Innovation implementation has a poor track record. • May be due to failure of innovation • May be due to failure of implementation • Usual question: what distinguishes implementation success from implementation failure? • Practices associated with success versus failure • How to policies for managing implementation affect the process? 4

3. Motivation • Approaches to enhancing organizational capability through participatory process improvement programs are widespread. For example: • Total Quality Management (TQM) • Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) • Lean Manufacturing (TPS) • High Performance Work Organizations (HPWO) • Common characteristic that they rely on the active involvement of and contribution from front-line employees to generate improvements. 4

4. “Start and Fizzle”(Reference Mode) • After a few months, management and shop workers proudly point to the initial success of the effort. • “The people that were there, they seemed very excited about it. When they saw the results, and what could happen, got a visual look, basically, of how we're doing things today and how it can actually be, they got kind of excited about it.” • “They got people looking at the machines, finally fixing them. We got the layout running. You got a pull system in place. And - start looking at some of the overall numbers - they're outstanding. Scrap has come down [thousands of dollars]. Performance went up from 70% to 94%.” • Several months later, some new work practices had been abandoned and performance had deteriorated. • “The wheels are coming off.”

5. Basic Stock and Flow

6. Getting Things Done • The intent was to learn together as the initiative progressed: • “Do we just go down there and say - ok folks, we're going to implement lean and we're the experts here? We're going to tell you what to do and you just trust us. ... Do what we tell you and we'll be ok - all right? And we said - no, we can't do that. ... Well, what if we all learn this stuff together, you know? ... Learn a little, do a little. Let's teach these folks a little bit. Let's learn a little bit about this stuff ourselves. Let's put our heads together.” • But in practice, the work of implementing fell largely on the shoulders of complementary resources. 4

7. Getting Things Done • Workers generate ideas for improvement, but these create task demands on complementary resources: • Engineering • Maintenance • Materials handling • Work group advisors • “So we went up there and did the analysis, got some of the tools ordered, and did some of the basic things. Then we were starting to require more and more engineering support because this is where the timing came in. That's where it really fell down. I think probably the biggest thing we were missing on that team is we had no one to go to.” 4

8. Getting Things Done • Existing norms about who does what guided the assignment of tasks to specific resources: • Engineers knew what they had to do: “When you are sitting in a group and it is some work group members and it is work group advisors … and you are talking about how you are going to change this process and you are talking about moving machines around and talking about changing the manual work … You knew what your part of that job was. You had to do the process documentation. You were responsible for moving the equipment and making the layouts and stuff.” 4

9. Getting Things Done • Availability of necessary resources was limited: • “If we had to have something from maintenance, they said you have to put a [requisition]. It took a month to put lines on the floor.” • “Our space is being cluttered. ... We'd get promised, oh, by tomorrow that stuff will be out of there. A week later it will be sitting there. Who's responsible? Whose stuff is this?.” • “How do you do that? Send in a work order. Well, you send in a work order and it disappears. How do you get the priority? Because we are trying to show some speed and show some commitment, but we didn't know who to plug into.” • “It wasn't really [anything] overt that we're not going to do this and not going to do that, but it was just like [pause] you're pulling an ox cart through a mud pit is basically what you felt like.” 4

10. Getting Things Done • So, tasks to do kept piling up: • “So we just kept on plotting on with our stuff. Had the people creating things. I think we got the workgroup so far ahead of engineering that - it was bad, but there was no way that I was going to wait for a support organization to give me resources while I got the people engaged. You can't. It's like - they have to catch up.” • “You know we hadn't finished the first new improvement. … You have all of these things but you didn't get anything accomplished because you have so much you have to do. We are trying to do it all in one time span. … getting all of that stuff done, you have to work with one thing at a time and that was the missing piece to the puzzle. … People kept coming in with more inputs and that was before you had one output.” 4

11. Two Ways to Get Things Done

12. Getting Things Done • What could be done about the backlog piling up: • “Nothing. You have to wait. That is pretty much it. You could have a meeting. Well, … we had this action item review every week, and [they] said here is the list of stuff that we want to get done, whatever resources involved and … how much time it is going to take. … It was just a follow-up. What we'd do is try to push the pencil on some of the issues.” • Or, improvise solutions to the resource challenge: • “I’ll Do It Myself” • Cherry-picking • Acting as a Crutch 4

13. Getting Things Done • “I’ll Do It Myself” • “Still no lathe. Still no standard for the lathe. This thing was supposed to be in there in December. We don't know how long it takes to do this and to do that. I can estimate it, but I can't estimate it in [our] system [laughter]. …Then it was the first couple weeks in January. I just got so frustrated. I finally took their standards and I created a layout for them, and I created a work path for them as options.” • Cherry Picking: • “You do the easy things first.” 4

14. Getting Things Done • Acting as a Crutch • “We had a workgroup advisor who was pulling it all together at the time. … She would check to make sure. Instead of ordering herself, she would go into the computer and check it to see if it was ordered and if it wasn't, she would go down on the floor and tell the people that they were not doing their job. She wouldn't do it but she was always be check the balance person of it. So she would go and make sure.” • “She's very persistent. She does not give up easily. She's bound and determined that she will succeed one way or another. And she does it without really alienating a lot of people.” 4

15. Model Structure

16. Starting the program: pulse ideas and add resources

17. But with temporary increases in resources, Process Capability may improve or decline:

18. Early withdrawal does not allow collaboration to build.

19. Similarly, a larger batch of new ideas overwhelms the resources and leads to decline.

20. Similarly, a larger batch of new ideas overwhelms the resources and leads to decline.

21. Adding an Effect on Idea Generation

22. With an effect of the rate of idea generation:

23. Insights and Implications • Equilibrium condition for Process Capability is: inflow = outflow • Sustained improvement requires building something else, perhaps the capacity to improve • Explicit Recognition of the Stock of Tasks to Do • Manage inflow • Manage outflow • Manage consequences • Increase productivity - shortcuts • “I’ll Do It Myself” • Cherry-picking • Acting as a Crutch 4

24. Managing A Stock of Tasks to Do • Increase the Outflow • Increase productivity - really • Increase productivity - shortcuts • Add resources • Cancel ideas • Decrease the Inflow • Reduce the idea generation • Screen ideas • Accept the Accumulation • Adjust expected completion time • Mitigate consequences of delays 4

25. Managing A Stock of Tasks to Do Increase the Outflow • Increase productivity - really • Skill development through experience over time • Training in new tools and techniques • Technology enhancements • Increase productivity - shortcuts • “I’ll Do It Myself” • Cherry-picking • Acting as a Crutch 4

26. PORTIA:Good sentences and well pronounced NERISSA:They would be better, if well followed PORTIA:If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good divine that follows his own instructions: I can easier teach twenty what were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own teaching. Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I Scene 2

27. A Familiar Story: Teach a Person to Fish ...

28. Adding resources generates lasting improvements.