Here is an excerpt from an article written by Rolf-Christian Wentz for MIT Sloan Management Review. To read the complete article, check out others, sign up for email alerts, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
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Team visits to companies that have successfully developed innovative processes can help organizations accelerate and ease their own innovation processes.
To compete and survive, companies need to adopt innovative ways of working, but new options seem to be emerging more frequently than ever before. Fortunately, not all innovative practices need to be invented anew. Many — such as lean management, digitization, and agile approaches — have already been conceptualized and employed by other companies or institutions.
A leadership team is expected to drive the transition to new innovation practices and overcome obstacles — one of which may be “not invented here” syndrome.1 Another common hurdle is misalignment in leadership team members’ conviction in the value of a specific innovation, often due to their varying levels of knowledge about it. While the CEO may be quite familiar with a particular approach and perhaps may even have seen it in practice, other members may have only heard buzzwords and have a surface-level understanding. Having different levels of information can result in misalignment and potentially even in resistance to change.
Key Concepts of ‘Go and See Together’
As managing director of the German subsidiary of SC Johnson (SCJ), I became convinced that Go and See Together (GST) was an ideal method to build quick and enduring alignment within the leadership team and significantly raise the probability of a successful innovation adoption. In one exemplary case, we needed to find and implement a superior sales forecasting and operating system for our subsidiary because our mix of overstocks and out-of-stocks had become intolerable. Our earnings and cash flow had taken a hit as a consequence, and our relationships with trade customers had become strained.
The social proof of witnessing an innovation working successfully in another organization validates its feasibility and benefits.
To address this, I took my six-person leadership team to visit another European SCJ affiliate that was already using an innovative sales forecasting and operating system. I had learned about the effectiveness of this system and was confident that it could be our solution as well. Every member of my team quickly agreed once they saw it in use. We were able to implement it quickly and successfully across our organization with great business results. The key was that the whole management team went to the source and saw the innovative system in action. This is the essence of GST.
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References (2)
1. R.-C. Wentz, “Beating ‘Not Invented Here’ Syndrome,” MIT Sloan Management Review 66, no. 1 (fall 2024): 12-13.
2. J.P. Kotter, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” Harvard Business Review 73, no. 2 (March-April 1995): 59-67.