How can you determine if part of your business should be innovated on or not?
Many companies and leaders become afraid to make a decision because they are afraid it might not work out.
Ironically, not making a decision if often the worst thing you can do, as it is guaranteed not to change or improve anything. At best, you stay at the status quo.
At worst, competitors begin to overtake you.
So how can you decide if it is the right time to make a decision, especially if something is unknown, such as the outcomes of an innovation attempt.
I quite like Jeff Bezos’ concept of One-Way and Two-Way door decisions, which he summarised in this great interview:
Jeff Bezos outlines two ways of making decisions, based on how reversible the outcomes of the decision could be if they do not work out:
- Two-way door decisions: If you go through this door and it turns out the decision was the wrong one, you can just turn around and go right back to where you were without much impact to the overall business. It will not bring down the company or require massive changes to the fundamentals of the organisation. These decisions can be made with less analysis.
- One-way door decisions: If you go through such a door, you cannot easily come back through it. These decisions are so consequential and hard to reverse that coming back is almost impossible. These decisions need to be made very carefully and deliberately.
“[One-way door decisions] have to be made very deliberately and very carefully. If you can think of yet another way to analyze the decision, you should slow down and do that.”
Jeff also points out that what often ends up happening as companies grow is that they try to align their processes to be consistent.
Unfortunately, while this does often reduce the risk of one-way door decisions going wrong, it also means that all decisions end up needing to go through the one-way door assessment and analysis process, even if they should really be taken more quickly .
“What can happen is that you have a one-size fits-all decision-making process where you end up using the heavyweight process on all decisions, including the lightweight, two-way door decisions. Two-way door decisions should mostly be made by single individuals or by very small teams deep in the organization. And one-way door decisions are the ones that should be elevated up to the senior-most executives who should slow them down and make sure that the right thing is being done.”
This can be especially hurtful for innovation projects, where progress can often be made quickly, cheaply and reversibly if the decisions could be made according to an innovation management framework, but are often slowed down or even blocked if they need to comply with a standardized project management and approval process which is not designed for innovation.
So have a look at how your teams and the entire organisation makes decisions.
Is there an opportunity for teams to quickly make two-way door decisions?
If not, maybe make a decision to quickly fix that today.
Creativity & Innovation expert: I help individuals and companies build their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you can develop the next breakthrough idea which customers love. Chief Editor of Ideatovalue.com and Founder / CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Author / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the most influential innovation bloggers.