top of page

How to be a Zombie Hunter and Innovate?



While we all understand the need to innovate, COVID-19 has created a world where creativity is essential for success more than ever to stimulate expectations and meet ever-changing customer demands.

 

Today's brands must navigate numerous ever-evolving challenges amid significant uncertainty. Before innovation can occur, we need to analyse the Zombies that are infesting your business and holding you back.

 

Zombies are projects, procedures, people, or products that, for various reasons, fail to fulfil their promise yet continue to limp along, consuming resources without making any meaningful impact on the company’s strategy or revenue. Despite best efforts, they have not demonstrated an increase in efficiency. They might not align with the greater strategy of an organisation, brand promise or with changing markets, consumer values and cultures.

 

 

Zombie Hunting

is one of the most

important executive tasks

PS: Courage is essential!


Even companies with a highly rigorous planning process struggle to commercialise innovative ideas successfully.

 

The issue with Zombies is that you rarely recognise them when you see them. They walk unnoticed through your business, infecting other projects and employees.


They divert attention from priorities and derail well-thought-out strategies. Zombies are highly contagious, and before you know it, the entire business becomes infested with them.

 

At some point in the past, the project made sense when it was approved by leadership. However, somewhere along the line, something went awry. The technology didn’t quite perform as promised; a competitor unexpectedly disrupts your industry, a key investor pulls out, or customers respond unpredictably.

 

Zombie-infested businesses often conjure up a hundred and one excuses to keep these procedures, products, or projects alive, sustaining them until the very end. Many organisations bolster them with toxic optimism or simply regard them as “This is how we do things here."


The invisible costs generated by the ‘un-dead’ harm organisations. They waste time, frustrate teams, create misalignment, and confuse departments about priorities.


They drain the efforts of our most valuable assets—our teams and people.

 

Most importantly, Zombies hinder innovation and agile responses to market changes, draining resources, clogging pipelines, and limiting the opportunity to create a better product.

 

The real challenge is that zombies were once someone’s idea, and they began as a well-intentioned innovation effort.

It's crucial to learn how to eliminate zombies without harming souls in the process.

The leadership challenge is to eradicate the zombie while preserving the drive, motivation, and soul of those who remain emotionally connected to the living dead.

 

 

CULTURAL CHANGE

IS CENTRAL!

 

To foster greater creativity in your organisation, you can't merely instruct people on what to do. Cultural change can only occur through a coordinated program that alters and shapes people's behaviour. Most importantly, this cultural shift must begin at the C-suite level if you aim to establish a genuinely new way of thinking.

 

A culture that empowers everyone, regardless of rank or department, should be fostered to act like innovators. It's essential to establish a value system that everyone can rely on as they witness it in practice.

 



 

  • IDENTIFY POOR COMMUNICATION & ALIGNMENT


A zombie environment reflects inadequate communication, a siloed department, and a disjointed structure that fails to align with the overall vision.



 

  • IDENTIFY INEFFICIENT PROCESSES & SYSTEMS


Counterproductive and time-wasting procedures require multiple data inputs across various communication channels. These unnecessary systems primarily benefit a select few individuals who often advocate for them. They frustrate teams, undermine motivation and positive initiatives, lead to burnout, and squander resources.

 



  • IDENTIFY CONFIRMATION BIAS


Psychologists have long pointed out that we suffer from confirmation bias. We are paying more attention to what we expect and ignoring what we don’t.

 



THE ZOMBIE HUNTING WORKSHOP.


I have helped several businesses kill their Zombies by running Zombie workshops. Several aspects are fundamental to its success.

 

The workshop’s key strategic aspects

 

1.     A cultural change

2.     A clear communication plan

3.     The Zombie submission process and decision committee

 

 

1.  A Cultural change


  • A CULTURE OF BLAME

    A Zombie environment reflects an internal culture of mistrust and micromanagement.

 

Nothing frustrates me more than witnessing failure without learning and mere finger-pointing from the top down. If we don’t learn, we’re destined to repeat the same unsuccessful experiments time and again. Not using failure as an opportunity for growth breeds frustration that will manifest at every level and, over time, erodes success and impacts your bottom line.


  • TOXIC REWARD SYSTEMS AND VALUES

Since most companies’ reward systems impose significant penalties for failing to meet commitments, individuals tend to hesitate to raise their hands. It appears more sensible to find ways to survive, as there’s practically no consequence for continually projecting but never achieving long-term targets.


 

  • A ZOMBIE AMNESTY

    A zombie amnesty is a vital component of a systematic approach to innovation and changing a company’s culture. A Zombie amnesty is when employees can put projects up for consideration without suffering repercussions if the project is terminated. The critical point of this amnesty is not to lay people off or to cut costs. The real importance is to allow the company to invest in new strategic innovation activities by redeploying budgets and brainpower to more promising projects without penalty.

 


  • EXPAND THE DEFINITION OF SUCCESS

Executives must be concerned about what happens to innovators of projects that don’t succeed commercially. All involvement in innovation carries the risk of punishment. Any time you innovate, future success is unknown. Therefore, learning that an idea is not viable is a successful outcome (as long as those lessons are learned in a reasonably resource-efficient way).

 


  • PROVIDE CLOSURE

    Provide closure and celebrate the failing as a symbolic event to give people closure. Demonstrates the power of failure in success with champagne.  Mistakes are addressed with honesty on ALL levels, and at the same time, the team is celebrated for their good work. This allows everybody to shift their focus to a better idea. Pat team members on the back when they’ve given you that precious gift.

 


  • COMMUNICATE TRANSPARENT

    Communicate widely. With an Award for thosewho dare to try. Broadcasting commercial failures encourage future efforts because innovation happens most naturally at companies that “dare to try.”

    Create an award for the most novel, daring, and seriously attempted ideas that did not achieve the desired results. Shining a spotlight on these kinds of efforts makes it safer for people to push the innovation boundaries.

 

After all, if you don’t dare to try, how can you hope to succeed?

 


2.  Clear and Transparent Communication

 

  • Use simple, transparent criteria. Shutting a project down is very emotional. Setting and sharing a shortlist of criteria before the process begins helps participants view the process as rational and not too threatening.



  • Involve outsiders. It is very hard to be objective about something you’ve played a part in conceiving. An uninvolved outsider can bring important impartiality to the process.

 


  • Define lessons learned along the way. Hold reviews to capture lessons learned and create an evolving knowledge database to store and share those lessons.  Research shows that knowledge gained from failures is instrumental in achieving subsequent successes.

 

I concentrate mostly on the following criteria to validate an idea or project:

 

a.)    Does the idea align with the Brand value and promises?

b.)   Is there a real market need?

c.)    Can we fulfil that need better than potential competitors?

d.)   Have we looked long enough into the future?

e.)    How will the industry horizon change in the next 10 years?

f.)     Have we engaged all stockholders?

g.)   Do we have the human resources to be the best in the market?

h.)   Can we meet our financial objectives?

 


3.  The Zombie Submission Process

 

Communicate the “why”.  Ask the entire team to submit Zombies. Use clear and objective criteria and be as 100% transparent to prevent people from taking any killings personally. If people can see you are trying to free up space to improve wellbeing and avoid people burning out from working long hours, that completely changes people’s perceptions of the value of killing Zombies.

 


 

 

Comentarios


© 2010 by A.Sabine Warlich | HOUSE of ICONIC

icon-trend.com.

bottom of page