ORGANIZATION ASSESSMENTS

Assessment of Innovation Culture & Capabilities:

Could you benefit from a fresh look at your organization?  Are you a chief executive, talent officer, or board member whose organization seeks to: 

• embark in a new strategic direction

• take stock midway through a major initiative

• hire a new chief or interim executive, or

• heal or recover from significant organizational change or challenges?

If so, Mint Chip Studios can develop a high-level snapshot of your organization’s capabilities and culture to enable powerful collective action. This assessment is called re:Route. Over 50 clients around the globe have used re:Route to define customized roadmaps. This tool is based on the best-selling Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation written by HBS Professor Linda Hill, former Pixar CTO Greg Brandeau and their team at Paradox Strategies.

The Challenge 

• Despite efforts, most investments to increase an organization’s creativity or agility fall short 

• Many leaders feel pressure to unleash innovation potential, but are unsure how to proceed 

• What does innovation really mean? To most, it is simply an oft-used but poorly understood word

The Solution

• Leveraging decades of research, we identified the “secret sauce” for sustaining innovation

• We begin with a simple definition. Innovation = anything that is both novel and useful.

• Armed with this definition based on hundreds of examples, we then measure two key areas where successful organizations stand out: are people willing and able to innovate? 

• The re:Route (rR) assessment to help leaders tap into this formula

Using a customized technique based on interviews, analysis, and discussion, we assess an organization’s willingness and ability to innovate.

In successful organizations, we found cultures where people share three qualities: 

1. a sense of common purpose, 

2. clearly articulated and lived values, 

3. rules of engagement for thinking and acting.  

This foundation in turn enables the three capabilities of innovation: 

1. Creative abrasion: the generation of a marketplace of ideas, 

2. Creative agility: an engine of quick experiments, 

3. Creative resolution: integrated decision-making and problem-solving

What next?  

• In most cases, our diagnosis reveals certain critical conversations are absent or weak

• We pinpoint barriers to key conversations, including underlying beliefs, behaviors or structures

• Next, our coaches support groups in identifying opportunities to address gaps and build skills

• Ultimately, leaders develop new mindsets necessary for to unleashing and harnessing collective genius throughout their organizations

DETAILS

While project cost and timelines vary according to client’s needs, assessments usually take 2-4 months and culminate with action plans for cultivating innovation. Leaders receive a report reflecting the current state of innovation within their organizations, which reveals where we find evidence of collective genius, and where we do not. 

Collective Genius:
The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation

We identified two keys for unleashing sustained innovation at your organization.

1. SHARED PURPOSE
   An organization’s purpose is its reason for being. It answers two questions: “Why do we exist?” and “Who are we?”
   

2. SHARED VALUES
   Shared values are the foundational beliefs, standards, and principles that express what is truly important to the organization.
   

3. RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
   Interaction rules comprise norms and expectations for how people should work with one another and think about solving problems.
   

4. CREATIVE ABRASION The capability of generating a marketplace of ideas by considering and vigorously debating alternatives from diverse sources.
   

5. CREATIVE AGILITY The capability of testing and refining ideas through quick experimentation, reflection, and adjustment. 
   

6. CREATIVE RESOLUTION The capability of combining different or even opposable ideas into novel solutions. This practice, also called integrative decision-making, requires the capacity to do patient, inclusive decision-making, and to resist compromising or allowing one person or group to dominate