I’m preparing for an upcoming trip to St. Petersburg, Russia to meet with some of my co-workers. I’ve worked with them for over two years now. They are highly productive; give them a task and it gets done.
Now that they’ve proven their mettle I am putting together a presentation about the opportunities for innovation at EMC, and I thought I’d share with them the “algorithm for innovation” that seems to work for me. It’s all about getting your day job done (meeting your commitments) and then consistently (and persistently) finding and solving problems that are interesting to you.
if (new_employee == true)
{
dont_innovate(); // focus on productivity first
}
else
{
while (meeting_your_commitments == true)
{
problem = find_a_problem_that_interests_you();
sphere = find_an_adjacent_sphere(problem);
learn_and_collaborate(problem, sphere);
}
}
I like the idea
You need to do your day job first and hit the metrics, the housekeeping. That gets creditability.
“find_a_problem_that_interests_you” – yep I go with that as well, after all you’ll do better if you have some passion for it.
The bit I’m unsure about is the new_employee == true -> dont_innovate().
New people arriving in with lots of questions, external knowledge, experience, and stimulus has them in exactly the right frame of mind to innovate? Maybe my question is how long are you a new person ?
John,
In my experience when a new employee puts in a solid 6-9 months of productivity, they’ve built up some credibility and influence.
I do agree that there are exceptions to the rule: new team members that really hit the ground running.
Maybe I should fix my code ;>)
Steve
I think it’s a great format to communicate the idea in a presentation. I’d say leave it as is !
It’s the techie in me that says …
if its not broke … keep adding features until it is.