How it started; how it’s going.
These fun before/after images making the rounds on social media sparked a conversation about the Innovation team’s origins at OMERS.
This week we’ll pull a crystal ball from the archives to see a team making sense of itself in real time. The audience for this email - i.e. you - are people invested in seeing corporate innovation succeed. Whether as innovation team members, people who advise them, or people in an org who interact with them, you all have a stake in this.
We wanted to peel back the curtain and show that we’re no different than our customers and colleagues. We don’t have all the answers. But we do have a process by which we can climb to a higher vantage point.
If you enjoy seeing behind-the-scenes, let me know, and I’ll work it into future emails.
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Some context: The below CB was sent in January 2020, which in covid years is a century ago.
We were finalizing the first iteration of our new innovation playbook and launching the first MVP of the new retirement planner. The team was nary a few months old.
The team asked why we needed an innovation playbook when we had smart, talented, experienced innovators who already knew how to do their jobs.
We also wondered why we started with our first project as retirement planner, rather than some other work in the pipeline.
So we found a metaphor. And a 2x2.
From analysis to synthesis.
From what is, to what could be.
Hope you enjoy.
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Subject: The Crystal Ball: January 27-31 Edition, 2020
To: OMERS Innovation
Team,
In research interviews, once you hear the same thing 7 times, you know you’re onto something. So when I heard variations of these 2 questions this week at least 7 times, I knew it was time to use this forum to clarify a few things.
Why do we have to follow the playbook?
The playbook is counterintuitive in many ways. It’s not a prescription on practicing our craft. It’s process, with specific decision points, designed thoughtfully to make our digital operations a massive success in our unique context.
(Credit, Hugh Dubberly, Dubberly Design Office)
Here’s how I see it:
1. Playbook as bridge: The playbook allows us to ‘bridge’ what is with what could be. The bridge model illustrates the path from analysis to synthesis—the basis for framing possible futures. See this week’s reading for a great explanation of why the connection between analysis and synthesis is crucial to creating anything new. Our process/playbook is a way of helping OMERS bridge the conceptual gap between what is – our current business, stakeholders and challenges – and what could be – better experiences, services and ways of working. In many senses, the playbook isn’t for us, but for the organization, as a guide to show how we work, and invite them into the process.
2. Playbook as inventory: The playbook will also serve as master inventory of assets. Organizing the steps in logical sequence, based on common project trajectories, allows us to keep a record of all the best assets we’ve created. At any given step of a project, we’ll be able to reference the playbook and pull the best-in-class example of that step – be it workshop template or a design system.
3. Playbook as our license to operate: In our world, context, not content, is king. In building the playbook, we looked at countless case studies from organizations like Lego, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, RBC, Loblaw, Whirlpool, Wells Fargo and several others. Broadly, they all shared the same core 80% of the process. That other 20% was unique to their specific industry, culture and operating model. OMERS playbook is also a product of its environment. We’re a globally respected institutional investor. Most of the people at OMERS are employed as direct investors or serving the investors. So, we designed a process that would resonate with them. Our decision points between Discover, Define and Deliver demonstrate that innovation is a rigorous process, with structure, due diligence and measurable business impact. The first stage gate is a prioritization algorithm that our investment folks have already asked to ‘borrow’ from us. The second stage gate would look and feel like and investment committee meeting. That’s the point. For us to influence the our colleagues’ way of thinking, we first must learn and integrate with theirs. This reason is probably the most counterintuitive to someone with a strong design background – but in my opinion the most powerful. It turns our playbook from a thing we tolerate into one of our most powerful tools to thrive in the OMERS ecosystem.
The playbook is a process, not a practice. At the end of each step, there is a checklist of critical questions we need to have answered to move to the next step. There are a million ways to arrive at those answers, and everyone will use a different tool or approach. The important thing is that we have the elements necessary to progress. The playbook does not attempt to dictate precisely what happens on each day of your project. The process should be driven by the teams and will need to be tailored to each challenge in terms of approach, in everything from research plans, to prototypes to MVPs and POCs.
Why are we starting with retirement planner (RP)?
I’ve heard this question as well, and I’ll answer the same as above.
1. RP as bridge: RP allows our members to bridge what is – their current income and lifestyle – with what could be – their future retirement, powered by OMERS. It’s the best first step for us to help them make sense of an abstract and faraway future. It is also the highest ranked item from the [decision making algorithm], which gives us confidence we’re aligned to our business goals and D/V/F criteria.
2. RP as inventory: RP will serve as an inventory of how our members are thinking about retirement. As a first step, we’ll be able to launch several new tools to round out a holistic financial planning service for them. We have to start somewhere though, and the work we’re doing to validate our members’ thoughts on retirement planning is invaluable to build a research inventory. All subsequent projects have a head start because we don’t have to re-do any of this research.
3. RP as license to operate: We have quite a few transformational ideas in our back pocket. Candidly, we haven’t earned the license to operate from our members yet. We need to prove to them by starting small and providing practical value. Imagine a member being asked about digital payment ecosystems when they’ve just struggled with the paper-based buyback forms. Total disconnect. So, we earn their trust with something they can use and build our relationship from there.
I’m happy to discuss this further. Send me your follow up questions and I’ll address them in future weeklies.
The only thing standing in our way between us and our goals is… us.
If we can get out of our own way, work together, keep the big picture in mind, and always drive towards resolution, we’re unstoppable.
The process will supercharge our efforts – but it’s just a process. The people will make this succeed. We will succeed.
I have unshakeable confidence in our foundation and deep excitement about our mission. I hope you do too.
Doing the things that have never been done are precisely the things always worth doing.
Onward.
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Postscript: We eventually figured out how to contextualize the playbook and our project pipeline. We’ve built a fully-functioning innovation machine. We work with hundreds of colleagues across OMERS, speaking the same language through the playbook. We’re onto V3 of retirement planner.
But it wasn’t easy. Moments of doubt, uncertainty, confusion were the norm. It took trust in each other and the ability to name our challenges via the bridge model.
In retrospect, there’s no other way we could, should or would have done it.
There is only one way.
Onward.
What we’re reading
Imitation as Taste - in the post-everything world, taste choices perhaps the ones that matter most. Some blame algorithms, but we should really blame ourselves.
The Analysis-Synthesis Bridge Model – A classic framework and concept, worth a revisit. Bridging the gap between problem to solution.
Nike and Boeing Are Paying Sci-Fi Writers to Predict Their Futures - Welcome to the Sci-Fi industrial complex.
This is what Covid-19 did to innovation budgets – A third of companies cut spending — but the ones making the cuts aren’t the companies you’d expect
A Teenager Mistakenly Moved Into a Senior Living Complex. TikTok Loves It -After living for a week in an apartment complex for older adults, Madison Kohout, 19, discovered why she was the youngest resident by decades.
Last word
“We cannot evolve any faster than we evolve our language because you cannot go to places that you cannot describe.”
- Terence McKenna