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    Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash
    Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash
    Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash

    By H. Evan Woodhead

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    About this ebook

    Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash is a guide and tool kit for removing the barriers to creative problem solving.

    Anchors are the things that make it so hard to come up with fresh ideas, to think of new and different solutions. People talk about being “inside the box” and the importance of getting “outside the box”, but we rarely hear anyone talk about how you can do that.

    Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash answers the unspoken questions about “the box”. What is it made of? How can I get out? Is there a time when I should get back in? The box consists of anchors, which are all the things that limit our thinking, consciously or unconsciously. We get out by taking control of our anchors, breaking the influence of the ones that are getting in the way.

    A crucial step in the Problem Solving process is “ideation” which refers to the process of creating ideas. The importance of generating a rich set of options to consider is universally accepted, but the process of thinking up possible solutions is still a weak link. When a team is working to create fresh, new ideas and generate options for consideration, it is essential to managing their anchors, or the options will be the same old ones we have seen before.

    And yes, there is a time to come back in. When it is time to implement and operate a practical solution, we need to be back inside the box where things are more stable.

    Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash explains what anchors are all about, why we need them, and how to control them. It describes multiple specific de-anchoring techniques, and clarifies the re-anchoring needed to move the team into implementation mode.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherH. Evan Woodhead
    Release dateMar 15, 2016
    ISBN9781311864697
    Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash
    Author

    H. Evan Woodhead

    H. Evan Woodhead, PMP, BSc, MBA, DSc is an author and management consultant specializing in the theory and practice of innovation in the solution of real-world business problems.The science of decision-making has always acknowledged the importance of art - the creative process of generating a robust set of options before choosing a course of action. But it is packed full of models and methods for comparing proposed solutions, wile the cupboard is nearly empty when we look for help unearthing fresh new possibilities.For decades the "experts" on business success - Visionaries, Motivational Speakers, Consultants - have told us we need to "get out of the box" to break out of the pack and take a business to the next level. They paint a very compelling and exciting picture of the benefits. And they are right. But on the subject of how to go about it, not so much.Evan's books finally answer the critical "How" questions:How do we break free of the established solutions, and find something completely new?How can we separate the policies, rules, habits and traditions that prevent disaster apart from the ones that chain us to mediocrity or even doom us to a slow death?How can we find a different way to look at our business that breathes fresh life into it?And ultimately - how can we differentiate our business from the rest of the industry and leap to a new level of competitive advantage?

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      Book preview

      Anchor Management - H. Evan Woodhead

      ANCHOR

      MANAGEMENT

      Letting Innovation

      off the Leash

      H. EVAN WOODHEAD

      Copyright 2016 Harry Evan Woodhead

      Smashwords Edition

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter 1. Introduction

      Chapter 2. Anchors

      Chapter 3. Anchor Analysis

      Chapter 4. De-Anchoring

      Chapter 5. Re-Anchoring

      Chapter 6. Summary and Conclusion

      End Notes

      <<<<>>>>

      Chapter 1. Introduction

      Anchor:

      noun

      1.Massive object used to moor a boat to the bottom of a body of water;

      2.An idea that constrains thinking.

      The Anchor Management story starts in the Dark Ages of Information Technology. By that I mean the years before networked personal computers invaded the business landscape. The mainframe was undisputed King of the computer world and very few people were familiar with its inner workings. I was a recent computer science graduate and an MBA student when some of my friends joined a team that was developing a computer system for a major corporation. At first they thought they were on top of the world—blessed with the opportunity to build something shiny and new. But time passed and gradually they changed their tune. A year later they were calling their assignment The Project from Hell and I was hearing their tales of woe at every social gathering.

      The problem was real—the organization’s size, structure, and diversity were costing it business. Each product division operated as if it was a separate company. There was no way for all the employees who might deal with a given customer to know each other, no efficient means for them to assist each other, and no incentive for them to change the situation.

      The solution concept was sound—top executives had a vision of a central system to support all marketing activities. The idea was that any sales representative calling on a customer would be able to see everything that was going on with that customer. Perhaps more important they would be able to pass on any problem or concern the customer expressed to whatever part of the company needed to deal with it, without sacrificing their own productivity.

      The project constraints were utter madness—the new automated system had to do everything in the same way the old manual procedures had done them. One of many examples was the requirement that customer numbers be assigned in a sequence that kept the customer list in alphabetical order. These restrictions bound the system design very tightly to the status quo and severely constrained its flexibility to handle changes in business processes or corporate structure. Updating such a system to cope with a merger, acquisition, divestiture, or restructuring (such as centralization, decentralization, regionalization, or switching to matrix management) will cost a great deal more, take much longer, and entail a greater risk of failure.

      The team pointed all these issues out, and explained that simple solutions were available. If databases are well designed the flexibility to accommodate future changes is enhanced. Reports can sort customer lists in alphabetical order by name regardless of the customer number sequence. One customer number can be linked to any number of present or future branch offices or product lines, and this can be changed as often as necessary without changing the customer number. Their arguments fell on deaf ears and they were ordered to build according to the original requirements. The sponsor explained that the business runs the way the business runs because that is the right way to run the business. The system was required to conform to the business; the business was not expected to change to accommodate the new system.

      On the surface this sounds like a reasonable position for management to take. But it is like switching a company's shipping department from horse carts to five-ton trucks without changing the dispatch procedures to allow bigger loads and the sales policies to sell in a wider territory. You get all the costs of the new technology without the business benefits.

      How did it all turn out? The project suffered long delays in the development phase as the team struggled to address conflicting requirements and constantly convert data to comply with the incompatible specifications of various product divisions. The actual costs soared past the original estimates, and then exceeded the revised projections. The project manager was blamed for failing to deliver within the arbitrary budget and schedule he had been given. Once the system went live, new problems quickly emerged as differences between the way management believed the sales force worked and actual practice in the field made their presence felt. The death knell came with the transition from a regional hierarchy to a matrix management model stressing central control. The system design had been so tightly tied to the old corporate structure that it could not be changed to accommodate the new one.

      It struck me at the time that there was a tremendous mystery at the heart of this debacle.

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