Growing companies often encounter friction between individuals and groups that need to be working together.  This isn’t just a management headache. It also impacts business performance, especially when the friction impacts new product development.  In this article, I exchange ideas with Mary Callahan about causes of and solutions to organizational misalignment in new product programs.

Takeaway
Simple models of new product economics are good tools for aligning people and functions to both reduce friction and improve ROI.  But even the best models by themselves don’t guarantee results. We recommend specific organizational tools to get everyone aligned with new thinking and new ways of doing work.

Read the full article.

• Three Principles for CEOs to Improve Product Innovation.  Napoleon has a lesson for today's CEOs. In addition to technology and engineering, winning competitive battles takes a better new product operation. Improving product development as a business operation is a powerful tool to improve financial performance, but one that's often hidden by the thinking that product innovation is about just technology and engineering.
• Successful Growth Means Hiring for Skills Plus Cultural Fit. One after another, a potential new hire’s skills and experience look good on paper, but his/her first few weeks on the job are very disappointing, and the company’s whole operation seems to stumble and slow down. The underlying cause could be “the culture issue.”
• Rightsizing Your New Product Process.  Your company is unique, and it’s not likely that a process that works at another company will be a good fit for you.  Only by matching process benefits and costs with your needs can you design a solution that’s custom tailored for you.
• Efficient Communication: Better Results with Less Time and Effort.  How much more productive would your company's operations be if communication worked better?  The upfront effort to focus on the intended results of your messages can yield enormous payback.
• Improving R&D Results: Count on the Uncountable.  It's easy to see how countable goals, such as product specifications and development cost, impact new product ROI.  But to get the highest return, take a look at some performance factors you may be overlooking because they seem uncountable.
• When the Solution is not the Opposite of the Problem.  We have a problem that feels a lot like a problem that we’ve had before…and we thought we had solved it before…so why are we here again? 

• Beating Inertia: Building Agile Leadership.  Agility is essential to win the race when changing business realities disrupt your market and your competitive position. Even small, innovation-driven companies are not immune to the inertia caused by silo walls between specialized functions, executives promoting their own agendas, and similar pitfalls. Our workshop provides inertia-fighting organizational strategies and tools, beginning with developing agile leadership.
• Dynamic Resource Management. Can you keep new product schedules on track without losing the agility to jump quickly on new opportunities and repond to unplanned demands?  Discuss some new thinking about project planning that can resolve this dilemma.
• Managing Fuzzy Projects.  Forcing exploratory projects into a deterministic project model can be toxic to radical innovation.  Look at a new approach that combines freedom to explore with sound business oversight.
• Learning Environments: Karma in the Halls and Walls.  Explore how to maximize meaningful workplace learning by integrating informal and incidental learning opportunities with outcomes of formal training and education.
• Sizzling Combo: Project Management PLUS Organization Change Effectiveness. Gain an essential understanding of the stages of a change management effort, including objectives and tools applicable to each stage, and find out how change management stages can be interleaved with the stages of a business project for maximum performance. 

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