This past summer, bicycle racer Lance Armstrong won his fifth Tour de France, cycling’s equivalent of the Super Bowl. Armstrong has written his amazing story, insightfully entitling it It’s Not about the Bike.
Yet, if you wander into your local bike shop, you are likely to find some guys in the corner debating the merits of clincher tires versus tubular tires, rather than being out on the road exercising with whatever tires they happen to possess. Or you will find a customer agonizing over upgrading to a Dura-Ace crankset for $270 to pare 43 grams from the weight of her bike, totally ignoring the PowerBar (i.e., candy bar) she just ate, which itself weighed 65 grams.
As with cycling, in product development it is easier to dwell on the technology and ignore the behavioral issues that render it effective. In fact, product developers are more susceptible to this than the general population, because the techies, who normally inhabit product development teams, are even more inclined toward technical solutions to problems.
In a recent book, Experimentation Matters: Unlocking the Potential of New Technologies for Experimentation, Stefan Thomke describes a host of recent technologies to enhance simulation, modeling, testing, and prototyping for product development. However, he states, “… it is not necessarily what the technology is that matters but how it is used (Page 145).” The key to effective utilization is the accompanying behavioral, cultural, and organizational changes that enable the new technology to function effectively.
Thomke doesn’t provide much guidance on making these critical behavioral changes, but his colleague at Harvard Business School, John Kotter, the guru of organizational change and leadership, does. In his book, The Heart of Change, Kotter identifies eight steps necessary for enduring organizational change, based on extensive research, and he provides case studies illustrating how organizations have either executed such steps or failed to follow them. I’ll outline his eight steps briefly:
In summary, installing a new technology or new concepts, as fantastic as they may seem, will be of little value until you successfully deal with the accompanying behavioral changes. Fortunately, Kotter provides a path to follow.
(c) Copyright 2013 Preston G. Smith. All Rights Reserved.