Servitization, outcome-based services and product-as-a-service are hot topics. However, we see little examples in the industrial sectors. Too often, there is a gap between the theoretical framework and the real practice. Here Jan van Veen, Managing...
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Aug 18, 2020 • Features • moreMomentum • Servitization and Advanced Services
Servitization, outcome-based services and product-as-a-service are hot topics. However, we see little examples in the industrial sectors. Too often, there is a gap between the theoretical framework and the real practice. Here Jan van Veen, Managing Director, moreMomentum, outlines 3 critical steps to boost the success of your servitization journey...
Summary
We hear a lot about servitization, outcome-based services and product-as-a-service business models. However, we see little examples in the industrial sectors. Many manufacturers face serious challenges while developing and launching new service offerings:
- Clients do not see the value, have many objections and are not ready for it
- Lack of strategic support to invest in necessary capabilities and to develop their business model
3 of the root causes are:
- The gap between academic terms like servitization, outcome-based services and product-as-a-service and the practice is not being closed yet
- Poor definition of the critical business problems of clients which will be solved with the new offering
- The impact on the manufacturer's business is not clear yet
In this article I share some of the best practices for designing advanced offerings which will help you to overcome these challenges:
- Build deeper and broader insights in your clients business challenges and pain points
- Focus on specific customer segment, based on their needs
- Approach your business models more holistic
The Problem
Just as an increasing number of manufacturing companies, you may be looking for ways to thrive during disruptive change in your industry. This is an exciting journey of enhancing your business models with digital solutions and advanced services.
Some of the major trends that make this mission critical for your future success are:
- Digital technologies
- Digitalisation of clients’ operation
- New emerging business models
- Shifts in the value chain / ecosystem
The vision behind these innovations is:
- Develop advanced services and solutions to develop new and recurring revenue streams and increase long-term differentiation.
- Develop better performing and more efficient predictive maintenance services.
- Meet a broader scope of (latent) customer needs, beyond availability and condition of equipment like operational performance solutions.
Most service leaders and innovators, solution providers, academics and consultants use broad and abstract concepts to describe their vision, strategy, innovations and new offerings with container words like:
- Servitization
- Advanced services
- Outcome-based services
- Remote services
I often hear from service leaders and innovation teams that they struggle with challenges like:
- Clients do not see the value of the new offering or solution
- Clients see many obstacles and risks
- Clients are not willing to pay more for the new solutions
- Clients are not ready for the new solutions
- Lack of support from strategic stakeholders and other functions in their organisation
In essence, all boils down to the following 3 problems:
- The new solutions and services do not solve (new) critical business problem of the clients. The value or impact is not clear (other than potentially lower prices for the maintenance services).
- It is not clear how these services contribute to the overall business challenges and vision of the company as a whole.
- The service vision is too abstract for internal stakeholders to understand and endorse. Words like servitization, outcome-based services, remote services and product-as-a-service are too theoretical and do not clearly articulate a vision and strategy.
This is pretty frustrating, isn’t it?
The Solution
In this article I share critical frameworks which many service teams miss in their service innovation strategies. These are:
- Build deeper and broader insights in your clients business challenges and pain points
- Focus on specific customer segment, based on their needs
- Approach your business models more holistic
Build deeper and broader insights in your clients business challenges and pain points
To be truly outside-in and customer driven, you need to have a deep insight in the challenges and problems your clients are facing in their business. Deep customer insights should:
- Go beyond their requirements about uptime and maintenance of their assets
- Cover a time window of 3-7 years
- Be thought provoking eye-openers for your clients
You and your colleagues already have most information at hand. It is a matter of turning this information and knowledge into a compelling customer story, for irresistible advanced services.
You can read more about this in ( “Build a Strong Customer Story in 7 Steps and Launch Irresistible Advanced Services” in the Handy Little Book, published by Field Service News.
Focus on specific customer segment, based on their needs
One size does not fit all. Different clients have different visions and strategies, different challenges and therefore different needs. When defining the (latent) customer needs for today and the near future, it is crucial to have some sort of segmentation of your important clients based on their (future) needs.
This segmentation will help you to develop a robust strategy which defines which customer segments you will target, with which new service offerings and which business models you will develop.
There are many ways to segment clients based on their needs, largely depending on the specific industry. I will share two generic patterns for customer segmentation which can be useful for you to take as a starting point. They are based on segmentations of innovative and successful manufacturers and service leaders.
Two often used patterns for customer segmentation are:
- Maturity – Willingness to outsource of a business
- Maturity – Complexity of a business
This could be a useful pattern in industries where many of your (potential) clients tend to do most functions themselves instead of outsourcing the activities (like maintenance of equipment).
Along the vertical axis you can separate segments based on the maturity of their core capabilities and processes.
For example, in the industry of metalworkers this could be:
- Traditional craftsmen
The entrepreneurs personally (together with their employees) manufacture the metal products themselves, love part of the manual work and working with their machines and tools. This is their pride. Little of the activities are put into structured processes. - High tech workshops
The entrepreneurs have invested in state-of-the-art tools to improve quality, consistency and efficiency. Their main focus is still on the technical side of the profession. Probably there is more structure in the workflow and processes, predominantly organised from a technical point of view. From a more economical point of view, the structure is not efficient yet. - Lean manufacturers
The entrepreneurs have a more economic view (or hired an operations director with economic competencies) and are working on efficient processes, workflow and organisation. They follow lean-six-sigma or similar approaches to optimise human resources, capital investment and materials. - Value chain optimisers
These entrepreneurs have a broader scope and are looking to their added value in the entire value chain, partnerships, vertical integration or specialisation. They may also develop more advanced value propositions to their clients like inventory management and delivery of the components they manufacture in small packages in the production line of their clients.
This is a very brief description. You should probably also look into functions like sales, marketing, engineering, internal logistics, inventory management, tools management, financial management, human resources management etcetera. You get the picture.
Along the horizontal axis you can segment your market into clients that tend to do as much as possible themselves versus clients that outsource many functions which are not part of their core-process. Clients in the first category probably have various dedicated departments, competence centres or teams for functions like process optimization and maintenance.
This pattern could be useful if you have clients with different types of operations with different levels of complexity.
The vertical axis is the same as in the “Maturity – Willingness to outsource” pattern.
Along the horizontal axis you segment your market into clients that have short and simple value chains versus clients with longer and more complex value chains. For example, again in the industry of metalworkers this could be:
- Jobbers or workshops that fulfil specific tasks like welding, cutting, bending, drilling etcetera and that manufacture intermediate components or semi-finished products
- Component manufacturers which perform several tasks to manufacture components, like engine blocks for the automotive industry
- Product manufactures, which manufacture complex products
- Machine manufacturers
Whatever pattern you use with these segmentations, you now have 4 (or more) segments in a logical structure. For each segment you can:
- Find a descriptive name
- Further describe their specific needs
- Define their characteristics to recognise them
For each segment you should:
- Decide whether you want to serve them or not. Or at least define which segments have your focus
- Develop a customer insight or customer story
- Develop specific messages to use in your marketing, sales and service delivery
- Develop and map specific services, offerings and delivery models
- Develop a specific commercial approach
When you are still in the early stages of developing advanced new service offerings, it often pays to focus on one specific segment first.
Approach your business models more holistically:
As soon as your advanced services go beyond the maintenance and the condition of the equipment your company manufactures and sells, you will be reconfiguring or extending the business model of your company as a whole. This means, you need to have a strategic dialogue and innovation process with strategic stakeholders.
To make this a fruitful and coherent process, you should avoid a discussion about product versus services. It starts with:
- A shared concern about developments in the industry
- The threats and opportunities for your business as a whole
- A vision about the future state of your entire business and what needs to change to achieve this
This will result in a few strategic priorities, one of which (hopefully) is services innovation.
Now I would like two share two useful frameworks that help to take the development of the business models to a more holistic – company wide – level:
- Generic types of business models for products and services
- Types of service value propositions
Note that these frameworks are not limited to services or products alone. They address the overall value proposition, which can be a combination of products, software, data and services.
In the matrix above, you can describe changes of your business model along two aspects.
Along the vertical axis, you differentiate value propositions:
- From stand-alone offerings (like single products or services)
- To comprehensive and integrative solutions which cover a broad scope of needs and solutions
Along the horizontal axis, you differentiate highly standardised offerings from highly customised offerings.
This results in 4 types of business models, which I will further describe with document printers as an example:
- Product Business Model
- Only printers, probably including service contracts
- A wide portfolio of different models to choose from
- Additional equipment for folding documents, putting them in envelopes etcetera
- Getting the printer for free and paying for the ink only
- Predictive and remote maintenance
- Cloud storage solutions and Microsoft Office 365 still fit in this model, even though you pay a small fee per month
- Retail banking
- Project Business Model
- An assessment of the entire business, to define how many printers, which type and where
- Connecting the printers to the network, configuring security systems
- Designing, building and commissioning an entire print room for high volume printing and mailing of documents
- Designing more effective and efficient processes
- Solution Business Model
- Taking over the entire print room from clients, which could still be at your clients’ locations
- Connecting the Salary Administration system to the print room to print all salary slips at the end of the month, put them in envelopes, and send them to the postal services
- Platform Business Model
- In the printer industry the example may become a bit theoretical, anyway.
- An online platform where clients can upload templates, designs and lists of destinations and pay for the job. The platform will split this in smaller jobs for various connected and certified print facilities across the world and process the financial transaction. (I am not sure if this kind of service ever existed).
- In the Additive Manufacturing sector, we do see initiatives in this direction to allow manufactures to print metal spare parts anywhere in the world close to the customer
- Other examples of today are Apples Appstore, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Uber and Airbnb.
This framework will help you to better articulate the kind of value and related business models you are aiming for.
In this framework you can define your value proposition along the horizonal axis based on the scope of the services. There are several ways to add value to your clients (deliver outcome if you like). I will use the commercial truck industry as an example:
- Better products
For example, improve fuel efficiency of the truck and engines. - Better availability
Your services can maintain and improve the availability and condition of the equipment. This could be quite advanced with real time data, smart diagnostics predictive analytics or supported self-help offerings using AR.
For example, predictive maintenance to improve availability (and maybe also improve fuel consumption). - Better application or use
Your services can drive the output or performance of the equipment you delivered to clients by improving the use, configurations, settings and ongoing optimization tactics. These services can be onetime projects or ongoing support.
For example: Reduce fuel consumption by improving the driving behaviour of truck drivers. - Better processes
Your services can also concentrate on the overall processes and operation.
For example: Reduce fuel consumption (and other cost) by improving the route planning, combining jobs, choosing the right vehicles for each job etcetera.
Along the vertical axis you can separate your offerings in
- Effort based offerings
You promise to do certain activities for which your clients pays, regardless of the result of the activities. It remains the responsibility and risk of your clients to manage the overall performance and take the right decisions. - Performance based offerings
You promise your clients a certain result and get a fee depending on this result. In the example of commercial trucks, this could be:- Guaranteed uptime and availability of the truck of 99% and penalties if the performance is below 99%
- A fee per percent-point of reduction of fuel consumption
- A fee per transportation job
How to use these frameworks?
Map your current business model(s) in one or more of the matrixes described above. Also map a few scenarios for the envisioned business model(s).
This will help you and your stakeholders to have a more structured and neutral discussion about the major trends in the market, technology and competitive landscape as well as in what direction your value propositions and business models should develop. Any choice will have an impact on engineering, manufacturing, software development, marketing & sales and services.
What are the takes
If manufactures cannot successfully adjust their business model, they run a serious risk of falling behind existing and new competitors.
Clients are developing digital capabilities in all their functions. They will have other needs for services and solutions.
This is an important opportunity for manufacturers to grow their relevance for their clients and grow their business.
It is also a unique opportunity for digital native service providers and system integrators, which offer remarkable and complete solutions to the (new) problems of your clients. They are your new competitors.
Benefit
If you use these frameworks and embed them in your service vision, your innovation strategy as well as in your dialogue with strategic stakeholders, you can develop the;
- Shared concern for the business as a whole
- The strategic priorities for the business as a whole, one of which will be services
- Shared vision for the business as a whole, which includes services
- A specific shared concern for the services business unity
- The strategic priorities for the services business unit
- A shared vision for the services business unit
Rome was not built in one day
It is an iterative journey. It takes time and work. The frameworks above will help you to facilitate and structure this journey.
Manufacturers and service leaders with successful advanced services have used these kinds of frameworks for a long time and still are. This allowed them to achieve quick, continuous and more radical innovations and thrive in disruptive times.
Conclusion:
For quite a few service leaders, the journey of service innovation is a tough one. Their clients do not see the value of new advanced offerings, they do not want to pay for them, and internal stakeholders do not provide the necessary support.
Some of the key reasons are;
- The critical business issues of the clients are not clear and are not addressed with the new offerings
- The business value of the new offerings and business models are not clear
- The envisioned business model(s) are not clearly described
Litmus proof
I would like to challenge you with the following questions.
Can you describe your services vision and strategy in concrete words? Without using words like;
- Advanced services
- Servitization
- Product-as-a-Service
- Remote services
- AR, AI, IoT
Does your services vision start with a description of;
- Major trends in the industry of your clients
- How challenges and priorities of your clients are changing
- How that will change their needs
Recommendation
If you want to be leading the transition of your business and industry, I would recommend you to;
- Define a clear shared concern with your strategic stakeholders;
- What are the developments and trends?
- How are customer needs changing? (our worksheet “Build your Customer Story” will be useful)
- What is the (potential) impact of these changes for your business?
- Does your business want to act on this by innovating the business model?
- Together with your strategic stakeholders, consider various options for developing the business model(s) and assess how these business models would help your business to thrive
- Agree on the innovation strategy and next steps
- Iterate!
Further Action:
- Read more about Servitization and Advanced Service @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/tag/servitization-and-advanced-services
- Read more exclusive FSN articles by Jan van Veen @ www.fieldservicenews.com/blog/author/jan-van-veen
- Connect with Jan van Veen on linked in @ www.linkedin.com/in/janvanveen1
- Follow moreMomentum on twitter @ twitter.com/more_momentum
- Schedule a discovery session with Jan van Veen @ moremomentum.eu/discovery-session
Mar 25, 2020 • Features • Management • Jan Van Veen • moreMomentum • Leadership and Strategy • Service Innovation and Design
Jan Van Veen, founder of moreMomentum, outlines a crucial approach he has been developing within his peer-sharing community to help service organisations grow through innovation and diversification...
Jan Van Veen, founder of moreMomentum, outlines a crucial approach he has been developing within his peer-sharing community to help service organisations grow through innovation and diversification...
Manufacturers with a narrow innovation focus miss many opportunities, see more innovations fail, often see that competitors do exactly the same thing and struggle to turn their innovations into growing revenues and margins.
Leading and successful manufacturers cover a much wider scope of innovations than those that stagnate and fall behind competition. They actively search for opportunities to improve the value they promise their clients, how they deliver the value and how they capture part of the value.
They find and launch more innovations for growth. Sounds like a good recipe, doesn’t it?
The problem: Too narrow innovation
Many manufacturers have a too narrow focus on their innovations. Their dominant focus is on improving features and functionality of the products they sell. An increasing portion of the manufacturers also improve their services, but are still focusing on break-fix and maintenance services.
There are major disadvantages of the narrow innovation focus:
- Companies miss many opportunities to better serve their clients and grow their business;
- Most innovations are not a complete solution, miss crucial aspects and therefore fail;
- If clients do appreciate the new value, they often have the buying power to benefit from this new value without paying more for it;
- For competitors it is easy to recognise the innovations and do exactly the same (or better), hence, commoditise the new capabilities and value even before the investment is earned back.
As a result, they not only fall behind competition. In today’s rapidly changing industries, they ultimately run the risk of be pushed down the “food chain”, stagnate or even become obsolete. This is pretty frustrating, but does not have to be like that.
How Many Manufacturers Struggle to Grow with IoT
A common struggle is to drive growth and monetise new remote capabilities. Most manufacturers focus predominately on predictive maintenance, remote diagnostics and remote resolution. The aim is to increase the value they offer to clients by improving uptime of their equipment and the resolution time if a failure occurs.
They encounter the following typical challenges:
- Uptime is already quite high, so there is not much room for improving the value for clients. If uptime is already 95%, how much value will it bring your client to increase uptime to 96-97%?
- Clients recognize that you will be able to deliver maintenance services at a lower cost, so they may actually expect to pay less, not more.
- Competitors are working on exactly the same, so there is no opportunity to differentiate
- Clients fear a myriad of IoT networks, platforms and having their data flow to external parties. Every brand and manufacturer they work with is asking for the same.
- Clients start looking for a common infrastructure and services from neutral service providers.
As a result, manufacturers invest a lot, see little value coming in return and see a declining interest for business innovation from senior stakeholders in their company.
Solution: Search along 21 innovation tracks
Leading and innovative manufacturers have a pretty broad range of areas in which they innovate for growth. They are more open to new domains, new business models and new perspectives which enables them to adapt and thrive in rapidly changing industries.In our research, we have identified 21 innovation tracks for growth, spread over 3 clusters. You can thrive in today’s disruptive world and achieve sustainable growth by widening your scope of innovation along these 21 tracks and by making strong and coherent combinations in each innovation.
Just like the leading innovators, make it a habit to embed these 21 tracks firmly in your innovation strategy:
- Actively search for growth opportunities
- Along 21 innovation tracks
- And enrich each innovation idea by combining a few innovation tracks.
The three clusters of the 21 tracks are;
1. The value you promise to clientsWhich problems or needs do you solve for which customer segments? Your growth opportunities are in solving more or other problems of your existing clients and expanding the market you serve. Alternatively, instead of expanding on scope and market, you could also specialise more in a specific niche of customer segments and needs and become the market leader in that niche. This cluster of innovation tracks also includes developing your brand to better articulate and expose the value you provide.
2. How you deliver the value
Which activities and capabilities do you need to deliver the promised value to your clients? Your growth opportunities are in building and improving the capabilities to deliver the value in an effective, efficient and consistent way, so clients get and see the value.
3. How you capture part of the value
Which portion of the value you create and deliver do you capture? So how and how much are you being paid for the value you deliver? This involves your pricing model, earnings model and your position in the value chain. Successful and innovative companies always have these three clusters – value.
A few examples of how the various tracks are embedded in their strategy;
- There was a latent need of easy availability of tools and information and easy access to music (track 1). A lot was already available for the techies, but not for the mass market until Apple made this easy and readily available (track 2).
- Various manufacturers have offered something similar before, but Apple made it a commercial success by learning from the previous attempts of others what was needed for success (track 8)
- Apple developed an ecosystem of products and services with seamless integration as well as the Appstore (track 7). Other app-developers can offer their apps in the Appstore as well (track 15), but have to comply with Apple’s requirements. They also need to pay part of their license fees to Apple (track 19). As the app-builders are replaceable and the Apple eco-system is not, Apple can afford to ask pretty significant fees (track 21 and 18).
- Apple’s brands is far beyond “great products”. It is much more about lifestyle, ease, fashion and desire (track 11 and 12).
Back To Iot – The Opportunity
Once you have the sensors in your equipment, the infrastructure for connectivity and data and the capabilities to turn data into valuable insights, there are many opportunities to enrich your innovations and business model and hence dramatically improve the potential for your clients and your own business. To mention only a few:
- Your clients are on a journey of becoming more digital and data driven in many of their processes. This is a challenge with many unknown domains, unanswered questions and uncertainties.
- How can you identify these new needs (track 1) and reduce the complexity and uncertainty for your clients (track 2)?
- With the data and intelligence you develop on the back of these data, you can help your clients to reduce usage of energy and materials, improve efficiency and productivity, develop their products and shift their core business (track 6).
- This could start with assessment and benchmarking services, evolve in consulting and training services and further grow into business outsourcing services.
- For example, Fresenius does not only sell the instruments for kidney dialyses, but also runs entire kidney dialyses departments in hospitals, including the staff treating the patients.
- Part of this journey is also advancing your brand from being a product manufacturer to a solutions provider and being known for what problems you solve. (track 11 and 12).
- For example, Caterpillar helps clients achieve operational excellence through advanced services covering asset management, project planning, fuel consumption etcetera.
- Particularly for component manufacturers, you have the opportunity to develop unique intellectual property with which you can improve the overall performance of bigger systems of OEM’s. This will make you less replaceable and increase your ability to secure your margins from the OEM (track 21 and 18) – like Intel Inside.
- Maybe you can even do business with the end-client buying assets from the OEM (track 19). An example is how Rolls Royce does not sell its airplane engines to the airplane builders (OEMs) but to the users of the airplanes.
- For most innovations, you will need to develop new capabilities, processes, competencies and tools to deliver these new values in an efficient way (track 14).
- As your business becomes more focussed on outcome and starts building more recurring revenues, you will need to develop your sales model as well (track 20), with more emphasis on onboarding, driving and demonstrating customer success, improving customer life time value and step-by-step growing the business with your clients by upselling and cross-selling.
Conclusion
For sustainable success in today’s rapidly changing world, there is no single silver bullet. A great product or great service will not bring much value. To thrive in these disruptive times, you need diversity in your business innovation with initiatives in different innovation tracks as well as initiatives with a rich and coherent set of innovation tracks. That way, you will launch innovations which:
- Provide clients a complete, remarkable and desirable solution
- Are hard to replace by other actors in the value chain, like OEM’s or system integrators
- Cannot be easily copied by competitors
- Your clients will love to pay for
If you want to take your business innovation to the next level, I would like to recommend you and your team to;
- Assess your portfolio of innovation projects along the 21 innovation tracks. How well are the 21 tracks covered?
- Enrich each innovation idea and project by adding a few more innovation tracks to it.
It contains:
- A description of each innovation track with some examples
- An excel sheet to map each innovation to the 21 innovation tracks and get an insightful graphical picture of how diverse your innovation is
- Slides you can use to brainstorm with your teams to enrich your innovation projects.
Mar 13, 2020 • Features • future of field service • Jan Van Veen • management • moreMomentum • CHange Management • The Field Service Podcast • Networking
Regular Field Service News' contributor Jan van Veen says surrounding yourself with those on the same wavelength can foster high performance, innovation and change.
Silicon Valley thrives as its own ecosystem exists on disruption. Each start-up flourishes with individuals all moving in the same direction; keen to change what's gone before. Each person has the same values, habits, goals and mindsets. As a collective it's no surprise this part of California is one of the most creative hubs in the world.
In this edition of the Field Service Podcast, moreMomentum's Founder and MD (and long-time Field Service News' Collaborator) Jan van Veen urges service leaders to choose their network wisely if they want to change the status quo. Citing the aforementioned Silicon Valley and high-performance judo athletes van Veen lays the foundations of a successful social environment for your business.
Also, for the first time this series, the podcast incorporates input from a LinkedIn discussion on this topic before the podcast was recorded. One of those who contributed to that discussion, Rohit Agarwal shared this diagram with us. It's handy to reference this image at the appropriate point of the podcast.
You can reach out to Jan on LinkedIn here and find out more information about moreMomentum here.
Jan 07, 2020 • Features • Management • Jan Van Veen • moreMomentum
moreMomentum's Jan van Veen suggests service professionals need to avoid the pitfalls around commodity as falling in could lead to missing out on big growth opportunities.
moreMomentum's Jan van Veen suggests service professionals need to avoid the pitfalls around commodity as falling in could lead to missing out on big growth opportunities.
Nov 05, 2019 • Features • Jann Van Veen • management • moreMomentum • cannibalism
MoreMomentum's Jan van Veen suggests once you embrace and accept cannibalism it might actually be good for your business.
MoreMomentum's Jan van Veen suggests once you embrace and accept cannibalism it might actually be good for your business.
Sep 16, 2019 • Features • Management • Continuous Change • Jan Van Veen • moreMomentum • Servitization
Aug 08, 2019 • Features • Management • Jann Van Veen • moreMomentum
The benefits of servitization and digitalisation continues to fill content in podcasts, conferences and academic papers. Indeed, much of Field Service News’ pages is dedicated to these two phenonium and how the service industry should embrace both.
However, it takes a certain amount of courage for firms to break free from their traditional business-model, which might well have served them perfectly well over the years, in order to undertake a strategy which demands a long-period away from the comfort zone.
I hosted the Field Service Podcast where Jan Van Veen, Director and Co-Founder of Consulting and Training company moreMomentum was a guest. Jan continues to work closely with manufacturers, encouraging business innovation and change in their make-up and I began the podcast by suggesting to Jan that some manufacturers are reluctant to make changes in their set-up; reluctant to innovate. “I think it’s more about making sure that everybody is happy,” he responds. “That everybody has the same sense of direction of what needs to happen, and then also to make it happen. I think this is the biggest challenge.”
The comfort zone here is ‘business as usual’. Firms, Jan believes, can see the advantages of servitization and digitalization as a release from the pressure of performance but they are struggling to make the process happen, or the rate of change is too slow.
“In general, what we see is that change is not growing rapidly enough in business,” Jan says. “There is more and more of doing the same, of doing business as usual which does incrementally improve business offerings, products and services etc., which is all good but that doesn’t take them to the future; that doesn’t help them reap the benefits of digitalization and servitization.
Jan identifies the comfort zone as something that manufacturers have been doing – albeit successfully – for many years: improving reliability and preventing disruption through a focus on asset uptime and product-related services. It’s a rut that could potentially leave firms lagging behind competitors, competition that could even come from their own customers as they become more digital savvy.
“I think that’s the main concern here,” Jan warns. “Digitalization is becoming more and more ingrained into everything a business does. We are seeing clients of manufacturers becoming more digital in their operations and therefore start to think about other solutions that can improve their own operations. The questions become about the role of the manufacturer in all this.”
It’s an interesting point and one that challenges the traditional notion role of a manufacturer.
Should they stick to the traditional product-related services offering or attempt to get closer to the business processes of their clients and pursue a more operational-oriented approach achieved through committed servitization and digitalization adoption? Jan, of course, encourages the latter, but admits the difficulties it poses, particularly when it comes to altering a rigid business-model, which involves risk and requires cultural buy-in.
“There’s a bigger bet involved,” he says. “We have to seriously re-invest in new capabilities, digital capabilities, new competencies, new operations and processes. It becomes about political decision making. Reframing and changing the business logic is something which any kind of business finds very difficult.”
Reframing and changing business logic, as Jan says, can be extremely challenging. Firms are reluctant to alter a process that may not be flourishing but is working. Tinkering with a framework does indeed carry risk where the fallout could be extremely damaging. However, most firms are aware there needs to be some type of change and innovation in order to improve processes, services and products. There is a range of innovation, ranging from short term improvements to disruptive radical change and it’s the most forwardthinking companies that embrace this entire spectrum that ultimately succeed.
"Firms are reluctant to alter a process that may not be flourishing but is working..."
“They play the game on each type of innovation at the same time and are therefore working on performance for today, tomorrow and the day after,” Jan explains. “It means that every type of innovation and change has different challenges and pitfall and therefore requires different strategies and techniques. If we are not aware of that we will find ourselves applying the wrong approaches, which may work for one type of innovation, but not another. We then fail.”
The key in the process is business logic. But what exactly is it? How can we define it? Let’s strip back one of the basics of enterprise. Every industry or business has a prevailing set of thinking patterns or knowledge about their customer’s needs: yearly performance; information about competitors; world trends which we then, as a business, make appropriate strategic decisions from. It essentially defines how businesses act, decide, change and learn.
With this in mind and in order to helps businesses observe their own rationale for change, Jan has developed a Hybrid Innovation Matrix. Relatively small, incremental changes, shown in the bottom left of the matrix represent what most businesses are doing. These take place during the day which includes customer feedback, marketing and R&D. “I don’t think this is the real challenge here,” Jan tells me. “Most of the companies have that right. It becomes more challenging when we move up the left column to the bigger changes within the current business logic, such as applying new predictive technology in our maintenance and services. This includes political decision making and serious change management if you want to launch that new technology.”
More generally, in the top right, darker red quadrant is where new solutions and markets are being created. Usually through a cluster of companies focusing on one area, for example, digital becoming more common in healthcare or the emergence of renewable energy. Here, Jan predicts the incubation of further ideas and disruptions. “We will see different kinds of developments going on and we still don’t know which one is going to emerge or be dominant, but one thing is for sure, in the next five to ten years, something serious will happen and change here.”
But how can companies use the tool to establish their own potential for change, or more specifically, make sure they’re avoiding ‘business as usual’? The key is ensuring any large-scale changes (top left of the matrix) such as a new software system, does not come at the cost of new business innovation that is incubating in the right-hand side of the matrix. “If that happens,” Jan says, “then you will see that every initiative in the right column will be sacrificed for something which has a shorter-term result in the left column, and then you’re really stuck in business as usual.”
Jan is passionate about change management and innovation and it was obvious during the podcast how much of a difference this matrix and other tools can make to a manufacturer’s outlook. He’s the first to admit that it’s not an easy process but is adamant about the advantages it can bring, an attitude affirmed when I ask what inspires him to do what he does. “I believe that it’s all about empowering and enabling everybody in an organisation to be eager and passionate about performing, learning, developing and growing; as a person and therefore as a business.
“It is all about people making it happen, and I’m a firm believer that people do drive change and want to change, as long as there’s a good reason and not too many obstacles. Therefore, we have to give them good reasons and avoid all the obstacles, and then,” he says, “great things can happen.”
Jul 23, 2019 • Features • Management • Jann Van Veen • moreMomentum • Motivation
We see increasing attention for the way to manage and lead organisations and teams and to build confidence to innovate and change in a rapidly changing world. The widespread fear to fail has a paralysing effect which hinders sustainable change, innovation and improvements.
To reduce this fear to fail, the idea has emerged that it is okay to fail:
• We should ‘Fail fast, learn fast’;
• ‘Failure is an option’;
• We should organise ‘Failure celebration nights’.
However, in practice I see many people finding it difficult to really embrace these concepts wholeheartedly. In the end, failure is a failure, it doesn’t feel right and by nature is something you try to avoid. It will not feel okay fail really, whatever we say about failure and how much we celebrate failures.
In some cultures, this is stronger than others. Besides that, most industries and companies experience increasing pressure on performance. So, should we take it easy when performance is behind expectation?
I fully agree with the point that many companies suffer from the paralysing effect of the fear to fail. However, I am afraid we are missing the point and do not get the right balance between accountability on the one hand and confidence to perform, learn, explore and change on the other hand.
Learning From Young Ambitious Athletes
I have the pleasure of being involved in coaching young and ambitious judokas who have a dream of participating at the Olympics some time. My sons are pretty fanatic judokas as well. They train hard - five evenings per week - and play three tournaments per month. Losing a match often happens very intensively: you’re on your own, and within a few minutes or even seconds you are violently thrown on your back – game over! If you’re not the top of the league (yet), you lose most of the matches.
How to stay motivated? How to keep on learning and performing? How to feel proud of what you are doing and accomplishing?
I’d like to share three things around failure and success, which I have seen working very well for these youngsters as well as for the leading and dynamic manufacturers which are ahead of the game during today’s rapid transitions and change.
Focus On The Right Actions To Get Results, Not The Results Themselves
Instead of focussing on winning the match, the most talented athletes focus on their task, doing the right things to have the best chances to win the match. They evaluate how well they performed their task and how they could do better. The end-result (winning or losing the match) is hardly indicative. There are so many other factors which influence the end-result. Their best match could be the one they lost, not the one they won.
In practice, many businesses focus too much on the results alone when managing their teams. Everything is okay as long as the results are okay. However, when they miss a deal, lose a client, or when a new service-product does not sell well, there is a problem
which has to be fixed ‘yesterday’. It doesn’t matter how - only the results count!
On the other hand, successful teams and individuals focus on building strong capabilities and competencies. They feel accountable for execution and results. Whenever either results or execution are below expectations, they review, find the root causes, try other approaches and learn. This will bring the best, sustainable results.
This is success! Not doing this – on the other hand - is the failing. So, failure should not be an option!
"Many businesses focus too much on the results alone..."
Articulate The Expected Outcome Of Learning And Experiments
I have seen how much more pleasure, engagement, learning and the results judokas get when they are very targeted in their learning and experiments. The experience the effects on intermediate objectives which are leading indicators for the overall result – winning more matches. For example, they will focus an entire tournament on dominating their opponents, force them to move and then experience how much more they are in control and get more opportunities to make a throw.
Too often, we see teams trying something new without being explicit about the expected effect and about how to ‘measure’ the impact. They tend to relate this impact to the end-result only. This reduces their ability to evaluate and validate their actions properly. They abandon good ideas too quickly because of the lack of performance improvement on the short term and move on to try something else. As a result, they learn slow and sometimes even follow unproductive paths.
However, successful teams articulate the learning objective, the expected impact and outcome of their initiatives and experiments very well. Whether it is about improving performance, finding new ways of working or developing a new service or business model, they have:
• A proper root-cause analysis;
• Clarity on critical assumptions which need to be valid for success;
• Formulated the critical questions;
• Designed their experiments to validate the critical assumptions and answer their key questions;
• Defined how to measure the results and validate their hypothesis.
Our Experiment-Learning-Card can help better articulate your experiments.
As a result, they can truly say that any answer or result is a good one and brings them further. A negative outcome is not a matter of failing at all. However, not following these kind practices is the failing. Failure should not be an option!
Like Edison said: “I did not fail, I only discovery 10.000 ways that don’t work.” Focus on learning from success and progress
Many young athletes with aspirations to get to the top – and ultimately will make it – are the winners at the moment. However, they have a mindset, attitude and practice to have a steep learning curve. That motivates and is the best predictor for good results.
Many of us often forget that we learn more successes and progress towards an aspiration than from failures themselves. Failures can increase a level of threat, stress and adrenaline, which can improve performance in a typical flight-or-fight situation. The effect is often short term and limits openness, creativity and collaboration. Which is not really a good situation for innovation and learning.
Our hormone-systems (dopamine, endorphin, oxytocin and more) are built around feeling rewarded and connected when achieving something (together), making progress and getting closer to the goals and feeling connected with
each other.
Every step we get closer to the desired result will motivate us more to be persistent and find ways to make the next step.
Conclusion
• Learning ≠ Failing and Failing ≠ Learning;
• Focus on actions and tasks for results;
• Focus on building capabilities for results;
• Celebrate progress and (small) successes;
• Specify objectives of learning, experiments and discovery as explicit as possible;
• Use our Experiment-Learning-Card to better articulate your experiments.
Jan van Veen is Founder and Managing Director at moreMomentum.
Jun 03, 2019 • Features • Jan Van Veen • management • moreMomentum • Burning Platform • Service Innovation and Design
Quite often, when talking with business leaders and clients, I hear the problem that the organization and its people are not that open to innovate and change as they already have good performance and there is no clear threat visible yet. They experience it as a lack of “sense of urgency”: there is no “burning platform” for innovation and change.
A common approach is to either wait until the situation gets worse or construct a (mini)crisis to increase and maintain a sense of urgency.
However, the question is:
• Do we really need a burning platform to innovate and change? And;
• What are the downsides to building change and innovation around a burning platform?
In this article I will share five reasons why a Burning Platform is bad for sustainable innovation and change.
Why a burning platform is bad for innovation?
1.You are too late
Typically, the trends which create threats or opportunities develop a long while before becoming an obvious burning platform. First, there are the first weak signals for a trend. At this time, it is still hard to accurately predict what will happen and when. Maybe different way signals are contradictory.
So often, these weak signals are being ignored by the majority. After some time, we see the first competitors moving, but actually also struggling to successfully address the threats of opportunities. Their initiatives seem to be failing. As a result, the majority still waits. Once the leading competitors are having their first successes and the trends become emerging, the burning platform becomes visible.
But now, the leading competitors have learned and built capabilities and can scale. While the lagging majority is still trying to find the right questions, let alone the right answers. They are dropping behind the leading pack in their industry. They are too late.
2. You get a deeper performance dip
The urgent situation of a burning platform means there is a critical situation which requires a rapid response and rapid results.
The topic is becoming increasingly dominant in the daily activities of everyone in the organisations. All hands on deck!
It starts distracting attention from the daily work of running the business. The overall performance will suffer more and longer than if the urgent can critical situation would have been prevented by innovation and change at a much earlier stage.
3. You disengage your valuable people
In general, a necessity to change – the burning platform – will create higher stress levels which will impact altitude and behaviour towards change. The more critical and urgent the necessity, the bigger the chances are for stress levels which will trigger defensive reactions like fight, flight or freeze.
Too often, we see the stress levels resulting in internal fights, pointing fingers, pushing problems to other teams and the best talents moving to other companies.
These are negative sentiments, which can be transformed into a positive and bonding sentiment within teams for a while, but not for long.
4. You miss the best solutions
The defensive fight, flight or freeze behaviour mentioned above, also triggers short term reactive thinking and blocks constructive and creative thinking.
When solutions require deeper analysis, being open to new types of solutions and require collaboration between different teams or department, this reactive short-term thinking is counterproductive.
The high level of stress increases the risks of not seeing the real problems or opportunities, not finding the right solutions and not doing what it really takes to get the results.
"It starts distracting attention from the daily work of running the business..."
5. You increase the risk for failure
During the first attempt of implementing a new solution, we should expect hiccups. Instead of experiencing this as a failure, everyone should see this as learning.
They should be able to have a constructive and forward-looking mindset to collectively understand why it is not working yet and what interventions are required to get it right. With a flight, fight or freeze attitude, the chances are bigger people will blame others or the conditions, find reasons to justify the disappointing results and give up.
For sure, we know about success stories where companies successfully pivoted their business during a crisis, like IBM. We also now the examples where companies miserably failed during a crisis and did not survive.
The better alternative: Purpose
The better alternative is what the leading and dynamic manufacturers do very well: the rally their employees, their clients and their partners with a strong and compelling purpose which makes continuous innovations and change the natural, logical and compelling thing to do.
Like everyone at Philips Healthcare is committed to transforming our healthcare by offering and developing integrated solutions (hardware, software, services) for people to live healthier, prevent deceases, be diagnosed quicker and more accurately, receive better and less intrusive treatment and receive the care they need at home.
Or like Tesla is accelerating the transition of sustainable energy and transportation with electric vehicles, better batteries and solar panels. This approach will be more rewarding for everyone, lead to sustainable success of the business and reduce the chances of entering periods of critical decline of performance. It will avoid you being on a burning platform.
The Essence: People Do change!
I believe that people do change and drive innovation, if there are compelling reasons and not too many obstacles. After all, that is the only reason the world is changing so rapidly.
Too many organisations do a bad job in providing compelling reasons and good job in creating obstacles. That is the reason organisations struggle in keeping up the high pace of changing world.
Leading, dynamic and innovative companies set themselves apart by maintaining a clear and compelling purpose, direction and strategic intent as well as e great environment for collaborative change and innovation.
Conclusion and recommendation
In this article, I described five reasons why the common practice burning platforms and sense of urgency are bad for innovation and change. I also briefly described the best practice alternative: build and maintain a compelling purpose for everyone to be proud of and to work on.
If you are on the same page and would like to take next steps, I would recommend you to:
• Assess what your personal view is on the reason your business or department should change and innovate differently or quicker.
• Assess to how compelling this is for the 1) shareholder, 2) boardroom, 3) employees and 4) clients.
• Evaluate and enrich (your view of) the purpose of your company or your department. What is your relevance for the industry, for your clients and for the society?
• Reach out to me for a discovery or sound-boarding session. I am happy to help and also curious to learn from your experience.
I am confident this will bring you actionable insights for your department - if not for the business as a whole. Good luck!
Jan van Veen is Founder and Managing Director at moreMoumentum.
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