Be Less Zombie

41Driving with the Handbrake On

Overcoming organisational innovation friction.

‘If I need a $1 length of rubber tubing to fix an urgent customer problem, there's a 10-person sign-off process waiting for me.’

This is the tired voice of an engineer employed by one of the world's largest construction companies.

It remains the worst case of bureaucratic obesity that I've ever encountered, and it was crushing any motivation to innovate.

Yet a different version of a similar story is told every day around the watercoolers inside most organisations.

Numerous studies have shown the connection between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. As Jennifer Robison of engagement specialist Gallup says, ‘A world-class culture inspires your most talented employees to create superior customer experiences.’¹

People progress affects customer progress affects financial progress.

Friction Burns

Ultimately, the focus on customers and employees must be the same. Make them awesome. Understand the progress that they need to make and remove any friction that impedes that progress.

The people charged with designing and delivering profitable user experiences every day, are often suffering from multiple ‘friction burns’ in their pursuit of daily progress.

More organisational friction means less speed, but perhaps more importantly, more friction means less capacity and energy to proactively find and remove friction from your customers' lives.

In other words, more employee friction, less customer ...