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name: Susan Stautberg
Organisation: POWER COM
Subject: HOW A DESIGN ADVISORY BOARD DRIVES INNOVATION AT
P&G
Message: `INNOVATION FROM THE OUTSIDE-IN:
HOW A DESIGN ADVISORY BOARD DRIVES INNOVATION AT P&G
BY SUSAN STAUTBERG AND NANCYE GREEN
Question: How can a company continually innovate and create
exciting new ideas in today’s competitive and constantly changing
world?
The answer is deceptively simple: By asking for help.
Most individuals and organizations spend their time thinking
about what they are most familiar with: their own business
sector, their current competitors, the customers they know
or their organization as it currently exists. They think
from the inside—the things they can control—out to the world
they would like to shape.
This approach is safe and comfortable, but safe and comfortable
doesn’t cut it in today’s lightning-fast world. Today,
thinking from the outside-in is what many organizations need
to stay ahead of the curve. They need to step outside
their comfort zones. They need multiple perspectives.
They need help. For this reason, organizations
in a wide variety of industries are creating Advisory Boards
of specialists who can offer outside-in knowledge and bring
a range of experiences and insights not available internally.
Advisory Boards consist of expert professionals who share
ideas, feedback and a fresh perspective with corporations
seeking input. They increase an organization’s intellectual
capital and contacts. Such groups have become increasingly
popular as budgets tighten and global competition increases.
CIGNA, for instance, has a global Advisory Board to
provide insights into international issues. Northwestern
Mutual convened a Technology Advisory Board to consult on
its Internet presence. Goldman Sachs and PNC have Women’s
Advisory Boards to discuss the needs of female consumers.
A relatively new trend in Advisory Boards addresses the area
of design and innovation. In fact, some of the products
you see lining supermarket shelves or displayed in the windows
of your favorite store may have been created, packaged, marketed
or improved with the help of a Design Advisory Board.
Procter & Gamble is a pioneer in this practice. While
there are many different strategies employed in CEO A.G. Lafley’s
heralded turnaround of P&G, one of the largest companies
in the world, the Design Advisory Board and critical outside
thinking from a multitude of sources have played a part.
____________________________________
Susan Stautberg is president of PartnerCom Corporation, which
assembles and manages advisory boards globally for businesses,
governments, and non-profits. For more information on Corporate
Advisory Boards contact:
Susan Stautberg, Web:
www.partner-com.com
Nancye Green is CEO of Waterworks, and serves on the Boards
of Hallmark Cards and Wildlife Trust, the Design Advisory
Board of Procter & Gamble, and the Advisory Board of Bayer
Healthcare Diabetes Care Division. For more information contact:
Nancye Green
Openness, getting to and listening to the best and the brightest,
and inviting new thinking among its own people, are transforming
the culture and hitting the bottom line as a result. For
companies seeking a more creative and innovative culture,
P&G offers a strong example of how to create a Design
Advisory Board, how to manage it successfully and how to apply
its recommendations for real-world results
GETTING STARTED
Like any major initiative, a Design Advisory Board, or any
Advisory Board, requires buy-in from senior management. “A
culture that embraces new ideas has to start at the top,”
says Claudia Kotchka, VP Design, Innovation and Strategy at
P&G, who created and manages the company’s Design Advisory
Board. “It has to be willing to accept provocateurs
and go back to the drawing board. It has to know that this
is the expectation of leadership.” At P&G, A.G.
Lafley attends the Design Advisory Board meetings and actively
participates. Advisory Boards generally don’t work if
there isn’t a culture of accepting ideas from the outside.
Selecting the right Board members, and mix of members, is
also tremendously important. “We wanted to create a
network of people who are thinking about P&G,” explains
Kotchka, “and we treat them like family.” Members, described
by Kotchka as leaders in the design field and “at the top
of their game,” hail from a variety of design and marketing
disciplines, including top designers, academics and corporate
executives. To attract the best and the brightest, Kotchka
says that Advisory Boards need to be “a spa for the mind.
To attract smart people who are busy, you have to make
it interesting.”
Advisory Board members themselves cite several key reasons
for participating: they meet interesting people, are stimulated
by the dialogue and learn, and because they want to help a
company and feel the satisfaction of making a difference.
(This means, of course, that it is the company’s responsibility
to design an experience for Board members that is stimulating
and well organized, and then to make sure that Board members
feel their advice is valued and applied.) When it comes
to Design Boards, there is certainly an element of fun as
well. “They need to know from management that they can
be a little crazy,” says Kotchka, who once brought in a Chinese
face reader to work with the group. And the networking
is appealing as well. It is not uncommon for Advisory
Board participation to result in a new job or new client relationship.
Organizations take differing approaches to how frequently
their Advisory Boards meet. On the one hand, short
terms can be desirable to enable the Board’s managers to fine
tune the mix of expertise and personality to derive the most
value for all concerned. On the other hand, Kotchka points
out that it takes several years to get a group acclimated
to each other and the company such that the group develops
trust and openness necessary to ensure honest dialogue. (P&G’s
group meets three times a year for dinner the night before
and a full-day meeting at the company’s Cincinnati headquarters,
and has included the same group of people for several years.)
Which approach a company takes should be determined
after carefully considering the situation, the nature and
purpose of the Board, and the specific needs of the company.
Several organizations exist to create and manage Advisory
Boards and can provide guidance on such critical issues.
HOW IT WORKS
P&G’s Design Advisory Board has become a resource to teams
within the company grappling with a myriad of broad design
and consumer experience issues. Brand teams present problems
to the Advisory Board, who in turn, gives the teams’ ideas
that address such areas as product design, strategy, markets
and execution, as well as providing long-term thinking and
big ideas relevant to a category or the organization as a
whole. “Advisory Boards are conversations where you
imagine what could be,” says Kotchka. “What doesn’t
work is just asking for specific information. It’s better
to use [board members’] open minds for a broader picture and
trends.” Each meeting covers a mixture of big and small
issues, and, not surprisingly, there is a waiting list for
brands that want to solicit the group’s expertise.
At the meetings, rich dialogue and diversity of perspectives
lead to surprising and innovative ideas—and the occasional
disagreement—arising from unusual juxtapositions and intense
collaboration. The Board members also benefit from the experiences
provided from each other. Critical to the success of this
strategy, says Kotchka, is having a large team from P&G
present, including senior management, not just the Designers
presenting. “It is critical that everyone gets smarter
together,” she says.
By using external expert networks, P&G now gets 35 percent
of its new product ideas from outside the company, up from
20 percent three years ago. The Design Advisory Board
has contributed to a range of ideas, including entering new
business categories, reframing the project objectives and
pushing teams to think more broadly. The company’s goal
is for 50 percent of its ideas to eventually come from the
outside-in. Company leaders believe that the more they
ask for help, the stronger they become.
“The importance of an external perspective is so critical
for any company today,” says Claudia Kotchka. “I can’t
believe everyone isn’t doing this. It’s easy to get
too close to your own thinking. Our Design Advisory
Board has been extremely effective.”
BEST PRACTICES FOR ADVISORY BOARD CREATION AND SUCCESS:
Homework: Give the Advisory Board members simple ways to get
ready for the meeting: e.g., reading a succinct brief on a
problem to be discussed or going into the market to get smart
about the context of a category to be presented.
Preparation: Those who manage the Advisory Boards within
a company are critical to its success. Preparing the agenda
as well as the teams who participate and following up are
critical if ideas are to turn into action. At P&G,
a “sponsor” is assigned to each brand team to help the group
prepare for its presentation to the Design Advisory Board.
Presentation: Presentations should be well edited, free of
jargon, concise and designed to stimulate thinking rather
than get buy-in. Questions are more important than answers.
Participation: When the intention is to spark new thinking
that translates into the real activities of the company, it
is critical that team leaders and key “doers” are equally
represented in the room. The richness of the thinking and
conversation at an Advisory Board meeting are as important
as the actual recommendations. Leadership needs to be in sync
with those who will be expected to take action. They need
to share the experience. “It’s also important to ensure
all Board members have the opportunity to be heard,” says
Kotchka. “The chair needs to call on all of the Board
members, not just the talkers.”
Follow up: Notes, key points and action items should be distributed
immediately after the interaction to make sure everyone agrees
on what they heard and experienced. Then, as projects and
activities progress, teams should check back in to keep the
fresh thinking going. This activity at its best should stimulate
an atmosphere of collaboration and openness that will carry
over into the team interaction on a day-to-day basis.
Know when to disband: The highest-order motivation for creating
an Advisory Board should be to gain access to expertise and
diverse perspectives, and put these to work for the enterprise.
When it is not possible to use this format effectively to
make a real difference inside the company, it is important
to reshape the group, re-tune the process internally or disband.
Creating ill will on the part of the members because they
are not used effectively is unnecessary, as this strategy
should be fluid and always up for review.
ADDITIONAL ADVISORY BOARDS TO CONSIDER
In addition to Design Advisory Boards, Advisory Boards
come in many shapes and sizes:
Advice and counsel for a CEO: This group might be assembled
as a private think tank for a CEO who needs a forum in which
to confidentially bounce ideas and gain insight.
Ideation across a number of different aspects of the company
for a group of senior managers, including the CEO: Here it
is probable that there are major issues facing the enterprise
that cross many boundaries. These meetings provide an
opportunity to present strategies, explore and refine thinking
for a group within the company, and include guest appearances
as specific issues come up.
Single-issue Boards: These are defined and participants are
chosen to address specific issues within the company. These
might be set up to exist for a limited time for a precise
purpose or be ongoing. Participants might be from one part
of the company or might be teams throughout the organization
addressing similar issues. Sometimes these experiences can
be valuable for insiders to learn about activities in other
parts of their own company as well as to learn from outsiders.
Refer to associates in India
2ndinnings.org in India for more on Susan S &
Advisory Boards or call 0091 22 22662627 Ms Arvee for assistance
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