The origins of the DevOps movement are commonly placed around 2009, as the convergence of numerous adjacent and mutually reinforcing movements:
- The Velocity Conference movement, especially the seminal 10 Deploys A Day presentation given by John Allspaw and Paul Hammond. It's long, but you can watch the first 10 mins.
- The “infrastructure as code” movement (Mark Burgess and Luke Kanies), the “Agile infrastructure” movement (Andrew Shafer) and the Agile system administration movement (Patrick DeBois)
- DevOps became an IT grassroots movement [over Twitter]. The movement folks created all new software which had the possibility of helping a lot of people. They were able to get it into big firms and different parts of the firms to create what DevOps is today.
For those of you still trying to figure out this whole DevOps thing, here is a good definition and summary.
What is DevOps?
DevOps is a term for a group of concepts that, while not all new, have catalyzed into a movement and are rapidly spreading throughout the technical community. Like any new and popular term, people may have confused and sometimes contradictory impressions of what it is. Here’s one take on how DevOps can be usefully defined. Like “Quality” or “Agile,” DevOps is a large enough concept that it requires some nuance to fully understand. Continue reading...
Here is a powerpoint slide deck about DevOps that I created, with the help of Nicole Forsgren, a DevOps expert and also a previous Ph.D. student from our MIS dept, and partially based Gene Kim's article on "The Top 11 Things You Need to Know About DevOps" and his co-authored book, all on D2L, Week 11 (and Readings).
ReplyDeleteBackground
ReplyDeleteImagine a world where product owners, Development, QA, IT Operations, and Infosec work together, not only to help each other, but to ensure that the overall organization succeeds. By working toward a common goal, they enable the fast flow of planned work into production (e.g., performing tens, hundreds, or even thousands of code deploys per day), while achieving world-class stability, reliability, availability, and security.
In this world, cross-functional teams rigorously test their hypotheses of which features will most delight users and advance organizational goals. This enables organizations to create a safe system of work, where small teams are able to quickly and independently develop, test, and deploy code and value quickly, safely, securely, and reliably to customers. Simultaneously, QA, IT Operations and Infosec are always working on ways to reduce friction for the team, creating the work systems that enable developers to be more productive and get better outcomes, most of this automated. These are the outcomes that result from DevOps.
But for most of us in IT, this is not the world we live in. More often than not, the system we work in falls short of our true potential. In this world, Development and IT Operations are adversaries; testing and Infosec activities happen only at the end of a project, too late to correct any problems found; and almost any critical activity requires too much manual effort and too many handoffs, leaving us to always be waiting. As a result, we fall short of our goals, and the whole organization is dissatisfied with the performance of IT, resulting in budget reductions and frustrating employees who feel powerless to change the process and its outcomes.
In Chapter 1 of the DevOps Handbook, the authors talk about the Toyota Production System (TPS) and refer to Mike Rother's 2009 book, Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results, which framed his twenty-year journey to understand and codify the TPS. He concluded that the most important practice of all, which he called the improvement kata, was where every organization has work routines, and the improvement kata requires creating structure for the daily, habitual practice of improvement work, because daily practice is what improves outcomes. The constant cycle of establishing desired future states, setting weekly target outcomes, and the continual improvement of daily work is what guided improvement at Toyota. This is also what defines an innovation culture.
ReplyDelete1. Based on our readings/presentation, what defines an innovation culture? Can you provide an example from the readings or from your own experience that conveys that culture?
2. Refer to the Westrum model and provide an example of the type of company culture that best depicts an innovation culture. What type of company culture did you experience where you worked as an intern or work in your current position (or other experiences). Say why you think so. Reply to this post to answer these questions.
1.Innovation culture starts when all members of an organization have an equal say on the team. Each member can provide innovative ideas or provide suggestions on how to streamline a process. It creates a culture of creativity and provides employees an incentive to experiment and learn. When I was at my time at Altria I worked alongside the data analyst team to streamline Marlboro Mobile Coupons. I was given over 17,000 raw redemption data and had to segment the data to better interpret it. The company allowed me and my team member to provide suggestions on the software side, as well as the distribution side of the company. By allowing an intern to have an opinion allows a company to learn about upcoming trends in the marketplace and best prepare for the future. We presented in front of senior management which supported the innovative culture Altria is trying to provide.
Delete2.Referring to the Westrum model, a company that best exemplifies this type of culture would be Google. The company has an wholistic office model that breeds creativity in the office place. By allowing employees to various amenities (cafeteria, gym, open work spaces), it allows the culture to breed organically. Every member on the team has an opinion and can experiment with different ideas to help enhance any system (cloud, gmail, search engine, youtube).
When I worked at Altria based off the Westrum model the company is a Generative (performance-oriented). Being a territory sales intern, I was given the trust to independently manage a $5 million territory in Downtown LA. I was held to performance standards to close inventory gaps, and update the storefronts marketing materials. Throughout my internship, there was constant feedback to improve my day-to-day operations on the job with my manager. By allowing a two-way dialogue with my manager, I was able to be innovative on the job.
1. Innovation culture is an environment where innovation can take place from any level within an organization and is highly encouraged. Organizations with innovation culture are always changing and are driven by new ideas. These organizations have a firm belief that value can be created from employees from any division or rank within that organization. Innovation culture has contributed to the rapid acceleration of technology in recent years. This type of culture is incredibly important since there has been shown to be a strong link between culture and organizational performance. This past summer I interned at a credit union which had an “open door” policy. The senior management team kept their doors open so that any of the employees could come in for a conversation. This policy also made it much easier to ask questions as answers were provided instantly. I believe this type of policy facilitates innovation culture and encourages new ideas from everyone.
Delete2. A company that depicts innovation culture as described by the Westrum model is Adobe. The VP of Adobe had the goal of creating a culture that “supports experimentation.” To achieve this the VP analyzed the company fail rate. He found the rate to be relatively low which was evidence that the company needed to make changes to encourage innovation. The goal was to increase fail rates by promoting new creative ideas and opportunities. The VP also wanted the employees to be motivated to “do the right things” rather than be told what to do. The increase in fail rates did not hurt the company since new successful ideas were formed and outweighed the failures. These changes ultimately led Adobe to have a creative and innovative culture.
1. An organization with an innovation culture has individuals, from entry-level employees through manager-level employees, who are highly self-motivated to continually improve their daily work, which results in the organization’s improved operations and greater performance. I used to work part-time at Uniqlo, the 4th largest apparel retailer in the world. In Uniqlo, all its employees are encouraged to think and work “like managers.” That is, not only store managers, but also all the employees who work under him, even including part-time ones, are required to think how they can improve their work and the store’s operations. For example, if an employee sees certain clothes are hot, they are encouraged to suggest the store’s layout change to the manager so that the popular item is placed in an area of the store which stands out, such as somewhere close to the entrance. Every employee has a say about the store’s operation, and this kind of work environment enables them to create innovative ideas to eventually enhance the company’s performance overall.
DeleteReference: https://www.rtinsights.com/real-time-retail-why-uniqlo-employees-use-handhelds/
2. Companies whose culture is generative best depicts an innovation culture. In an organization with generative culture, “failures lead to inquiry” and “risks are shared,” and the company can learn from failure and improve further while avoiding unnecessary risks. This past summer, I interned at Plante Moran, one of the nation’s largest certified public accounting and business advisory firms, in Michigan. What was very interesting is that at the firm’s conference a couple of partners and managers presented about their failure, such as their experience of losing a client they were in charge of. After that, we discussed what led to the loss of clients and how to avoid such a failure. I believe it is not easy for partners and managers to talk about their failures in front of many people. At Plante Moran, however, those failed experiences are shared organization-wide so that everybody in the organization can avoid risks of making the same mistake in the future.
1. Innovation culture is a workplace mindset that they organization and the individuals it employees must never remain stagnant. Every party should be equally motivated to continually better themselves, regardless of their rank. With this innate belief, those invested in the progression of the organization will be encouraged to use creativity to catapult them into the forefront of their industry. In order for a company to remain at the top, there must be a collective agreement on all levels to always improve and be open to changes. Over the summer, I interned for Goldman Sachs, a financial investment bank established in 1869. Since then, they have remained resilient and innovative in their technology for both front desk trading and even operations. It was unsaid that the firm’s wellbeing came first and ideas for improvements were always welcome as long as there is strong evidence behind it. The firm also encouraged this active approach to innovation with its interns as well. They recently created a worldwide innovation challenge for all interns to better the operations division and pitch their proposal to Vice Presidents for potential implementation. Goldman was also a “flat organization”, which meant that despite the ranking of each individual, a first year analyst could be sitting next to a Vice President with 6 years under their belt. This environment truly encouraged the sharing of new ideas and innovations.
Delete2. The type of company culture that best depicts an innovation culture is the generative organization. When I interned with Goldman Sachs, I quickly discovered that I was being graded based on my performance as an individual regardless of ranking. They encouraged and fostered an environment of open and frequent communication by having requesting that VP’s and the rest of the team is CC’d on every email sent internally and externally, as well as weekly meetings to provide updates on any day to day items and on-going projects. There is a high level of cooperation that Goldman has created. As an intern, I was placed on 3 different teams with extremely diverse personalities and backgrounds. There was a lot of delegation and frequent meetings and trust that each team member was going to do their part on time and correctly. The employees were also encouraged to make mistakes so we could all learn as a team, what to avoid and how to handle a similar crisis in the future. There was no fear of being fired over a mistake. In addition to this, the workspace was a show and tell environment where you had to verbally and explicitly tell your higher ups what you accomplished, improved and innovated since that heavily factored into the likelihood of getting promoted and the amount of bonus received. Overall, Goldman Sachs practiced a very generative based environment.
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Delete1.
DeleteInnovation culture is allowing communication throughout all levels of the company; this furthers gains to the company as employees feel they are heard, relationships are formed, and thus trust builds-creating a culture where anyone’s ideas leads to progressing their company.
In my own experience, working in an IT department of a 1,600 employee headquartered building, when communication fails to be heard in regards to thoughts on new policy, existing gatekeepers, or even ability to achieve higher positions within the company-productivity will be lost. Thus, if certain parts of the company I worked at had been more innovative in ways of allowing input from all levels of positions, workers would be happier, more would get done with higher efficiency and would convey a more innovative culture.
Pg 50 2016 State of the DevOps Report
“We’ve seen forward-thinking companies routinely go through a planning exercise to turn efficiency gains into innovation and value.”
“Innovation culture is the work environment that leaders cultivate in order to nurture unorthodox thinking and its application. Workplaces that foster a culture of innovation generally subscribe to the belief that innovation is not the province of top leadership but can come from anyone in the organization.” Jul 31, 2015
What is innovation culture? - Definition from WhatIs.com - SearchCIO
searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/innovation-culture
2.
As Ronnie replied, I too believe Google is a company that depicts an innovation culture in a positive manner. To add onto what was already said about Google, employees at Google have group talks about “…unconscious bias as it applies to race and gender…” (https://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-screed-1797564320). This relates to a generative, or performance-oriented, Westrum model company culture because Google is allowing a platform where talk can be had to increase flow of information and build trust. If biases are talked about and possibly overcome, maybe one employee will be more willing to communicate with another employee.
If you are interested in Google’s Current Employee Demographics, Statista has a graphic published on Aug 10, 2017: https://www.statista.com/chart/10640/googles-current-employee-demographics/
The type of company culture where I interned over the summer was seen as Bureaucratic, or rule-oriented, because those in positions of power, such as project manager or director positions, would want to keep company resources within their respective branches, IT, accounting, HR, etc.. Also, implementations of new policy was looked at as invasive rather than supportive since change is sometimes looked at in a negative light.
Pg 34 2016 State of the DevOps Report
“Pathological (power-oriented). These organizations are characterized by low cooperation across groups and a culture of blame. Information is often withheld for personal gain.
Bureaucratic (rule-oriented). Bureaucratic cultures are preoccupied with rules and positions, and responsibilities are compartmentalized by department, with little concern for the overall mission of the organization.
Generative (performance-oriented). The hallmarks of a generative organization are good information flow, high cooperation and trust, bridging between teams, and conscious inquiry.”
1. Innovation culture is defined by an internal desire and drive for constant improvement. This is accomplished by clearly establishing desired future states, setting weekly target outcomes, and a continual improvement of daily work, such as was the case at Toyota. Another company that conveys an innovation culture is Kayak. Former CEO Paul English left his mark on this thriving travel company in the form of a philosophy that states that personal engagement between employees and customers fosters a more intimate work and travel experience.
Delete2. The Westrum model emphasized a culture of collaboration where people feel safe to share their views and work across a diverse group. Statistical analysis shows that team culture is not only strongly correlated with organizational performance but also job satisfaction. A high-trust, generative culture is important for creating a safe working environment and a high-performing organization.
I had an internship at Rio Tinto over the summer, during which I was able to observe such an innovation culture. While the mining industry is one of the last industries which have not undergone a major technological boom, Rio Tinto is a big promoter of innovation and advancement. Throughout my time there I took part in daily and weekly meetings during which the next weeks and months production and process improvement goals were discussed. Other topics discussed were how to improve safety around the mine as well as interdepartmental communications. Overall it was a very driven environment with clear goals.
1) A company with an innovative culture has to start with diversity. Diversity of thought is what truly makes a company innovative. People come from different upbringings, and think about problems differently. This past summer I interned with Accenture on a large technology project for the State of California. I worked on a small, diverse team that was made up of American, Indian, and Chinese people. We were one small team on a project of 200 consultants. We were the client correspondence team, and we were responsible for maintaining the part of the system that handles all documentation that flows between the eligibility workers and the people applying for welfare/government aid. As a 10 week intern, there is a ton to learn. Each person on my team got the opportunity to train me at some point, and they all had a different way of problem solving. I then gained new ways to solve the day-to-day tasks I was responsible. Accenture is constantly pushing both diversity and innovation, and this is because they go hand and hand.
Delete2) I think that a company that depicts the Westrum model is Boston Consulting Group. BCG is one of the big three consulting firms. Year-after-year, BCG is ranked one of the best places to work, and a company that has high employee satisfaction. This is a part of the Westrum model. Another part of the Westrum model is collaboration like Anna Katharina Schuh mentioned. BCG specializes in strategy consulting with small/medium collaborative teams. They come together, and solve massive problems such as mergers and acquisitions and profitability issues. BCG offers 1st class benefits, and is constantly doing mixers, parties, and networking events to keep their workers satisfied.
I noticed this culture at Accenture as well. We had 10 total interns in Accenture’s LA office spread across 6 different projects. Throughout the summer, our internship coordinator planned fun and collaborative events for us. We had an intern day of service where we helped out at the LA regional food bank. We also got to go to a LA Dodgers game, Disney Land, and a end of summer gala. We worked very hard, and has very stressful deadlines. These events were planned perfectly, and made all the interns feel like they had a work life balance.
1. Innovation culture, as with any culture, can have different meanings for different stakeholders. For me, innovation culture is defined by the desire to improve constantly and the willingness to experiment with new ideas, methods, and technologies. Starting with the desire to constantly improve, I believe that an innovation culture should be striving to better their short and long-term operations. This can be done in many mays such as stand ups, reflection, and outside consulting. During my internship, the company that I was working for had a stand up every two days to discuss progress that was happening during the current sprint and also to brainstorm any solutions to potential problems that came up.
DeleteThe next aspect of innovation culture is the willingness to accept new ideas and technology into the environment. Technology is advancing at an astounding rate making the adoption of new technologies essential to supporting a business. During this summer, I found that the company that I interned for stayed informed of cutting edge technology. They did this to recognize any potential opportunities where they could apply the technology to better the business.
2. A company that best describes innovation culture is Amazon. Amazon strives to embrace and apply new technologies--even if they are disruptive--to drive the business. For example, Amazon embraced robots that drive around their warehouse. As of early 2017, there are over 45000 of these robots working to pick, package, and move products in Amazon's various warehouses (Shead, 2017). By embracing these types of technology, Amazon is fostering an innovative culture that will give the company a competitive advantage in the short and long run.
Shead, S. (2017, January 03). Amazon now has 45,000 robots in its warehouses. Retrieved November 19, 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-robot-army-has-grown-by-50-2017-1
1. Innovation culture can be defined in many ways but it is ultimately decided by everyone in the workforce. The leader of the company or office is usually the one who cultivates the culture and the other employees usually adapt to that culture. Innovation culture can be something small such as a team for a project but they ultimately follow the top of the pyramid. An experience that I had with this was over the past summer when I interned at a medical device company called Becton, Dickinson, and Company. My team was actually only one other person so it was important for me to get to know her on a personal basis to really understand her culture for our team.
Delete2.Referring to the Westrum Model, an example that provided this depicts of an innovated culture would be Airbnb. Essentially the customers of the company are the owners of their business. There are workers that work actually for Airbnb but ultimately, they rely on their "Employeees" who rent out their areas to create profit. Not many other companies provide this type of innovated culture in their company.
During my previous internship at BD, the company culture was very relax and had a flat hierarchy. We had the opportunity to meet the CEO of the company and we're highly encouraged to meet as many VP's/ MD's as possible. My manager didn't necessarily have the technical abilities I did so she truly trusted me to do all the work my self. The work that I did was implemented and used by other departments.
1. Innovation culture can be defined in many different ways and is very important for all organizations to value since it can really bring many benefits. As a definition, innovation culture can be defined as where organization practice and believe not only top level leaders can come up with and find innovative solutions to an organizations problems. Every member is valuable and has something interesting to offer. An example of where I noticed this is at my current job of a Systems Administrator Assistant at The University of Arizona Athletics Department. All of the student workers are asked every week on how they would change processes or if they have any ideas. Since working there, I have been able to find solutions to our inventory problem and have really made an innovative and beneficial difference.
Delete2. In reference to the Westrum Model, an example of an company that follows this model is Amazon. Amazon has been so successful due to the innovative culture they have adopted. Many of Amazon's new products have been created by working backwards, where employees will work with customers and then find solutions to problems. These solutions are then presented to senior management to see how they can be implemented and benefit Amazon.
This reminded me about my previous internship in Texas where my supervisors asked me about how I would approach certain projects. With my MIS background, I was able to look at processes a different way and come up with innovative ideas on how to be more efficient in documentation and how to create training guides for an ERP project.
1. An innovation culture refers to a culture within a company where all members are encouraged, and can take an integral part in innovation within the company. This is achieved by recognizing that many people, no matter what level they are at, come from different backgrounds, and view things in different ways. This inherently means that they may have different ideas that could work in improving a company. It is important that upper management creates this culture where others feel comfortable in taking risks and communicating ways in which they believe that the company can improve. I have experienced this first hand during my internship over the summer. My manger made sure that everyone felt comfortable sharing ideas about how the company to improve. This led to many of my coworkers actually implementing several of there ideas in their day to day jobs, many times leading to a more efficient process. The company was very good at realizing that they needed to cater to workers needs because they were the ones on the front lines getting the work done. The more changes they made that benefitted the workers, the more work got done.
Delete2. Referencing the Westrum Model a company that closely follows this is Microsoft. When Satya Nadella took over the company, he made sure that he changed the culture of the company. He wanted to create an innovative culture, and allow employees to think creatively and even come up with projects that they were not currently working on. Currently at Microsoft, employees are encouraged to use company resources in order to make prototypes of their ideas, and some have even become real products. An example of this is Saqib Shaikh. He is a blind programmer at Microsoft who worked on a special project which his superiors supported. His project is a pair of special glasses that scans the environment and talks to the person wearing them, telling them about their surroundings. This product is currently getting funding from the company, and it just one example of the innovative culture being utilized by Microsoft.
link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2mC-NUAmMk
1. Innovation culture is not just a culture that companies have begun to adopt, but it is an ideology as well. The long held belief is that the greatest innovators come from the top: The CEO, The president, or even a Vice President. These are the people expected to make the big decisions and change the game. This falls in line with who many think of when they hear the word innovator. Common names like Walt Disney, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, are all innovators, and they all came from the top.
DeleteInnovation culture flips that idea, and it says that "innovation is not the province of top leadership but can come from anyone in the organization," (Margaret Rouse, 2015). To create an innovation culture, an organization must believe that any of their members has the potential to create ground breaking ideas, and it is their job to cultivate those ideas. They have to give employees a safe space to feel comfortable expressing their opinions to start achieving an innovation culture.
I worked at a job with Technology Services, LLC as a contractor for IT manual labor. This job had absolutely no innovation culture. In fact, you were given a strict rule book that you had to follow, and even if you thought there was a better way, they made sure that you followed the "rules." As a result, the job quickly bored me. If you want to attract smart individuals to your organization, you have to give them a chance to share their voice. This is what innovation culture is all about.
2. In regards to the Westrum Model, an organization that cultivates innovation culture would most likely be considered a Generative (performance-oriented) organization. This is because information must flow freely and cooperation is paramount to allow innovators to flourish in a company.
I worked at Dignity Health, the 5th largest healthcare provider in the country, and I found they are a bureaucratic organization. Everyone had a position, seniority had the final say, and there were certainty restrictions in place. It didn't have the free flowing group-think feel of an innovation culture company, but they have their reasons for this. Perhaps the rules and restrictions are in place to protect such a large organization from internal issues. Overall, I enjoyed my experience there, but perhaps in the future they could invest more time in idea cultivation from their employees. That building was full of smart people that could add even more value with their ideas.
Hello @Max Sanowski, l especially like you explanation of innovation culture, and your citation. i agree that organization structure many to do with innovation. Most people cannot conduct or test on their innovation with limited resources. Organization should create structure that letting people to utilize the resources for good, and encourage them to innovate.
Delete1. Innovation Culture involves a company that does not restrict new methodologies even if they will be challenging to implement. This involves giving all members of the team a voice in how improvements can be made on a constant basis. An example of this that I found in my past summer internship was based around the assessment of the current IT capabilities of our company. This involved categorizing our current IT employees in order to compare the capabilities of those specific departments. Myself and the other interns though the current categories we’re outdated and attempted to create new ones that better defined the specific types of IT roles such as data scientist, software engineers, IOT developers. Although this change involved a much higher overall cost and time commitment of our assessment, our company was eager to enable and help us make this transformation and I felt this reflected what was shown in the readings.
Delete2. In regard to the Westrum model, a company that describes innovation culture with a generative approach in a similar form as my example above is Amazon. They are constantly adapting their methodologies and ways of doing business resulting in a disruption to a number of industries. “Unlike Apple, Google, and Microsoft, Amazon is not fixated on a tightly designed ecosystem of interlocking services”. This quote from a Fast Company article describing why Amazon is the most innovating company of 2017 emphasis their adaptive nature that is now matched with a seemingly unlimited number of resources backed by the unmated capabilities of Prime.
Source for Amazon Quote: https://www.fastcompany.com/3067455/why-amazon-is-the-worlds-most-innovative-company-of-2017
1. The technology industry has been a cradle of innovation for years now. The way that these companies have fostered an environment that allows their employees to be comfortable to share their ideas has been one of the reasons why they have been so successful. At my internship at Optum, they created an environment like that by celebrating diversity and understanding how important it is to make every employee feel empowered to share their ideas.
Delete2. UnitedHealth Group has not had the best reputation and they have been trying very hard to change their culture. According to the Westrum model, UHG could've been described as bureaucratic but Optum which is the tech company under UHG is more generative. Performance is the most important thing to the company right now and the results have been impressive. Culture is very important to an organization of that size so the efforts have been widespread to create a more inviting and innovative culture.
1: Innovative culture
DeleteI believe that innovative cultures should be adopted by almost every company simply because it helps engage every single employee and not just the people at the top of the hierarchy tree. Innovative culture enables people or coworkers to get together and come up with ideas to further improve their company or their product. This culture also has a high emphasis on creativity and allows everybody in the company to have their own say when it comes to what needs to be improved and how they can go about doing it. A real life example of this was when I was interning at American Express over the past Summer. Every week me and my team of about 6 members would meet up and discuss what needs to be improved about the network and then we would all brainstorm ideas to one another. After everybody has had a chance to put in their input, we would discuss which idea would be the best at that given moment. This allowed me to actually have a say in what the company does and how they go about fixing an issue that arrives. It proves that regardless of your position in the company, anybody can have a good idea and encourages people to speak out if they feel they have come up with a better solution.
2: Company Culture
A company culture that best depicts an innovative culture would be a company that is generative. The reason behind this is because generative companies are performance-oriented and allow co workers to work together to brainstorm creative ideas to improve the company. A company that I would consider to be generative would be Google simply because one of the main things they look for in their employees is creativity. They preach creativity in the workplace simply because it gives everybody a say and allows their voice to be heard even if they are not at the top of the totem poll within the company. I use to work as a sales associate at Fitness1 gym for about two years and I would say they were a very generative company. Since I worked in sales, you never really knew what the customer was going to say so my manager always encouraged me to be innovative. When ever I would show them around the gym and show them all the different packages we sold I would have to improvise and do my best to relate to the customer even if they were super dull and had no personality at all. After every sale, my manager would ask me what I learned from it and what I would have done differently the next time around. This made me start to become more creative when talking to people instead of sticking to the same script every single time. Even on days that nobody was coming into the gym my coworkers and I would practice by creating different scenarios and objections and then we would find different answers on how to close that certain sale. This type of work force preached creativity and innovation because you never knew who you were going to talk too and how they act in certain situations.
1. An innovative culture is one that recognizes new leadership skills, new processes, new people, and a focus on opportunity. It is an environment that leaders cultivate in order to nurture unorthodox thinking. Workplaces that follow an innovative culture have a strong belief that innovation doesn’t necessarily stem from the top leadership but it can come from anywhere in an organization. From my personal experience, my last internship was at an international think tank called the Observers Research Foundation(ORF) and ORF is a great model of an innovative culture. Every member at ORF has to participate actively in all meeting and even the interns were asked to share their thoughts on the topics being discussed, these meetings included all top heads of ORF. As an intern I was often made the rapporteur for various international events hosted in partnership with the World Economic Forum and these experiences led to an innovative culture in the organization.
Delete2. In my opinion, Intuit is a great example of the Westrum model. Intuit has a very relaxed culture that promotes innovation and they provide many amenities in the office like a cafeteria, gaming room, gym etc. Intuit has an open line of communication between the employees and the directors. Also, employees are encouraged to participate in extracurricular actives or learn skills that can help improve their performance. There are many team events to foster healthier relationships in the office.
I experienced a very innovative culture at my last internship at Observers Research Foundation, and I could say the same for my fellow interns as well. ORF provided great exposure and helped interns by creating an atmosphere that resulted in great communication between the junior employees and the top leaders. Anyone at ORF could make a big change by offering new solutions or better ideas for an overall success of the think tank. The president of ORF would encourage people of all ages to offer different perspectives as collective effort always led to better ideas.
I totally agree with Will saying that “an innovation culture should be striving to better their short and long-term operations. This can be done in many mays such as stand ups, reflection, and outside consulting.” In order to innovate, it is essential for a team to regularly have a meeting/discussion to make sure of whether the team is making progress, and discuss together how to solve problems which are preventing progress if there is any. Team discussions give opportunities for problems to be shared among all the team members so that everyone can learn how to solve them and improve their skills, which will eventually lead to better overall performance as a company and create innovative culture.
DeleteAvaneesh has a good point about in what kind of environment innovation tends to occur. An environment where employees can share their own ideas is definitely the key for innovation. I have worked at an apparel retailer, Uniqlo, which is known for creating products with innovative fabric. One of the reasons why they can keep producing innovative items is because all the employees at the company has a say in order to improve the store’s operations and products. When I was at Uniqlo, we regularly had meetings, and every employee including part-time ones was able to give their opinions comfortably to improve the store’s overall performance.
Delete1. Innovation culture means continuous improvement. No one in an innovation culture is satisfied with “okay”. They want to try new practices, experiment, and take some risks. The goal of innovation culture is to change it up and try different methods or opportunities and hopefully it will lead to a successful process. Innovation isn’t just at the top of the hierarchy. It starts everywhere and every employee, no matter what their rank is, is encouraged to innovate. Entry level employees should not be scared to change up the process a bit and managers should encourage innovation. One thing that makes innovation culture allowable is to give everyone some freedom. If people are following strict guidelines, then there’s no room to innovate. I interned on the QA team at InFocus 3 summers ago and I was testing their phones. When I started, I was the least experienced intern because most of the other interns worked part time during school. I went to school out of state, so I didn’t have that opportunity. But, right when I started working, they gave me my freedom to change up some of the testing. They called it ad-hoc testing. Basically, ad-hoc testing means to use your experience and knowledge to do the test plans. I didn’t have to follow the test plan because they were constantly looking for easier, faster, and new tests. I was the newest in the company and right off the bat, they want me to innovate test plans. I know a test plan is a small thing but if its creating value for the organization, then it is innovation culture.
Delete2. The Westrum model has three distinct types of organizational culture. The type of culture that represents an innovation culture is generative (performance-oriented). Some characteristics of a generative culture is high cooperation, risks shared, failure leads to inquiry, and high trust. A company that best represents a generative culture is Facebook. One of my friend’s parents work at the HQ at Menlo Park. The place is almost like an amusement park. I walked through the front security door and it was like its own city. One thing I recognized when I went into the offices was that there was no manager cubicle. Every person was treated the same and younger employees were not scared of conversing with older employees or their managers. Also, the environment was relaxed. People could leave, take breaks, or even play video games whenever they wanted. I could tell there was a strong connection between coworkers and the trust between them is very strong. By allowing everyone to feel comfortable with each other, it creates an atmosphere where people want to go to work and want to create value for the organization.
1. An organization with an innovative culture is one that encourages its employees to take risks that lead to positive breakthroughs for the company. An innovative culture starts with making sure everyone in organization feels they have the power to be innovative, and that there ideas will be heard and considered. All ideas should be heard no matter the amount of power the employee has within the organization. Along with transparency, ideas need to be communicated in order for others to understand ideas and have the opportunity to collaborate and build on those ideas. This past summer during my internship with Circle Logistics, a third party freight broker, innovation was necessary in order to find new ways to develop and maintain relationships with new carriers. In order to achieve that, every employee in the office had the ability to communicate their new ideas to upper management. Even as interns, we were always told to communicate with our colleagues if we had any idea that could be beneficial in improving efficiency or customer relations in any way.
Delete2. In reference to the Westrum Model, I believe a company that perfectly represents an innovative culture is Facebook. Facebook's innovative culture starts with its CEO Mark Zuckerburg having high involvement in all of the company's designing and conception of its products. Zuckerberg has designed several ways to encouraging high levels of creativity within the office by establishing things such as think tanks, and not allowing employees to present ideas using PowerPoints, but inside having to develop prototypes.
In my internship this summer although the culture did encourage innovation, I would describe it more as a conventional corporate culture. In the office although all ideas were heard and considered, there was definitely clearly defined hierarchies. I thought there was a very cut-and-dry feel to the office that could at times leave little room for experimentation or inspiration for pushing to better the business.
1. Innovation culture like Max pointed out above is also an ideology. Individuals within the company must have open communication and a ‘safe space’ so everyone feels like their idea can bring some sort of value to the table. The company should keep a ‘forward thinking’ mindset and not only look at industry trends, but the ripple effect of patterns these trends might create.
DeleteOne of the biggest components of Innovation I like to use a 1+1 or 1+2 framework. In other words, when going through a process of ideation, the question to ask is not just “How can we compete through innovating a new product or service”, rather, “How can we innovate the next generation of new products that will create ‘the new wave’ and give us a ‘leg up’ against our competitors. This framework creates an environment where you plan to take multiple steps ahead of your opponent and has proven to be very successful for many.
2. Referring to the Westrum model, I believe Apple has proven to be one of the leaders in innovation culture. They work across a diverse group and generate high trust levels among their employees. While working for them a couple summer’s ago, I mostly worked remotely, and the experience led me to enjoy the autonomous work style. I remember being asked to provide feedback (almost monthly) based on not only how I was trained but also how my manger was performing. I would be placed in chat rooms with other apple employees around the country and we discussed topics just like this one and had to come up with ways in which we believed apple could provide better customer service based on our experiences. There were no wrong answers and everyone’s opinion was valued (and also recorded). The whole culture seemed random at first but then I noticed the methodical nature arise. Upon my departure, they pressed even harder on ways the could improve and wanted to know what led me to leave the company.
1.An innovation culture is when all members of the team are encouraged to think and find something innovative. This can be from the leader/CEO or to entry level employee. Innovation culture promotes innovative thinking. As technology is rapidly developing, everybody in the team must be able to think quickly adapt. Innovation culture can lead to an improvement in team/company performance. As an entry level employee, they may be too scared to say something but if you encourage them, they’ll be able to do work more freely and confident. Overall, innovation culture is an idea that allows everybody to contribute and perform at a maximum level.
DeleteDoing my research on innovative culture, I was able to find out companies such as CSAA Insurance Group (CSAA IG) are all encouraging innovative culture. CSAA IG’s added “innovation” as one the company’s value while hiring employees. They created their own definition of innovation because it can be very broad (incremental, evolutionary, and disruptive) to help employees develop innovation. The first is incremental. No one expects a huge change after a day, it all begins with something small and then continuous improvement can lead to something bigger. The next two categories people don’t focus on as often is evolutionary and disruptive innovation. Evolutionary innovation is creating something new that can benefit the company and disruptive innovation is exploring consequences/effects of different ideas. CSAA IG provides innovation training to all their employees. They also provide employees with online ports, training sessions, platforms where they can freely speak and share their ideas. It is the worst when someone’s ideas do not get heard.
Reference: https://hbr.org/2017/08/how-one-insurance-firm-learned-to-create-an-innovation-culture
2.Personally, I believe many companies now are trying to fit with the Westrum model. The generative approach is the innovative approach in the Westrum model. The Generative model has good information flow, cooperation trust, conscious inquiry, and linking between teams. Facebook is a good example of this. I personally never worked at Facebook, but I had a friend that interned there and he showed me around. Facebooks has a wide open campus where employees can go shop, eat, play video games, and etc. Basically a place where employees can interact with each other. This allows for more information flow and team bonding. At Facebook, they also encourage innovation. Many work spaces did not have walls or cubicles. This allows employees to converse, problem solve, and generate new solutions. This is probably why Facebook is one of the top businesses in the country.
1. An innovation culture is one where all employees, regardless of their position and experience at a company, can bring in new ideas or challenge existing processes. An article McKinsey and Co. on Innovation Culture discusses the importance of busting hierarchy in organizations to increase innovation in companies. A lot of budget constraints and deadlines prevent ideas from being heard. To be able to prevent this, companies offer incentives to employees to create and support and innovative culture. One such company is Accenture. Accenture is mainly an IT Consulting firm that offers digital services to companies from various industries. Accenture holds an annual Innovation Challenge that allows encourages employees to pitch ideas for new technologies, processes or ways to improve existing ones.
DeleteHere is an article from McKinsey on how to build innovative cultures:
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/strategy-and-corporate-finance/our-insights/creating-an-innovation-culture
2. During my internship last semester at Texas Instruments as an Operations Intern, I was responsible for forecasting demand for an upcoming manufacturing technology. I had to work with multiple databases and applications to analyze and forecast demand data. This was pretty time consuming and vulnerable to inaccurate data. My boss and team was pretty supportive and encouraging of my idea to connect various databases to eliminate middlemen to transport data and prevent human error. I was able to connect 3 of the different databases I was working with and help over 200 people perform their jobs more efficiently. I was happy that my ideas were accepted even through I was just an intern, For employees of different levels in companies, especially the incoming workforce of millennials, it is especially important to create a sense of innovation to help retain top talent.
An innovation culture is a type of work environment that leaders manage in order to have distinct thinking and apply this to their work. Businesses that have an innovation culture believe that innovation does not have to come from the top people in an organization but rather from anyone working there. An example of this is the job I currently have at Kate Spade. Although I don’t have a very high position at my job, I can still contribute ideas to my boss that are innovative and can help the culture of our business. I have thought of a technological innovation that I believe will help the business and can share those ideas as much as anyone else working there.
DeleteRegarding the Westrum model, a company that shows this type of culture is Microsoft. They are continuously encouraging employees to engage in the three different types of innovation: business model, product and policy. Microsoft has moved from being a traditional product focus point and is now using other strategies to create this innovative culture. Employees are able to share their innovative ideas, and it is improving their overall business and culture. When I worked at CyraCom last year as an intern I was able to act as leader despite my intern role. In a short amount of time working there, I was able to be involved in an important phone call with two managers holding a high position, by being persistent and thinking of innovative ideas I could serve to the organization. They showed me that regardless of my role, they have an innovative culture where I was able to bring my ideas to the table.
Innovation cannot thrive without creative problem-solving. Innovation culture starts with creating a working environment that allows for all team members to hear each others ideas and opinions rather than one-member instilling the dominant idea upon all of them. This type of work ethic is what Dev-Ops also is known for. Employing this method, everyone’s thoughts and ideas are welcomed and respected by each other and this form of authority can take the company in directions that were thought to be unattainable. I would say motivating the employees to work with speed and agility is important as well. Technology has enabled us all to move very fast whether it be healthcare, business or everyday life. Employees encouraged to move fast within a business are enabled to identify and develop creative ideas into disrupting technology. This is one aspect that DevOps challenges as well. Another part of this type of culture comes about by communicating effectively. There needs to be open door policy from the team leader to hear and discuss those potential solutions to the problem at hand coming from lower level staff. This two-way communication can be used to get feedback and is an ongoing conversation from beginning to the end stage. Lastly, measuring employee satisfaction of employees can also play a key role as it can determine where the company needs to change in order to advance further.
Delete2. Referring to the Westrum model, a company that best exemplifies the generative (performance-oriented) type of culture would be Google. “The brand is as famous for its staff perks – pool tables and bowling alleys, and gym memberships – as it is for its technology, and even employs a chief happiness officer whose sole job is to keep employees happy and maintain productivity. “Google is one of those few companies that has a great culture for its employees and one that thrives on innovation. Google has been able to make this happen because it provides various channels for their employees to percolate up ideas that may not be perfect nor finished. Some of these channels include Google Cafes, direct emails to the leaders, Google Moderator. the company aims to maintain a tight feedback loop that promotes quick decision-making. Instead of using a flat line approach, Google has its researchers, engineers, and product managers work together throughout projects—they all communicate directly no matter what level of hierarchy they are at. Furthermore, the employees are also briefed on the new things that Google is developing and innovations in the industry. Utilizing this method can flourish an environment where ideas flowing from one division can be applied to another division. This is similar to genesis of DevOps of an increasing need for innovation on the systems side of technology work. Google also gives their employees about 10% “free time” to experiment with new ideas in hopes to develop new ideas to carry through with.
1. An innovative culture is one that creates a space where employees are free to present new and creative ideas that could advance the organization. There’s no hierarchy, per se, and new ideas are encouraged from any role within the organization. From my own experiences, my part-time job encourages me to present new ideas that could reduce time-lag or bottlenecks from our services. A few years ago, a student created a method where we could reduce the number of invoices needed to be printed only for clients that have outstanding balances instead of printing every invoice for each client even if they paid during the month. We became more sustainable from this method and lowered the time it usually took to print, fold, and send the invoices.
Delete2. According to the Westrum model, there are three categories that breakdown the culture of an organization. The first category is the power-oriented culture known as Pathological. The second category is rule-oriented culture known as Bureaucratic. Lastly, we have the performance-oriented culture which is known as Generative. Over the last few years, with the emergence of the tech startups, we’ve seen companies shift from having a pathological culture to now having a generative culture in their organizations. More and more companies are becoming more diverse as many employees begin to identify their roles in the company and how it fits in to their personal lives. As more people demand meaningful jobs and roles in their organizations, companies have managed to tweak their company cultures to accommodate the lifestyles of their employees. For example, Zappos is an online retail company that sells shoes. Zappos fits the category of having a generative culture. Zappos encourages its employees to input new and creative ideas and present it to their teams instead of a manager. Their teams are not governed by one person that is in-charge, whom when things go left, they are blamed for. Instead, each individual is responsible for their own mistakes which diminishes the pressure if one person was in-charge. This way, there is no blame culture around the organization and encourages innovative ideas to be shared around Zappos.
1. Innovation culture is defined by the desire that everyone want to improve and not afraid to share their thoughts. It means that the working environment and atmosphere of the company is very innovative. People desire to improve operations and always find something new to have better outcomes. Innovation culture allows everyone in the company provide suggestions and provide them a chance to speak for themselves. The employees must have better communications with other people so that they can combine their ideas and thoughts together and come up with better ideas.
DeleteI used to have an internship in CHINA CITIC BANK, and I think they have the Innovation culture. We all know that the functions of bank are very limited, and their work is kind boring, but the CITIC bank is trying to provide more services to their customer such as jewelry business, and they also try to reduce complicated processes in order to save their customers time. I think it’s pretty good for the company.
2. Based on the Westrum model, I think in this model people feel safe to share their ideas with other people, this model has cooperation trust and focuses on generative. I think Amazon is a good example. I personally don’t work on Amazon but my cousin works for Amazon, and he used to show me his working environment. My cousin is a programmer, and when I was in his company, I saw he talked a lot with his team members to decide which part of the code could be improved and how to avoid some further questions. I also find there are many places that people can have a rest and seat together to talk. We all know that Amazon is one of the most innovative companies in the world, and I think maybe it’s one of the reasons why Amazon is such a good company in the world.
1. An innovation culture is a culture where innovation is encouraged from any level. Additionally, innovation is encouraged. What this means is that all members of the company's team are open and welcome to innovative ideas. In fact, innovative ideas should be encouraged. This also means that when these ideas are proposed they are taken seriously. The people in charge must be open to ideas that will better the company. They must act on these ideas and eventually implement them within the company to improve the company. These are some characteristics that define an innovation culture. To achieve this culture all employees must want to improve. I have experienced an innovation culture in a past work experience. The company I worked for this summer had an innovation day once a month. On this day employees compiled ideas and selected their favorite. They then had the entire day to work on developing this idea. On the first innovation day the team developed a mobile app for the company that ended up replacing the old app. This is a perfect example of an innovation culture.
Delete2. I believe the generative type of organization best mirrors an innovation culture. Generative has high trust, effective communication, and thoughtful employees. These are all key factors to achieve an innovation culture. REPAY, the company I worked for this summer, is a perfect example of a generative type company. REPAY is a financial technology company that is relatively small, about 60-70 employees, but through a strong innovative culture has been able to generate millions of dollars in revenue. All employees of the company were in constant communication via tools such as RingCentral (videoconferencing) and Slack (messaging). By linking all the employees including the CEO through communication tools all questions and problems were quickly answered or fixed. Additionally, employees knew each other on a highly personally level which created a strong trust between all members of the organization. Innovation was always encouraged. REPAY even implemented an innovation day where employs got the entire day off work to work on a project of their choosing. The culture at REPAY was extremely easy-going, but the work still got done well and on time. This is why REPAY is a perfect example of a company with an innovation culture.
This is a reply to @John Allen Wilson. I like your explanation about innovation culture that the companies encourage employees to take risks, many people they have ideas but afraid to share with other people and also worry about what if they fail or it will bring some risks. But some ideas used to seem risky and finally its successes, so it’s important for employees to speak out their ideas and don’t afraid the risks.
Delete1. In the view of Greg Linden, Amazon’s engineer, building this culture is the key to innovation. An innovation cooperate culture encourages every member including summer interns and CEO in the organization to be creative. The Westrum model is good drive to innovation. Because the Westrum model enables employees to focus on the performance. To improve performance, the members are willing to share risks and implement novelty. I think the group project in our MIS 441 class convey that culture, because all of us are assigned to small branches and encouraged to highly cooperative and creative. At the beginning, it was hard for us to come up with a mature idea to help our customers. Dr. Suzie allowed every member to present, so the group could have different options. After that, we could share them via VoiceThread. Therefore, we could improve our idea by considering various views from other groups.
Delete2. PayPal is good example for an innovation culture. PayPal supports equality for all and provide tons of opportunities to its employees. PayPal’s mission and vision is that every person ahs the right to participate fully in the global economy, and that PayPal have an obligation to empower people to exercise this right and improve financial health. Furthermore, PayPal encourages its employee to leverage other experience such as serving in the military.
In my view, my organization of my last intern combined bureaucratic and generative culture. When I worked there, they were developing a software, but only IT department were working in a small group, other departments were likely to be restrained by rules and care about the responsibilities.
I am writing to reply to @ Mitch Goedken post. I think Mitch has deeper and more realistic view to corporate culture. Furthermore, I think ideas can create ‘the new wave’ are very rare and may mean more risks. Therefore, collecting everyone’s ideas that you also emphasize in your claim, becomes more important because we cannot miss any potential idea.
Delete1. A culture of innovation is crucial to the success of a new or old company's success in the modern world. Innovation should be encouraged at all levels, including senior management and lower level employees. Some of the best inventions and ideas have come from the lower tiers of an organization and for that exact reason everyone should have an equal say with equal accountability. My best first hand experience of an innovation culture would be being a member of the Director team of Spring Fling. Though this is a school sanctioned entity, it remains a business and operates like one. Each of the eight directors have the same amount of say aw well as collaborate with each other outside of their field to increase efficiency and creativity. Many of our implemented ideas that range from the layout of the event to most of our processes come from the minds of the team.
Delete2. Charles Schwab is a prime example of an innovation culture. Schwab empowers employees of any level to get involved with the bigger picture of the company and provides them resources to lend a helping hand. Charles Schwab prides itself over providing their customers with the best financial advice and services world-wide. Schwab offers endless opportunities for innovation and I was able to witness that first hand this past summer. As a technology intern, I was tasked to work with many cybersecurity softwares and provide feedback to my managers as to what I thought of the software and what improvements that I could recommend. Though I was simply an intern, the culture of innovation and equality exemplified that Charles Schwab takes all the steps possible to provide value to its customers, even if the customer doesn't see it.
1. An innovation culture is defined as a culture that a company has when they promote employees to at all levels of the company to be outspoken with their opinions and develop solutions for any various degree of problem the company faces. This innovation culture is also defined by more of a flat employment structure or hierarchy as opposed to a traditional pyramid hierarchy that is very structured and vertical or tall. One company that exemplifies a culture of innovation is Zappos. Although now owned by Amazon, Zappos is famous for their staffing structure. Instead of being having a tall, pyramid structure with lots of management oversight, Zappos used used a structure that was almost like a web. It was very flat with little management oversight. If a team wanted to do a project, they would be trusted to do so and given the resources they needed to do it successfully.
Delete2. The type of company culture that best fosters an innovation culture is one where the company values each employee and what they have to offer the company. Companies that value all of their employees, such as Google, are also the companies that are most known for their innovation cultures. When a company values its employees, they place great trust in their employees and encourage them to pursue what they interpret as being the most valuable use of their own time for the company. One example where I personally experienced an innovation culture was during my internship this past summer with Continental Towers. The team I was composed college students, yet we developed a plan for a pilot project provided solutions for the company, and our managers gave us the resources we needed to successfully implement the project. Although just interns, this innovation culture allowed us to run our pilot project and deploy atmospheric water generators in Lima, Peru that gave water to those in need.
Innovation culture is when all different levels of employees are encouraged to continually thrive through self-motivation and creativity. In order to remain competitive and on-top of the industry, upper-level management must be open-minded and account for lower-level employees. This would in turn increase efficiency for the company and create a happier workplace. In my experience, I worked as an intern for a company that we did not have a lot of say in. I never had a chance to give my own input and neither did the regional manager because upper-level management in New York was the only one with a say. I was unhappy with my job and therefore would not want to work full time with them.
DeleteA company that encourages innovation culture is Microsoft. Microsoft has recently tried to improve its organizational structure under its new CEO, Satya Nadella. According to USA Today, Nadella has "managed to alter a corporate reputation for being stodgy, closed and insular. [New hires] are being asked for opinions, and even leading best-practice meetings.” My cousin works as a software engineer for Microsoft and he talks a lot about the wonderful initiatives they take to ensure that their employees are happy. They also ask for feedback from the employees and keep an open mind about what can be done to improve the company.
I agree with yuan yang that employees should be empowered to improve themselves and stay motivated through creating environment that is forgiving and allows creativity to flow among st the team. Again, this can be done by having open communication with your team members, asking questions because there is no such thing as a wrong answer. This builds trust with each other and makes possible a platform to share knowledge. I believe a good practice would be to stay engaged in conversations for the betterment of the company through providing solutions that are heavily backed up with evidence and maybe even results. It is important to note here that when we say an innovation culture, it is made by different people and they form this culture every day differently. Having said that, it is important for the members of the work place to acknowledge this and work towards taking the needed steps to achieve such culture.
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Delete1. Innovation culture is a culture that exists in many big corporations today. It is an environment where all employees at every level of the company can feel comfortable thinking of new ways to perform their tasks and duties. When any employee has a new idea or innovation, they should be able to present it to their higher ups and the idea should be considered for a more widespread implementation. During my internship with Protiviti doing tech consulting and internal audit consulting, I spent many hours in Excel every day. I ended up developing a macro that saved me some time combining large data sets and showed it to my senior consultant. He found the Excel macro to be very helpful and shared it with the entire IT consulting staff in the Phoenix office. My senior consultant was able to see that spending a few extra hours developing this macro would possibly save me, or my colleagues, countless hours of time that they would otherwise be wasting combining these datasets. I believe this shows an incredible culture of innovation in the office.
2. The Westrum model can be applied to work at Intuit and it shows that the company has a very strong culture of innovation. The founder of Intuit is a firm believer in innovation and encouraging experimentation. He believes that even failed experiments offer great insight into better ways to accomplish goals or new developments. He believes that this method of doing things will change the way all work is done in the future. Allowing experimentation at all levels certainly defines a culture of innovation.
In my own internship this summer with Protiviti, I believe that I experienced a very healthy and thriving culture of innovation. We were constantly offered opportunities to have discussions or conversations with our superiors, including a mixer with the CEO of the company and the executive board. In the Phoenix office, we had the vice-president of Internal Audit for the entire company. He always had an open door policy and loved discussing our internships with us. We were allowed to experiment with different ways of doing our work, so long as they were easily repeatable and we took notes on what we were doing so someone could pick up our work after the internship ended. All of this allowed us to experiment and innovate and it led to a very successful internship.
The Three Ways: The Principles Underpinning DevOps - The authors assert that the Three Ways describe the values and philosophies that frame the processes, procedures, practices of DevOps, as well as the prescriptive steps. Refer to the link to see how these Ways work, but the specifics are covered in the book.
ReplyDelete1. The First Way emphasizes the performance of the entire system, where the focus is on all business value streams that are enabled by IT. In other words, it begins when requirements are identified (e.g., by the business or IT), are built in Development, and then transitioned into IT Operations, where the value is then delivered to the customer as a form of a service. How is the First Way put into practice? - no quoting from the link. This is covered in great detail in Chapter 2, "The First Way: The Principles of Flow". Use your own words. Provide an example if you can.
2. The Second Way is about creating the right to left feedback loops. The goal of almost any process improvement initiative is to shorten and amplify feedback loops so necessary corrections can be continually made. How is the Second Way put into practice? This is covered in great detail in Chapter 3, "The Second Way: The Principles of Feedback". Use your own words. Provide an example if you can.
3. The Third Way is about creating a culture that fosters two things: (a) continual experimentation, taking risks and learning from failure; and (b) understanding that repetition and practice is the prerequisite to mastery. We need both of these equally. Experimentation and taking risks are what ensures that we keep pushing to improve, even if it means going deeper into the danger zone than we’ve ever gone. And we need mastery of the skills that can help us retreat out of the danger zone when we’ve gone too far.
How is the Third Way put into practice? This is covered in great detail in Chapter 4, "The Third Way: The Principles of Continual Learning and Experimentation". Use your own words. Provide an example if you can. Reply to this post to answer these questions. You need not answer all the Ways, but read what others wrote, so you can comment.
1. The First Way is put into place to reduce redundant work. By being cognizant when performing upstream work, it reduces the amount of fires that need to be put out further down the stream. For example, if a product is shipped with known defects, this will cause customer support and the patch team to scramble to mitigate the issues.
Delete2. The Second Way is put into practice by listening to what customers, employees, and all sources of input have to say. By implementing the Second Way, creators of the system can fully understand the requirements of the system and how users are using the system. This also allows users to gain more knowledge regarding the system.
3. The Third Way regards creating a learning culture. It is important to foster a learning culture to help the business improve. It is essential for a company to resist become stagnant--especially in technology. By constantly experimenting and learning, it allows the business to explore new, potentially more efficient methods that can lead to gains in other areas of the business.
1. I would like to expand on what Will talked about regarding defects. The first wave in other words is telling a silo not to pass on something if it has a know defect. This saves time for every part involved. If a person is working on a piece of code and they know it has a defect, then it would make sense for that person to solve the defect before passing it on to another work stream. One can put this into practice by making sure one's product or code is error-less before passing it to the next person or customer.
Delete2. The second way harps on feedback loops, and receiving feedback from all parties involved. This can be put into practice by asking questions about how a product is working from every party that is using the product or code.
3. I like the way Will describes how the third way sparks a learning culture. Technology is always changing, and IT professionals must be ready to change their skills along with the Tech. Being willing to learn new skills in turn can open up new revenue streams for businesses.
1. Speaking of defects, it is very interesting to see how different organizations approach defects in different situations. Expanding on what Andrew said, you would think all companies would try to fix a defect in a code if they knew there was one. But, during my internship due to time and money constraints, a lot of defects were pushed into later modules to finish.
Delete2. The second way relies on feedback and how important it is for everyone to be involved. Especially in a small team, if questions don't rise from employees and customers the product or service won't be efficient or valuable as it could be.
3. The third way is extremely important because learning should always be in the minds of all business. With technology changing and evolving every day, there is always something new and valuable to learn.
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DeleteCompanies set these requirements in order to be clear with their employees what they are looking for to improve the current system or implement the new system. Like Will said, this will decrease the redundant work. Also if requirements are set, a company may not need as many people working on one thing and can have select people who they know can fulfill the requirements work on one thing and another team work on something else
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The second one is talking about feedback and how listening to what everyone involved in the system has to say that it can be very beneficial. Feedback is great to work out the negative things and create the best overall product or service possible.
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The third way is my favorite, because with no risk there is no reward. In an innovative company people need to push the limit and take big risks. Without the risks that these innovative technology companies took we would not have the technology we have today. Risks continue the advancement of our technology and these companies should not be afraid to take risks if they want to keep advancing.
I am writing to reply to @Will Zgoda idea. I stand a strong believe with Will that doing repeating and tedious work prohibit people from focusing more on innovative idea. When people are forces to complete a lot of task, they convince themselves that they do not have time to try new implementation.
DeleteHere is my opinion on the three principles:
Delete1, The first is to build communication. A good communication gives stakeholder information of the organization and provides value that is more than a product or service to those stakeholders.
2, The second is to increase feedback. Feedback is important to evaluate the current performance of an organization and to learn more about customer's demand.
3, The third is to learn from the feedback. An organization should develop a business model that is flexible to change according to the deep learning of customer's feedback.
1. The First Way of DevOps takes a broader look at the entirety of the system instead of homing in one particular department or individual. By taking in the performance of all the value streams, errors in the large scheme of things can be caught before the work is passed downstream. The overall goal of The First way is to maximize work flow and to understand the big picture. Like Anna said in her post, this is achieved by moving from left to right from the business to development to operations to customer as smoothly as possible. An example of the First Way occurring is decreasing the amount of Work in Process. Accenture aims to have “smaller pieces of work” in the work stream to expedite the flow as much as possible, resulting in value delivery.
Delete2. The Second Way emphasizes on expediting the right to left feedback loops. By detecting potential bugs, defects and faulty processes at a faster rate than before, it can result in a higher value being produced for the customer. As soon as the feedback loops detects an error of any sort, the flow should be stopped so it can be fixed as soon as possible. The Second Way is a process that is continuously monitored, optimized and most importantly, understood. By comprehending the reason for an error detected in the feedback loop, the process can than be enhanced. With faster feedback loops, it may result in the ability to respond to customers in a timely manner, shortening feedback loops and detection time, and increasing knowledge in many of the common issues to prevent similar future defects.
3. The Third Way places high importance on continuous learning. It encourages consistently experimenting, taking risks, and understanding the necessity of repetition and proactive to reaching mastery. It implies that progress cannot be made without mistakes and that creating tension on the system is an effective way to ensure that it is never stagnant and continuously improving. An example of The Third Way in practice is Netflix utilizing a tool called ChaosMonkey. This tool will create randomized failures within Netflix’s systems and it pushes the employees to be constantly vigilant and to never remain complacent with their current system. With the random timing, it also increases the need for innovation and taking risks in order to solve the issues that ChaosMonkey creates. By successfully implementing The Third Way, a culture of taking calculated risks, regular improvement and resilience will be created and reinforced.
I agree with Yulun when it comes to the first principal of expanding on communication. I believe that communication is the key to success simply because if you are working with somebody then they should know exactly what you are doing and how you are going about doing it instead of holding out details. If you communicate with the person or stakeholder you are working with then they can put their input in on it. This can lead to knowing whether they actually like your ideas or not before you implement it and it can lead to improving any existing ideas you already have simply because they can build off of what you already said. Communication is the key to success and without it people are destined to fail.
DeleteI think what Trent saw in his internship is interesting. It sounds risky if many defects are pushed into later modules to finish despite that fact that those are already known. That is because if a product with defects is not fixed but still is shipped to a customer, then that is going to hurt the company's reputation. But given time and money constraints, it might be difficult to fix problems in a timely manner.
DeleteI agree with William saying "Feedback is great to work out the negative things and create the best overall product or service possible. Having feedback from everybody in the team makes it possible to find the best possible ideas and solutions to problems in order to develop better products and services.
Delete1. By utilizing the First Way of DevOps, redundancy is reduced and more focused is put on the system as a whole, as opposed to different operating sectors of the system. The article emphasizes discovering a defect and not passing it onto downstream work centers. This comes with communication and transparency between work divisions, and avoiding pushing problems to fix later along in a project process. The purpose of the First Way is to make the transition within your business from when your idea is solidified, to when your idea is put into place as a project, to when it is actually offered as a service to your customer. A lack of redundancy, as Andrew pointed out in his post, along with consistent communication between work centers will make this process run a lot more efficiently.
Delete2. The Second Way puts focus on constructive and concise feedback from all parties throughout the process. This can be put into practice by being transparent amongst all work centers immediately after a problem is recognized. Quick and consistent feedback will lead to a higher quality ending product, and make it easier for necessary changes to be made to the system.
3. The Third Way can be put into place by encouraging constant innovation within your business, and being able to adapt to changing markets and customer desires. Like Trent said, in today's age with technology evolving at the pace it is, it is important for a business to recognize that and be able to understand how that effects their goals and how they continue to learn and be able to innovate.
The First Way requires fast work from Development to Operations. It is meant to deliver value to customers quickly. We do this by making work visible. It is important because work can bounce between teams due to incomplete information, or passed downstream with defects. We want to visibly see our work to know if it is correct or complete. To help see work more visible, a Kanban board is very useful because it can show work flow, visibility of our work, and we can measure lead time from “Ready’ to “Delivered.” Another method for the First Way is to shrink batch sizes. Decreasing batch sizes shrinks lead times and increases quality. It is faster to do events sequentially than all at once because it is faster and if there is a problem discovered, it will be less expensive and faster to fix. An example would be releasing a software that is worth an entire year’s work of code. There are going to be a lot of problems and poor flow. If the batch size was smaller, set of code, was released, the flow would be better, and any problems would be minimized fast.
DeleteThe Second Way describes the constant feedback from both sides of the value stream. We want to create a fast and reliable method of information flow between the organization and value stream, so we can avert or detect and fix problems faster. In technology, there are bound to be problems. It’s inevitable but designing a safe system is key because the organization wants to be confident that they can avert or fix any errors detected. The book says if they fix the problem before any catastrophic outcomes occur, then it is considered a success. To create a safe system, we need to see the problems as we are designing it. Poor outcomes occur because of the lack of fast feedback. We want to create a fast feedback loop wherever work is performed. When problems do occur, everyone should be working towards fixing it. A perfect example in the book is at a Toyota manufacturing center. When a problem occurs, and a team leader cannot fix it within a time interval, the entire production is halted so everyone can help fix the problem. This way, it prevents the problem from progressing downstream where problems are likely to accumulate and provides fast feedback.
The Third Way describes continual learning and experimentation. In technology, we want to create a high trust culture by making sure everyone wants to learn and try out some risks. We welcome stress because it will ensure learning and we simulate failure to increase resilience. By making this culture, organizations can quickly adapt to any change. We also want to fix our problems instead of letting it accumulate. There are practices called kaizen blitzes which is a period when engineers form teams of their own choice and fix any problem they want. Working around the problems is time and money consuming. Continual learning also means spreading the knowledge. It is beneficial to spread the knowledge around a company, so another person doesn’t do the same mistake. The book calls it transforming local discoveries into global improvements. The second part of the Third Way is experimentation. A company should inject resilience by trying new methods. New methods aren’t guaranteed to be successful but with daily trial and error practices, it could increase productivity and reliability.
I felt that Andrew made several great points in his analysis of Will's entry. When individuals are compiling code and are aware that there is a defect they are responsible for making sure that the defect is solved before passing it along to be addressed by another individual. This is very important in the steps of compiling code as he noted due to the fact that making sure the final product is free of errors will speed up the entire process and minimize delays in general. Feedback loops can be very useful because it allows the provider of a product or service to receive information about their product and how it can be improved. When you are able to be in contact with users of your product you can receive valuable information on what is and isn't working as well as valuable recommendations on how to improve moving forward. Like Andrew mentioned in reference to Will's original post, it is critical for professionals in the Information Technology industry to be able to constantly adapt to changing landscapes in the business environment. Constantly striving to continue their education and gain new skills will allow individuals to have an advantage on others and obtain employer desired skills.
Delete1. The First way is put into practice through redundancy and constant attention on any work that needs to be done in the future. For example, if there is a developer notices a defect, he/she shouldn’t pass on their work until it is error free so the next person down the line won’t have to worry about this same problem.
Delete2. The second way is put into practice through any type of feedback mechanism. This could be in the form as a simple question or concern brought up by an employee to a manager or as complex as a feedback system that employees and clients are asked to fill out on a set basis. This helps all levels of the organization increase knowledge towards whatever system/operation they are running.
3. The third way is put into practice by taking all the lessons learned from redundancy, feedback loops, and any other area of knowledge and learn from it. I think Yuan brought up a great example above regarding Netflix’s ChaosMonkey tool that finds failures within the system but does so in a randomized method that stimulates learning and creates future stability.
1. I think the first way is to save time, improve efficiency and can apply to many teams. It can help to reduce the redundant work if a person finds a defect and then he/she will not pass it to the next person, and this will save much time for the team.
Delete2. The second way is focusing on customer feedback. These feedbacks will help the team to have a better understanding of the requirements and know what has done well and anything else they can improve, to meet customers’ demands. It can be implanted by asking questions.
3. The third way is focusing on learning like other classmates said creating a learning culture. We can learn many things like learning from the defects, learn from customer feedback and we can also learn new technology to improve operations, the company can have more potency.
1. The first way is like the waterfall methodology. It is best put into practice when all the requirements are known upfront. This way ensures that the final product is how it was originally specified before completion. This can prevent having to go back and fix certain errors later, but often takes a longer time to actual put out the finished project.
Delete2. The second way is like agile as it is continuous. It is best put into practice when requirements are unknown, but feedback is easily obtainable. This way will get the project completed faster, but it will need to be fine tuned later. Using feedback and communication the project is constantly corrected as the needs and wants are changed.
3. The third way is best put into practice in an innovation culture. By taking risks and experimenting the potential of any project is limitless, because those involved will constantly be trying new ways to improve it. This of course is a risk, because some times risks do not pay off, but when they do they pay off big time.
I especially like Yuan’s post about the ChaosMonkey which is used by Netflix, I never know it before, and I agree that this is a good example of the third way. This tool creates randomized failures within Netflix’s systems, and this will make the employees always learn from new failures and pay attention to their work. I think this system will help Netflix to be always innovative.
Delete1. The first way is put into practice by enabling the entire business to operate fluidly and efficiently to reach product/service to customer. To enable the entire business, departments such as IT, HR, and Accounting must be communicating to the point of establishing trust and comradery. Without such communication, and the results from it, the appendages of a business become disconnected from the mission statement and can even become hostile for resources.
DeleteThe first way was witnessed while I was interning summer of 2017, IT employees were asked to develop a ticketing system for IT. Before IT was asked to do this, budget and the system had to be approved by the administrative branch. As the ticket system was being implemented, IT was asked to develop methodologies, tips, and estimates to further develop systems in other branches such as an Accounting, Accounts Payable.
As Yulun put it, communication is key and this can be seen by the example-using communication to take into account all departments-not just IT.
2. The second way is put into practice by accounting the results into the product/service. The results mean any updates, errors, etc. that may have been missed when the initial rollout happened. By incorporating the results into the product/service, companies increase their product/service value since feedback, whether good or bad, will allow changes asked for.
An example of the second way was when I helped work on the development of a knowledge management team for a new platform, ServiceNow. Members of this team would meet and discuss how users/employees found the new platform to be working. If there was a slowdown when trying to find a certain document, members of the team would report this and the team would implement the comments into further documents, tweaking the document to see how to increase the knowledge finding.
3. The third way is put into practice by pushing the limits on knowledge and experience via constant trial and error. To be able to achieve efficiency, a dynamic system is necessary. Companies cannot allow for stagnant growth when testing the limits with experienced workers can be all it takes for a break through into a higher value environment.
When working over the summer of 2017, I interviewed a HTML coder who created a full-time position for himself when he automated a couple other positions. This automation saved the company money and was done by hard work through research. However, if this programmer had just stuck to the same old same old, he would not have pushed into new boundaries and maybe not even secured himself a job! FYI he was an intern when he accomplished this. Also, his automation involved things like cleaning up how computers are reimaged to allow for faster processing time.
The Third Way claims that an organization that eager to innovation should have courage to take risk. Because innovation ideas need experimentation to prove themselves. only when a organizations are willing to go deeper into the danger zone rather than to keep everything regular, can this organization forest the new ideas.
DeleteHere is good example of implementing this way. Google X is an American semi-secret research-and-development facility founded by Google in January 2010. Google X was designed to be a “moonshot factory”. In other words, the research lab focuses not on incremental innovation, but rather on building risky, life-altering technologies. A requirement at Google X is “Turn out, failure is not just an option”. In this case, Google fully implement the third way and reserve abundant room for potential innovation. None at this lab is afraid to failures, and they even happy to see the failures.
Alex, I like what you said about The Third Way and how important the factors of trial and error are when putting it into practice. The basic concept of trial and error is a numbers game and companies need to understand this. The more trials a team takes, the more times they will error in their solution. However, each error to a trial provides a piece of information that is vital to understanding how to go about the next trial. As the number of trials increase, so do the number of errors. However, it the number of times errored does not increase in proportion to the number of trials. As teams learn from each trial, their confidence and understanding also increase, giving them a higher probability of developing the correct solution for the trial with each new trial they face.
DeleteThe first way is very applicable to basically all companies today. Businesses in all industries need IT resources to complete the everyday operational functions. IT projects must have a focus on the businesses needs at all times to make sure the system that they are creating is effective. I saw this firsthand at Optum because the whole company is geared towards providing IT solutions to UnitedHealth Care. Every project has UHC's business needs in mind. For example, Optum's call center division provides all of the tools that UHC's call agents need to carry out their job activities. We must make sure the technology that we are creating is useful and makes the business side of the healthcare company operate fluidly.
DeleteThe second way is needed for the first way to be successful. Open lines of feedback is important in any developing setting. You must be open to having your work constructively critiqued and having multiple people look at your work to give any advice. One example of businesses implementing this is encouraging presentations. Progress can be presented to upper management and business partners to get feedback about the systems project.
The third way puts it all together and really creates a culture of innovation. Encouraging continual experimentation and learning is one of the most important things for tech companies and people involved with dev ops. One example of companies creating a culture that advocates for continual experimentation is Pure storage. They allow their engineers to work on personal projects and rewards them for every patent they create. This system values how important innovation is and rewards people to go out and experiment as much as they can.
1. The First Way is the principle of Flow and refers to the structure of the entire technology value stream. It enables fast left-to-right flow of work from Development to Operations to the customer. Improving the flow is best put into practice by making work visible, limiting work in process and reducing batch sizes. It is also important to reduce the number of handoffs and continually identifying and evaluating constraints. Eliminating hardships in the daily work for employees and the process itself is a large aspect of the First Way.
ReplyDelete2. The Second Way is the principle of Feedback and emphasizes creating fast feedback, which is critical to achieving quality, reliability, and safety in the technology value stream. The Second Way is put into practice by seeing problems as they occur, solving problems to build new knowledge, pushing quality closer to the source, and continually optimizing for downstream centers. This means that the process itself needs to be continuously monitored and elevated. It enables the fast and constant flow of feedback from right to left at all stages in the value stream.
3. The Third Way is the principle of Continual Learning and Experimentation and addresses the need for valuing organizational learning, enabling high trust and boundary-spanning between functions, accepting that failures will always occur in complex systems, and making it acceptable to talk about problems so a safe system to work can be created. It also requires the institutionalizing of the improvement of daily work, converting local learnings into global learnings that can be used by the entire organization, as well as continually injecting tension into daily work. As part of the Third Way, the system of work is designed to multiply the effects of new knowledge, and transforming local discoveries into global improvements, to affect the cumulative and collective experience of everyone in the organization, regardless of where someone performs the work.
Improving flow and feedback requires an iterative and scientific approach that includes framing of a target condition, stating a hypothesis of what will help get us there, designing and conducting experiments, and evaluating the results. The results are not only better performance but also increase resilience, higher job satisfaction and improved organization adaptability.
As Anna said, the second way optimizes on creating fast feedback to achieve quality, reliability and safety. This enables teams to solve problems quickly and create new knowledge which in practice allows teams to have a steady and efficient workflow.
DeleteAs an example, we tend to think once everything has been developed, it’s best to save security testing for last pushing it to the final stage of the development process. Delaying this process can create many problems and delay the deployment. The development team would have to rework the processes in order to fix the issues that were presented from security testing. This would also increase the levels of the deployment pains which would mean the DevOps team would be highly unproductive if they repeat the same steps before moving forward with the deployment process. To prevent such problems, integrating automated security testing throughout the entire process would lead to increased performance from teams and also throughout the whole organization, according to the 2016 Sate of the DevOps Report (31). By this, immediate feedback from automated security monitoring will be enable teams to solve security issues quickly instead of waiting until the last minute to solve all the security issues that arise.
Adding on to Anna’s assessment of the first way of the principal of flow, transparency of flow of work is a critical factor in improving the processes we see on a constant basis. This allows different stakeholders to give helpful criticism and make the necessary adjustment based off the work of others. It requires more adjustments on a constant basis in order to meet the changing requirements. These changes to the value stream are currently being made by a large number of corporations who see the value as technology continues to improve.
DeleteI agree with Anna's assessment of the third way. In any business, it is always important to encourage taking risks and innovating. It creates an environment of trust, and enables others to work together in harmonious ways. Continuous learning within an organization allows for employees to better themselves as they simultaneously benefit the company. Adding on to this idea, taking risks allows for individuals to learn from mistakes. Without risk taking companies would go nowhere, and money would never be made. If acceptable risk taking is encouraged, employees will know that they have the support of the company when diving into innovative projects of their own. If they make a mistake, they will be able to share that knowledge with other in order to ensure that it does not happen again.
DeleteI am writing to reply @ Yuan yang ‘s post, I like Yang’s explanation about The Second Way. It helps me to have a deeper understanding of The Second Way. The Second Way can help organizations to save time because it keeps the whole project aligning with customers’ opinions. As long as a piece of work is unsatisfied, it can be figure and re-design soon.
Delete1.
ReplyDeleteI believe that innovative culture really begins when everyone in the company has a say. If every person is able to speak his or her mind and collaborate the sky is the limit. This goes for new ideas for a company or even improving existing systems. This creates a innovative culture within a company because employees won’t be scared to test new ideas and possibly fail. Innovative environments within a company are a big reason why technology has advanced so much in the past 10 years. This culture is extremely important for a company to produce the best overall product that they can. During my internship this summer, our supervisor encouraged us to come to his office with any suggestions on how to improve our current system of the way we communicated in the office. We were on the phone all day so sometimes we would instant message each other, call out each other’s names, or even email each other. We came to the conclusion that instant messaging each other was the best way for us to communicate because we didn’t want to disrupt phone calls.
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A company that depicts the innovative environment based from the Westrum Model is Apple. Innovation is so deeply embedded in Apples culture they refuse to recognize an limits and keep outdoing their selves year after year. A big part of the Westrum model is collaborating with employees. Employees come together to create great products that the world loves and continue to lead in innovative technology. On top of that Forbes ranked Apple 10 on their list of best places to work. This plays a big factor in employee satisfaction, because if the employees love coming to work and love what they do this also helps the overall innovative culture.
@William I really enjoyed reading your post. I agree with you that employee satisfaction is a key part in innovative culture. Apple employees enjoy the work they get to do because Apple encourage them to find new solutions and makes them more confident in their work. If they make a mistake, they are not blamed but encouraged to find new soltions in making the company better.
Delete@William Innovation environments are one reason why technology has taken off, but also as you alluded too: technology is a reason why innovation environments work better than they used too. Taking your instant messaging example, emailing a coworker about when to meet and using a scheduling tool makes all the differences in saving time to innovate more!
DeleteAs for apple, I made a comment that their workers have been divided recently on ethical issues raised by apple. These issues focus on diversifying thought and focusing on biases of the employees. this should allow for greater innovation and a lovelier work environment
My idea of innovation culture is like an extension of @Max Sanowski’s. I really like how Max Sanowski points out a traditional belief and strengthen the difference between that belief and innovation culture.
ReplyDelete1. Innovation culture:
As a fact, innovation of a company may start with a CEO or an entrepreneur. A company is building successfully because they implement their innovative business model with their resources. However, for a company to sustain and bring value to consist changing environment, a company should adopt an innovation culture, which is a culture of not afraid of failure and is a culture of listening to idea from all member in the company.
2. Company culture:
My example of company culture that encourages innovation is Zappo.com, a company that operates an online retailer store. Zappos is known for it unique business structure that breaks the barrier between manager and manager’s staffs. By doing so, staffs are more willing to shares thoughts and ideas. They not only feel more involves but also feel needed in the team. There few store like Zappos that do not often use sales, but have the high user come back rate. This is due to the good customer innovation trigger by innovation.
@ Yulan Ding
Delete1. I agree that for corporations in the modern world to succeed they need to push to innovate and not be afraid of failure. Oftentimes, organizations become too afraid to make change. This is why an innovation culture can be very beneficial. I agree with this part of your post!
2. I think its interesting that zappos breaks the barrier between management and staff. The standard company gives managers the final say and the bigger voice, and it is definitely an example of innovation culture for zappos to break this wall! I learned something from your post Yulan.
Nice job!
Lost revenues with constantly pushing failures, i can see how this would lead to afraid to fail attitude. although, as has been discussed: this is necessary for success.
DeleteZappos is a great example that you bring up, I also did not know their high user comeback had to do with their innovation. Zappos grew and grew, like Alibaba. With the success of an idea, these companies flourish!
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ReplyDeleteAs mentioned by many of my peers, innovation culture is a broad term that can be defined in a number of ways within an organization. This can be structurally described as a n organization in which members are encouraged to use their resources and make a significant contribution to the overall innovation and efficiency within the workplace. One way to accomplish this feeds off of a thought expressed by Alan previously in which he states the importance of recognizing that people, regardless of backgrounds view things in different ways. This means that they may have different ideas that could work in improving a company. It is important that upper management creates this culture where others feel comfortable in taking risks and communicating ways in which they believe that the company can improve.
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In regards to the Westrum Model there are several companies that we can identify as key followers of this concept. One company which we have heavily discussed in class is Amazon who encourages all employees to contribute to innovative culture on new products. Creating a broader and less restricted source of ideas allows for a more collaborative workplace in which great ideas can thrive. During my previous internship the company culture at Vanguard was very unique and friendly. In this position I was exposed to a number of high level financial transactions within an industry leader. We had the opportunity to meet the CEO of the company during the first week of our internship at partnership meetings in the Scottsdale office. Having freedom and being comfortable enough to work alongside your managers in such environments promotes a culture of teamwork with colleagues and stirs innovation in the process.
Great post Jeremy, I like how you emphasize that employees must feel comfortable. I agree that is crucial to fostering an innovation culture. I also believe that everyone sees things differently, so it is important that everyone is open to ideas outside of their comfort zone. If employees don't feel comfortable they will never be willing to step outside their comfort zone. If employees are scared to do more then what is asked of them the company will never excel beyond its current state of operations.
DeleteGreat post, I just had a question about culture in the companies. At Vanguard did you have any issues for fellow employees that didn't conform/fit into company culture? You mentioned it was unique, did it the uniqueness not match any of the employees, and did that create problems in the promotion of innovation?
Delete1. The First Way basically wants to get rid of useless time so they can get the product to the customer faster and at a higher quality. One of the first methods is to make everything visible by writing down a plan so you can prioritize and manage your work. The second method is to limit the work in process. So instead of taking on multiple of tasks that are urgent, you can only take on a set amount of work. .This keeps the user more focused and spot problems more readily and also keeps everything visible. The third method is to reduce batch sizes. Reducing batch sizes allows us to limit the work in process and also reduce lead times. It is also easier for the user to detect errors if they are working with small batch sizes. If a user follows this method, they can find out the system’s limit, and then work to improving and increasing the limit of the system. This will make future jobs easier and for the employees.
ReplyDelete2. The second method is encourages constant feedback loops. For projects, it is a lot more convenient and cost efficient to figure out a problem earlier than later on in the project when it is set to release. It is easier to find a problem before production than waiting until finding a problem during production and you have to recall every item back. Failure is almost always a given. Nothing is ever perfect, so you as the user must always be aware of something. This allows the users to work in confidence. You must always constantly test your product. The more tests you have, the more information you can share. It is always important to share the information to every area which allows problems to be detected faster. New information can be used to learn from so next time they can solve this problem faster. The main point of the second method is to share information to find the problem faster in the earlier stage.
3. The third way emphasizes constant learning and testing. This encourages users to experiment and find new solutions. If you make a mistake, you can take that as a learning experience and find new methods to improve so next time you won’t make the same mistake. This is better than straight up punishing them every time they make mistakes. You want to encourage them to learn. Don’t use the blame game every single time there is a mistake. Instead of blaming, find out what you can do as a whole to improve so there won’t be the same mistake in the future. You don’t want the employees working in fear. Also it is important, not to ignore the problem. You must test it and find solutions to increase your process. Instead of waiting for it to happen again and again. This can lead to new problems later on and overall increase your process time. After finding the solution, you must also communicate with other teams just in case they run into a similar problem. This will benefit the whole system and they can run more efficiently. It is always helpful to have a good and mindful leader. They can help the employee who messed up to fix the problem by encouraging them instead of putting them down.
Jeff, thanks for going in depth and also providing examples per method. Obviously each method has its unique perks but also cons; with that being said, out of the 3, do you have any preference on style that you think would help you be the most efficient?
DeleteHere is everything you need to know about DevOps and Netflix's Chaos Monkey in Case Study on the DevOps blog. It also describes in much detail the Simian Army of which Chaos Monkey is first. I'll post this on my blog, as I am sure it will get lost here.
DeleteThe first method can be applied to any team. The team leader can draw out a plan with set schedules and delegate work to its members in a way they can operate efficently.
ReplyDeleteThe second method can be applied to similar products. If one product has a in issue, they can tell other teams about their information to help the solve problems.
The third method can also be used in team situations. When a problem arises, the team leader will help the team find the root cause instead of throwing blames. They can find a solution and make sure this same problem does not arise in the future.
1. The First Way focuses on reducing redundancy in the various processes involved within the development cycle. It is important for teams and various division/departments to have proper channels of communication between them to reduce recurring processes.
ReplyDelete2. The Second way emphasizes feedback loops and how it is important to understand the faults in the product from various users and customers to constantly improve and adapt. This helps save time, money, and effort in the long run and results in a better product.
3. The Third way is to constantly evolving with new trends and having a mindset of advancing change and innovation. It is definitely important to be in touch with the latest trends and create something to the best of one's ability and adapt with information.
Hey Niharika, thanks for posting this. All three of them are used in various work places and are tailored towards the culture of the company and how the leader thinks is the most efficient. Going back to part 1 of the DevOps discussion, do any of these 3 methods apply to your team or company that you have worked with previously? Thanks
DeleteHi Ken, I can say from firsthand experience that I wish the leaders of the company I worked for knew more about DevOps. Although the company did not produce software, I believe that the The First, Second, and Third way all are very valuable lessons or ideas for a company to understand and implement into their practices. In regards to The First Way, there were instances in the company where two departments would be doing the same thing that an ERP system could have easily eliminated. This example of redundancy occurred when customer order sheets would be filled by sales, sent to us at shipping and receiving, only for us to have to copy the order information onto our own forms that were essentially the same.
DeleteFeedback loops are part of The Second Way and also would have been useful to implement into the business model. We could have implemented The Second Way by communicating with the delivery team to see how they personally like us to prepare the shipments for them. If they give us feedback on the best way to prepare the shipments for them, then they are able the spend less time packing the shipments, and therefore deliver the products to clients sooner, while also cutting cost by saving time.
ReplyDeleteFirst Way has to do with the work flowing from the left to the right very quickly. Making it quicker consists of lowering the quantity of work in progress such as the raw materials. For instance, in a car assembly factory, all of the steps are crucial and this process makes a difference when every step is creating a value and will benefit in the long run.
The Second Way would be expanding the feedback loops from the right to the left, as well as the speed of the feedback. Once a mistake is made, it is important to go back to that mistake and fix it before continuing again. An example would be creating quality into the product during the very beginning of this process. For this to be done then, the feedback needs to be done quickly.
The Third Way is about having a culture where people are experimenting and are inspired and wanting to learn more. It is about people knowing that in order to master something they are to repeat and practice. An instance would be to take controlled risks and learn from your failures and triumphs. Building up habits and continuous improvement is significant in this Third Way, rather than trying to have fast feedback and expanding it like one does for the First and Second Way.
Great post, I was thinking about different ways of integrating feedback into these systems. Sometimes it can be harder to have customer feedback in fields that employ the Second Way and Third Way. Especially time constraints in regards to IT. One of the issues I have come across in IT Helpdesk is that problems can arise, and the only way to know is from customer feedback. We had 30+ computers that went into endless reset loops, and the problem could not be fixed when we ran into it because Microsoft had not yet heard of the problem since we were operating in real time. Since the developers were not aware of the problem until much later, we had to find the solution in house after trial and error. I wonder if there are any ways Agile can make feedback more instantaneous?
Delete@Daniel the problem you are describing at the Helpdesk sounds like an issue with servers being updated and clashing with the newer update and existing platforms you guys were using. A rollback might solve the issue, but that would take time and potential loss of work completed.
DeleteI know during the internship where i worked, the helpdesk was assisted by rolling out an agile ServiceNow in 3-4months time eariler than it was supposed to. The company did this to recieve feedback more instantaneously from employees so that the company did not spend those 'needed' 3-4months developing something the customers or it desk wouldnt use.
ReplyDelete1. Innovation culture is a culture that exists in many big corporations today. It is an environment where all employees at every level of the company can feel comfortable thinking of new ways to perform their tasks and duties. When any employee has a new idea or innovation, they should be able to present it to their higher ups and the idea should be considered for a more widespread implementation. During my internship with Protiviti doing tech consulting and internal audit consulting, I spent many hours in Excel every day. I ended up developing a macro that saved me some time combining large data sets and showed it to my senior consultant. He found the Excel macro to be very helpful and shared it with the entire IT consulting staff in the Phoenix office. My senior consultant was able to see that spending a few extra hours developing this macro would possibly save me, or my colleagues, countless hours of time that they would otherwise be wasting combining these datasets. I believe this shows an incredible culture of innovation in the office.
2. The Westrum model can be applied to work at Intuit and it shows that the company has a very strong culture of innovation. The founder of Intuit is a firm believer in innovation and encouraging experimentation. He believes that even failed experiments offer great insight into better ways to accomplish goals or new developments. He believes that this method of doing things will change the way all work is done in the future. Allowing experimentation at all levels certainly defines a culture of innovation.
In my own internship this summer with Protiviti, I believe that I experienced a very healthy and thriving culture of innovation. We were constantly offered opportunities to have discussions or conversations with our superiors, including a mixer with the CEO of the company and the executive board. In the Phoenix office, we had the vice-president of Internal Audit for the entire company. He always had an open door policy and loved discussing our internships with us. We were allowed to experiment with different ways of doing our work, so long as they were easily repeatable and we took notes on what we were doing so someone could pick up our work after the internship ended. All of this allowed us to experiment and innovate and it led to a very successful internship.