Session Information:

Capital Projects in the time of COVID

The COVID 19 pandemic has imposed intense pressure on all parts of a business, but it has been especially hard on capital projects. Most companies have cut back their capital spend by 30% or more and have announced significant reductions in headcount. The pressure to successfully execute those critical projects that do remain on the docket is ever more intense. 

The objective of this presentation is to provide some potentially helpful ideas to companies faced with the need to stretch every capital dollar, and to make hard choices on which projects to execute. Project portfolio optimization, rigorous front-end project development, and risk management are no longer nice-to-have processes but could become essential for the survival of the business.

The presentation will also touch on some critical aspects of people and technology that could make all the difference between project success and failure in current circumstances.

Session Transcript:

The next session will be Unleashing the Power of Great people and Organizations, and I have the privilege of leading that session for you. So, I'm gonna change hats here, momentarily, to get into the presentation mode. Because we're gonna, we're gonna be examining how great enduring organizations emerge out of tremendous disruption, and the, and grow to dominate their fields. So, what I'm gonna play back to you now is our future, and what it's gonna look like for those organizations who apply the right principles, and we're going to discuss what those principles look like. So, without further ado, let me get started here.

So, I want to start by sharing with you, the perspective, from disruption. And you can look at this and say, wow, in 10 years, it's predicted that 40% of the Fortune 500 companies will no longer exist.

And this is very interesting. You may be saying, oh my goodness! the impact of the pandemic and the and the, you know, the big, the biggest, best performing organizations aren't going to be, you know, heavily impacted by this.

And then I'll say, Hold on, Look at the date on that slide.

That slide is from 2011 when I was having discussions after the 2008 Financial crisis with organizations that were still dealing with the situation related to that crisis.

So, it's not now, it's from nearly 10 years ago.

And, when I presented this information, most of the organizations and leaders, you know, in the presentation, I still remember very vividly saying, wow you know, is this a little bit too much, like, fear? Mongering because these are the most powerful organizations in our society. You know, it's, it seems like we're over predicting to say that 40% of the Fortune 500 companies no longer exist.

And they were right except they were right in the fact that the number was, wasn't not right.

but they were wrong in the direction and it was not fear mongering.

The reality is that if you fast-forward to 20 20 before the pandemic, not to distort the data before the pandemic, more than 40% of the 4 Fortune 500 companies no longer existed.

So the pace of destruction and the pace of disruption was already present in our businesses before depend, amec ever hit us. And the pandemic just took it to a different level and certainly has accelerated many of those already exponential trends that existed. And we're going to talk some about that. But the question that I'm going to pose to you is that how, what is the best way of predicting the future? What's going to happen 10 years from now?

Where are we going to be at, as, in our businesses, in our society?

So what is the best way of predicting the future, and especially in the energy space, and being a leader in the energy space? For nearly two decades, I got to experience a lot of this. We have this tendency to to really fine tune on predicting the future, and we try to hire the best professionals and experts to help us predict the future. So we get into this Big Meetings with multimedia dollar consulting practices coming in and telling us what the future's gonna look like, and so we get experts in the room, we get the best forecasting models that we can have, we get the best approaches to scenario planning. That we can possibly have. And we feel good about ourselves.

But the reality is that all of this, people in approaches are wrong.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, there is only two types of people who predict the future, those who don't know, and those who don't know that they don't know.

Because there is no reliable way of predicting the future.

The only way to predict the future is by creating it.

So how do you create the future than that? We're going to prosper on. So, I want to pose your question. I would like to, our true for you, choose the question box, to give them your input. So, what do you think is most important to determine your our success, not just today, but 10 years from now, when we look back 10 years from now? These are four factors that I want you to consider. What do you think matters the most in setting the future for us? Is it ideas? Is the methods? is it technologies, or is it people? So, please go into the question box in our store, and you cannot be on the fence on this one. I know that every one of them has a level of importance, but you need to pick the most important one.

If you fast forward, and we get to the future 10 years from now, what was the most important factor for you to be dominant in your industry. It will be ideas, It will be methods, it will be technologists, or it will be people.

So go ahead and start entering every year or opinion about each one of those, and then I'm going to re-assess and give you the results a little bit later on. Excellent. So, the concepts that I'm going to talk about are confusing and the concepts that I'm going to talking talk about are contradictory. And that's going to be strange because the world of greatness is what I'm going to be talking about. The world of greatness is a small portion of the overall distribution of all leaders and profile and the businesses in the world of greatness. It's filled with contradictions. These are forces spooling very different directions. I'll talk about the importance of ideas and how ideas don't matter. I'll talk about the importance of methodologies and tell you that they don't matter. I'll talk about the importance of technologies and how they don't matter, and I'll talk about the importance of people and how they don't matter.

So for those of you who are expecting a quick answer to the previous question, you're not going to get that.

You'll have to think for this one because the world of greatness RF includes forces that pull in very different directions. I'm gonna talk about the importance of clear purpose and discipline.

I'm gonna talk about the importance off incremental improvements and breakthrough innovation.

I'm going to talk about the importance of exponential technologies and the human values, integrity, trust, collaboration, vulnerability.

Because the world of greatness is not an all world, the world of greatness isn't and the world where this contradictory forces have to be properly blended.

So there is no greater contradiction in the world of greatness than this forces of excellence and innovation. Because the world of excellence is all about setting performance standards, about meeting and exceeding those performance standards, It's about squeezing efficiencies out of the system.

And that is wonderful, but the world of excellence will not lead you to greatness by itself in the world of innovation, which tends to somewhat despise excellence and vice versa. The world of neat innovation is about breakthroughs, is about taking different perspectives.

And the problem is about this ongoing pursuit of technology and innovation, but the most innovative organizations are not the ones who become great, enduring organizations 10 years from now.

So, what is the answer for this? It's neither excellence nor innovation.

For sure, in the world of excellence, we want to squeeze efficiencies out of the horses' we have today.

But the world of innovation looks at it and says, I can't, I don't get to design a car by squeezing efficiencies out of horses. So, how, how do you blend this things? What are you going to see?

Is that the, what's necessary for great, enduring performance to emerge is a blend of excellence and innovation, Where you have, clearly, performance standards and a culture of excellence. And, at the same time, you allow, we think that culture to question the excellence that you have, to take a different perspective, what you currently have, and all this Excellence that you have created. And once you identify that new perspective, the seed of innovation, the little eye, if you will.

The great Enduring organizations are not the ones who just continuously innovate, they are the ones who are able to get the little Y, any scale it, better than their competitors. And how do you scale innovation?

The proper way to scale innovation is by applying excellence to the innovation that you created. So, now, I have just set up the biggest contradiction, of all of them all.

How excellence and innovation have to play together, and the culture to advance you towards greatness. Now, what I'm sharing with you is not just what I thought, what I read in the book. These are practical experiences, with more than 100 organizations, over 30,000 excellence, innovation leaders, across all industries, in more than 20 countries. I am not a visionary leader who has the ability to predict the future. Nobody does.

What you find from those leaders is that they have the ability to experiment on a very often basis.

They see what works and what doesn't work. And then they understand why it works. And then, they double down on that. And that's what great visionary leaders have.

Now, I want to spend a little bit more time on five organizations that built this standard of greatness for what became a worldwide program and approach for achieving greatness in the organizations. So, very quickly, because I'm going to try to summarize five weeks of masterclasses in about 25 to 30 minutes here for you. My specific background: I was a kid who grew up in Brazil, I study in the United States of a background in engineering physics and investment banking. My first job was to work for the electronic giants in Japan, Sony Electronics. So I was super excited, and I'll give you a lesson. And the lesson comes from this company is that not only I had to advise on, but I had to live with the consequences of my advice.

So at Sony, the last one is the following, at the time that I joined Sony, they were the, the technological leaders in the display world at that time. And as a technological leader and an innovation leader in displays at that time, the lesson is simple.

When it comes to real innovation, innovation doesn't care about your gender, your ethnicity, your race, how many certificates you have hanging on the, I love myself wall, when it comes to real innovation, there are four traits that separate, real innovators from the pretenders. And those are the traits that you need to find in your people, in your organization. And they are purpose.

They have a strong sense of passion.

They have a tremendous level of discipline, and they are incredibly resilient, purpose, passion, discipline, and resilient separates riau innovators in your organization.

When I moved to a startup in California that changed the world, that company called cyber, we went from nothing to over 90% market share as a startup in the in the semiconductor industry and revolutionized Moore's Law, by applying technologies that allow micro chips to be image a very, very small scales to this day.

In that company, it was all about getting the most, the brightest scientists around the world and get them to collaborate.

So, the lesson from ... is the importance of collaborative leadership chewy scale innovation.

Also, a somewhat older lesson that, if you do not disrupt yourself, you will be disrupted by external forces, and that's a lot more painful. As I moved on to be the innovation leader for Nestle the food company, an organization with over 350,000 employees, 585 business units around the world. The question is how do you will impact innovation and an ecosystem that large?

And the lesson from lastly is a deep respect for culture.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, Excellence, and innovation, or any initiative that you have are just side dishes. So you must meet culture where it's at. You must be empathetic to the culture and to the people, and you meet them where they're at, and then you bring them along. The lesson from Black and Veatch, which is an engineering construction company with over 100 years of innovation around under its belt in the energy sector.

The message there is very interesting, because you're now working in an ecosystem with over 12,000 pure engineers who love innovation, but also think that their idea is the best one, and there are tremendous fights about how we're going to proceed going forward. And they're not very excited about someone from outside, like me coming in and saying, Oh, I'm here to help you accelerate innovation.

So the lesson there is that in the highly intelligent and skeptical ecosystem, you must develop what we call an improvement in innovation, venture capitalist approach.

Nobody cares about methodologies. Nobody cares about your knowledge of certain technologies and other industries. What they care about is simply how you're going to create the most value in the shortest time and simplest means, and that's the innovations, venture capitalists mindset, create the most value in the shortest time and simplest means another important lesson. And then finally, coming to, right onto the oil and gas industry, let's talk about In Denver and the Denver. It was an organization that, in 2010, was a $2 billion organization somewhat mediocre and then decided to go for extraordinary.

So, how do you go for extraordinary when you have a business that's, you know, being around for decades, and nothing very cool, interesting and different about it?

So, the way to go for extraordinary is to make innovations, ordinary.

So, those are the key principles that I'm going to cover, but I want to, I want to show some results right from the beginning.

When in Denver was in its own journey of transforming the business. You started in 2010 with the new CEO come into the company, and an inherent during a company that had a $2 billion market valuation. This is 2010, just after the financial crisis there is still recovering from the financial crisis. So, the question is, OK, where do we go from here? How do we become meaningful in the, in the marketplace? Is data about ideas? Is it about methods? Isn't about technologist, or is it about people?

So, what do we do?

And the story of endeavor is one of our I needed sculpture with strong principles of excellence and innovation.

A culture of operational excellence, a culture of entrepreneurship and intra partnership in an in in the business that didn't have anything particularly unique about it.

But, the story that plays out there is that, through, it's ideas, through its methods, through it, certain applications of technology, and through identifying the right people, the real innovators, within the company.

They got to a point where they are identifying, prioritize, and executing over 2000 innovation projects on an annual basis, delivering over one billion dollars in IBA in additional earnings for the organization on that, on those time periods.

And this same $2 billion organization in 20 18, had a market valuation of $35 billion.

Now, how do you get to grow like that out of disruption? Is it about ideas? Is it about methods, technologists, or people?

So the answer is the people, but not all the people.

It's about encoding everyone, But creating a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms, where the right people can emerge, and the right people have purpose aligned with your organization. Have passion, have discipline, and have resilience to execute innovation. So let's go ahead and set the stage for what this innovation culture looks like. The first thing that we need to do is to go back to Basics. And to go back to Basics, we must look at the basic definition of innovation.

Fundamentally, what is innovation? There's a lot of misconception about what innovation is. And I claim that, if you're going to have extraordinary innovation, like in Denver as annoying gas company wanted to achieve, you must define it in ordinary terms. So, if I asked, what is innovation?

Some of you will say, Wow, it's about, you know coming up with new ideas, OK, but it's having a new idea, an innovation by itself, and most of you will say, yeah, probably not enough, probably not enough.

New ideas are everywhere, but the having a new idea by itself is part of the creative process, and that's necessary, but not sufficient for innovation.

So I, for example, have lots of new ideas, but most of them are not that important or maybe create value. Oh, OK, that's the magic word, so it's not just about having a new idea, it's about having a new idea that creates value. There you go: Now, you're getting to a subset of new ideas, new ideas, that create value. You must innovation of value creation, are always hennie hand, very good.

But, that's not enough, because, as we work across multiple organizations, in every industry, while we experience is that every one of them has a cemetery of new ideas that create value, and it's a big cemetery. It's it's it's it lots of new ideas that create their value bared all over the place.

Why is that? Because the real definition of innovation is the implementation of new ideas that create value And, it's on that implementation and execution that resides 90% of your innovation journey.

So, so, we need to understand that innovation is simply the implementation of new ideas that create value.

And the most difficult component of that definition is certainly the implementation, is not the new ideas, and certainly not new ideas that create value all, And on top of that, we're gonna go into a little bit more advanced level here, There is not one size fits all. Their levels of business innovation, There are core business innovations, they're adjacent business innovations, they're disruptive business innovations. And every one of them has their own characteristics. And the most innovative organizations, they have a portfolio of this, of this innovations, and they don't, And what you see on TV is 100% coverage of disruptive innovations.

But the reality is that, if you go behind the scenes on the most innovative organizations, that truly represents only about 10% of what they do, 70% of their innovations are the core, 20% of their innovations are adjacent to the core extensions to the core, and 10% are disruptive.

Now, we could spend hours just talking about this, but I just want to give you the big picture, because the big picture, before we get behind the scenes, again, what are the pillars of success for this very successful organizations that accelerating innovation and the vilest of Success for innovation acceleration are three.

They have very clear governance for innovation. These are not new positions in the organization. These are clearly defined roles and a structure for innovation acceleration.

They also have very clear methods and proven methodologies that they used to accelerate innovation their organizations, and they have clear execution mechanisms that translate this principles of innovation into value creation, action.

And develops a common language for value creation leaders in the organization. And the third component there is collaborative leadership. They are on the journey of skill development for all professionals related to collaborative innovation for value creation. And this ... is a specific skill set that's not taught in schools. And it's not while formalized in most training programs, in most organizations, any specific collaborative leadership principles, and most important techniques on how to lead effectively as a collaborative leader. So very quickly, I'm going to give you a flavor for each one of these, OK? Because of our time here, I can go into the depths of each one, but I'll give you a flavor for a governance standpoint. What does it look like?

So, the summary of the roles of the organizations that achieve great and during greatness, and have innovation acceleration as a discipline in their organizations out of crisis, like the ones we have right now, they have this governance behind the scenes, and they can happen at enterprise wide, at a business level, or even at a departmental level. And here, I show a bit of both. So, the first level is clear ownership. So, you have either business level ownership or process level ownership. That's very clear. And that's the foundation for everything to work.

If you don't have that, define, nothing else works well, or certainly, to its ultimate capacity.

On top of that, they have a layer of intrapreneurs and collaborative leaders in the organization that have been identified through the test of execution and this R value creation leaders in the organization. And they are not methodology Masters. They are value creation masters in the organization with highly developed collaborative leadership skills. On top of them, you have coaches who are serial intrapreneurs, are not coaches on methodology. Does our coaches on value creation and entrepreneurship? They have been successful, serial entrepreneurs who have become coaches on, and then they certainly have champions at a business level or a project specific level. Who are hierarchical leaders, who controlled the resources in the area in which you're making the changes.

And overall, there is a portion of the executive committee who oversees this, this very important part of the company, and that's the steering committee for excellence and innovation acceleration. So, these are the Building Blocks to Achieve Discipline innovation Success, and I'll leave you with that.

Let's talk about the second fundamental pillar, which is the pillar off the pillar of methodology. So, there are many approaches and methods that you can use. The methods vary from innovation as a discipline, thinking different and innovating from very clear: business process management on the value chain key processes for the organization that create value for customers, understanding what those are, understanding them, and to add, and having clear ownership of those processes. And then they're efficient. Methods are very commonly used, like Link, which is all about increasing speed and eliminating waste, or, and, or six Sigma, which is about reducing variation and satisfy customers. Now, separately, does methods are effective when they are combined with the framework of value creation?

They are exceptional.

Now, there are many other methods that you could be talking about: Agile, Scrum, which is just kind of a subset of Lean applications in the software environment, and many other methods. So, those methods are important, because they provide discipline framework for execution, and for value creation.

But I also want you to remember that methods or loans do not transform businesses. People do.

So, for over 20 years, I have been a certified Lean six Sigma Master Black Belt, for most people. That sounds like a dangerous mental condition. It doesn't help them.

They want to know what it's going to do for them. So, it's not about the methodology. It's about the ability to have a discipline approach to create value through innovation, so keep that in mind.

Now, the third level and the third pillar, I talk about collaborative leadership and innovation acceleration skills as the third component. So I'll give you a summary here of what that means. For a million dollar startup, an organization that's usually characterized by individual brilliance. You have a founder, a subject matter, expert or technological guru who comes up with a new idea just brilliant and is able to build them, multi-million dollar business on that. It's built on that individual's fashion, discipline and resilience.

Now, that will all that would stay at that level unless you're able to scale that individual brilliance.

So for most organizations to got to be billion dollar companies, they have to figure out how to scale that individual brilliance. And And what that means is that you now have innovation systems and mechanisms that is scale that the individual brilliance and innovation systems and mechanisms are built now on clear governance, on structures and roles for innovation acceleration. They also have a combination of growth in technology accelerators, that experiment with new technologies, and that is all part of the foundation for the multi-billion dollar organization.

But what does the multi trillion dollar organization look like? And very few have reached that or will ever reach that.

But what that looks like, and what that looks like, the next level, is characterized by collaborative leadership and innovation acceleration skills development broadly dispense in the organization.

Very clear execution mechanisms and very clear purpose, culture, and core values alignment.

And that is the ultimate level, a level that most organizations will never achieve, because it's only, it's only reserved for the great ones. Because it's not easy because you go from a level chew that's very difficult to achieve.

But it's more mechanical to our next level, which requires very clear purpose, culture, alignment, and a strong set of core values and a relentless drive for progress built on collaborative leadership and innovation acceleration skills across the organization. So, building a culture of collaboration, innovation, and value creation is the ultimate competitive advantage for any organization.

So with that in mind, I want to ask you again, what matters most? Is it ideas, methods, technologists, or people?

And I'll give you the answer for this one.

Ideas are important, but ideas are everywhere. What are uncommon in your organization? Are people willing to put the reputation behind ideas?

Methods, they are important. They provide a disciplined framework for execution.

The methods do not transform businesses.

People do value creation, people do.

Is it about technologists, RPA, AI, national net, natural language processing, AR, VR, blockchain? Those are all amazing technologists.

But the great in theory organizations understand the most. Technologists are like a new romantic lover Very exciting the beginning. Solve one need in the short term, and may create 10 new problems in the long run. Unless that technology Enables you to scale your value creation for your existing value creation processes.

Dan, That is the right one to partner with And, then, is it about people?

Of course, people are very important, and all people in the organization must be given an opportunity to develop their collaborative leadership and innovation acceleration skills, but it's not about all the people It is about finding the right people in your organization. The amplifiers of innovation, Those who can create the most value in the shortest time and simplest means for discipline approaches, and they become the role models for the entire organization. So what do those people look like?

What traits do they have? So if I would open up for Q&A here, you'll be inputting. OK, These are the traits. I mentioned, the traits. I'll remind you, they have a strong sense of purpose and the alignment with the purpose of the organization.

They have tremendous passion.

And this passion is not like romantic love is a lot more like an arranged marriage. They work their face off on certain areas. They become good at it. They develop a passion for it, and those are the ones that, that type of passion that I'm talking about.

And then they have tremendous, tremendous levels of discipline as well.

Indiscipline he is not just falling and regimented set of rules.

Discipline here is having consistency with your purpose, because the signature of mediocrity is not a mental willingness to change, The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency with your purpose.

That applies to individuals and organizations.

And finally, this individual's must have tremendous levels of resilience.

Resilience is not about being stubborn. And then just never acquitting.

Resilience is about using your collaborative leadership skills. to engage the resistance, and overcome it together. And if unable, having the ability to pivot, and take the longer road towards your purpose.

But it's still getting there, because that purpose is worthwhile to you. You have the purpose, the passion, the discipline, that gives you the resilience, to go on that journey, where most people would just give up.

Now, so, how do you find this people in your organization is the key question here.

And you're the only way that they are revealed is for the task of execution. So this is the way it works. Especially in large integer organizations where you have a tremendous number of well paid individuals. And when you get in there and you look at them, they look like this. A bunch of sour face people.

They're not really the happy on the work that they do. They have not really found the alignment between their live, their life and the work that they do, and as a result of that, they make lots of money but often they are unhappy with what they do. They're just going through the motions, they're kinda crab being stressed out.

Now among them, there are a few happy faces.

These people could be delusional, happy, Or maybe they have found some level of alignment between what they work on on a daily basis for most of their day and their personal purpose. So I make no judgements. What you do is that you don't motivate the people. You inspire the self motivated individuals to achieve greater things for the organization. And to do that, I set up excellence and innovation. You know, this meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms that every one of you can participate on. And the and the self motivated ones they flocked to that. And that's a group of highly motivated individuals.

My motivation is not alone, because motivation is like a rocking chair. There is a lot of motion, but you don't get anywhere unless you have a clear execution mechanism. And as a leader, that's your, that's your job, right? You have ...

now a clear execution mechanism for strategy, execution and value creation that will, that will allow this highly self motivated individuals who have been properly train on collaborative leadership and innovation acceleration skills, Learning how to take different perspectives or problems.

You give them this clear mechanism, and this mechanism is such, that is disciplined at all level, that will guarantee 99% implementation of the ideas that have being accepted and vetted to become this value creation, strategy execution projects. And most of the ideas will not make it, so you actually have a strict that, any mechanism for, these ideas don't have the time to get into all those details, but out of that, you're gonna see that the, the ideas that get approved. Then, they get carried on by this teams. On the other side of that, of that process. You identify those who deliver strategy execution of value creation for the organization, and those individuals inevitably have clear purpose alignment. They have passion, They have discipline, and they have resilience, and that's how they were revealed. And once they are revealed you make a big deal about them to the organization, and the reason for that is because they become now role models for.

For excellence, innovation, acceleration, in your organization, that's what the innovators look like in my organization. And now, Bill, who was down there before with a sour face is starting to have a happy face because he sees speed are up there, as the leader for this $5 million, marine innovation.

and, and, Peter came from the accounting group, it doesn't even have a background in marine operations, but he was passionate about it. He had the discipline, had the resilience deliver $5 million the value for the company.

Now, Bill is looking up and say, You know What is that Peter up there?

Peter led this multi-million dollar project.

Peter says: Dumb as a door. How did Peter do it?

Well, Bill, I'm not sure.

But you know what, if Peter did it, you can do it, too.

So we have now democratize innovation. Innovation is not Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs. Bill Gates is Peter, an accountant, who did a project in the marine group, and we have humanize it now.

And you don't have to be this perfect human beat, you have weaknesses. But what you do is that you doubled up on your strengths as a collaborative leader. And once you have that done and your organization at scale, and you're in, the ultimate level is around the organization, has a clear purpose, and people can align the purpose of the organization with their individual purposes, then you'll become that you're on the path to become that multi trillion dollar organization.

This is not easy. Of course. This, what I'm showing it to you here right now is reserved for only the best of the best and it will be, it requires tremendous levels of discipline over a decade or more.

Now, let's give you another example here. This is an engineering construction company that implemented links. six Sigma had a great Lean six Sigma program. 500 people delivering value by year, six, multi-million dollars.

They're focused on ideas and methods, and which is fine. Let's do the Lean six Sigma projects and get the best ideas to be done. He and create value. Well, that's good, but during the 2008 financial crisis, we decided that we needed more. It will say you need more. I mean, that's crazy. Most innovation programs die on year. By year three, 99% of them die by your five. You're in year six. You should be happy to celebrate it. Yes, we are. But we have this relentless drive for progress. So let's experiment instead of focused on ideas and methods. Why don't we just focus on the concepts that I just mentioned Shield? Let's focus on the right people. Let's focus on identifying those of purpose, passion, discipline, resilience and then we teach them the methods. What do you think about that?

Wonderful. But if it fails, it's your fault, Josiah. Alright, CEO gave me leeway. Let's try that we did it and out of a financial crisis. We got same or better results and better and better and exponentially better results, We got eight fold increases in value creation and then fold increases in voluntary participation globally.

The company won the Engineering Construction Global Award of Excellence for accelerating innovation in the industry. It was ranked the number one US private company for leaders and leadership development by Chief Executive Magazine, and one the Global Business Transformation and Operational Excellence or in the energy industry.

Now, I want to summarize this for you.

The innovation leaders who are going to catapult you to success 10 years from now, if you create the right systems for them, they don't work for Google and Tesla and Facebook, they work for your own organization. Right now.

They want most of the people there, don't think there are the innovative type, but the innovator's are within you.

It's your job to create a system where they can race, assist a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms where this value creation leaders can emerge and show you what they can do.

You have to help them develop different perspectives, the problems, because they, some of them don't have that background on innovation as a discipline. So, you teach them how to, to take different perspectives, the problems you get.

You support them, so that they have the courage to step up and take on this leadership roles.

The difference between fear and excitement is largely what our brain labels, that if we, if we risk managing the situation, you have to change their mindset. You have to give them support to take that step in a safe manner, yet it requires courage.

And ultimately, as a leader, you have to create an environment where great people and great ideas can connect and that's your job as a leader.

So, my last message here is that let's get, let's get actionable.

So nobody can predict the future.

You don't know if another pandemic is going to happen 100 years from now 10 years from now or maybe in 20 21 when you think everything's going to go back to normal.

So, you must take discipline action now and those discipline actions will benefit you in 10 years from now. You'll be better off, regardless of what happens.

And those discipline actions include, be clear on what your purpose is as an organization, and be consistent with it.

And right now, is the time to live your core values in moments of stress. We show our real values. This is the time for you to cast the shadow of leadership and core values in your organization.

You must build an innovation governance and you can start incredibly small in your own department if needed. This does not need to be done across major organizations like I share with you. This can start small in scale, but you must have the fundamental innovation governance in place in the meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms. You must make that accessible to everyone in your organization.

So that every, because your innovators are going to come from places where you don't expect, you have to invest in your people.

Smart companies are invest in their people right now.

They're developing their collaborative leadership and innovation acceleration skills and techniques right now, because they're going to pay off for years and years to come.

And you have to create a system and let the tasks of innovation execution reveal those among you who have the purpose, The passion. The discipline, and the resilience to collaborative lead innovation for value creation.

Now, to summarize this, none of us have the ability to predict the future, but we all know that building a culture of excellence and innovation, which is very hard, because excellence innovation fall in different directions, as we discussed before. But building a culture of excellence innovation becomes your ultimate competitive advantage, regardless of market conditions.

Your greatest strength is insight.

If you're able to, if you're able to harness the power of your people in your organization. So, for us to continue this journey, you can follow us on LinkedIn. You can send me an e-mail, You can check our site. But send me a note. Follow up the discussion on there. and the right now, I'm just going to take some questions that you have here, with a few minutes that we have available. So let's take a look at questions that you may have.

So I'm looking at the question box here right now for your questions, and I am looking at what your inputs has been on people, the technologists, most people went with people, which is interesting.

What questions do you have based on what I have share with you, and all that, some of the questions that have already popped up here include, this is great. I have a great review of innovation. Acceleration in times of uncertainty and rapid change like right now. But my problem is that I don't have access. Like, you do shows there, choose C level folks in the organization. And it seems like my senior leaders don't really understand the value of, of innovation and the creating the systems like that. It's a very good question, Very good question.

So, so you have two options, one option is to replace your CEO, which is probably not very feasible for you.

And the second option is for you to build from the ground up, and the way that you do that is by applying these principles at a very local level.

It could be that you are the leader of a business unit.

It could be that you are a leader of a department. It could be that you are a leader of a subgroup in a department. It doesn't matter. These principles are fundamental.

You have to have a basic governance on how you're going to identify, prioritize, and execute, execute this value creation opportunities, and then you have to, you'll have to have a meritocracy of ideas with clear execution mechanisms, with the people that you have control over.

All right, if you don't have control over anybody, what you can do is to influence laterally. and by displaying this abilities of value creation capabilities to your peers is one way of getting their attention. So it doesn't matter if you are having access to the sea level, or if you are at the lowest level in the organization. You can either influence and display this. This principles and behaviors to Throughout the organization to start, and then you start small, and then you scale. Another option is that people sometimes say, well, I'm stuck here because my supervisor will not allow me to pursue any of those things, and I'll say that you have options, lots of options. Find another job, I'll never work for a company that wouldn't allow me to grow. So the company is not allow you to grow specifically or supervise, not allow you to grow.

Look for another opportunity within your organization, with a different supervisor, and look for opportunities outside of the organization. I have time for one more quick question and answer here. And this one, this one comes from John Saunders talked about the four key elements of innovation. Safety is a key element. You spoke of. How do you convince people that they are in a safe environment to take risks? Can you talk more about that than how we empower innovators to come forward? John, That's an excellent, excellent question, and that that is a tricky one. Because the power for creating that environment is in the hands of leaders in the organization, right? The hierarchal leaders in the organization have a disproportionate power in setting that environment.

So, as I mentioned, that, when you look at innovation acceleration, you don't accelerate innovation by providing people financial incentives. For example, I'll give you a bonus and innovation bonus that doesn't work. You really accelerate innovation by creating environments where great people and great ideas can connect. And, and those environments include an environment of safety and trust and collaboration. And that goes back to the core values of the organization, the purpose of the organization, John, if the and and and creating that environment, requires the leadership.

Just set a safe environment to set a collaborative environment, to set an environment where there's a level of vulnerability that's taking place, and then that's, not, that's necessary, but not sufficient. You have to follow that up with, with, with performance standards. And the clear goals and merit in a very clear execution mechanism, so that people, once they have that environment, translate the principles into action that creates value.

But that environment needs to be set by leaps and the leader, whether whether the leaders, the highest level, or maybe at a lower level, the organization, requires all of the literature set. that. As an individual and professional, you can set those principles of safety and trust and collaborations as your own core values and practices, But that's not scalable if your leaders do not believe in those things. So you either have to influence the leaders to set that environment or, or you have to demonstrate the values and tried to inflate influence that way Or, look for some someplace else in the organization should be does that? That's the key. Creating that environment is critical. Very often, when we work with organizations, they come to us and say, I want you to accelerate innovation for value creation. We set up all the mechanism for them And once they start getting results from that, which is great for them, they realize that you get to the next level, needs to become part of the culture and to become part of the culture, we need to set up that environment, and that's when we really go into transformations.

Digital transformation is a byproduct of real, business and cultural transformation.

But we often don't start with culture transformation, because most senior leaders are like, Wow, you know, what does that mean, it's too fluffy. So we start by showing them value creation projects. We grab their attention and say, now you're a multi-billion dollar organization to get if you want to get to the trillion dollar level, you need to adjust things in the culture. And that's how we got there.

So, I hope this is helpful. I'm stay in touch. Let's connect on on the journey of excellence innovation acceleration that other organizations have, and the in your own organization have follow us on LinkedIn. And the, and the other speakers that we're going to have here in this conference, as well on, that we're going to wrap up this segment by saying, thank you for your time. And on top of the hour. I'm going to welcome Ed, Bror, and Bror, the vice-president of Enterprise Excellence for Duke Energy. Is going to talk to us about how Duke Energy is implementing some assessments, as a way of scaling in a disciplined fashion. So you're gonna see a lot of the Straits of Excellence and innovation combined on the on the session led by Ed Brewer. At the top of the hour. Thank you. Everybody closer to the webinar right now and start back up at the top of the hour.