Flash Case Study: Will a Pilot Program Unleash This Innovation, or Kill It?
HBR.org 2012-04-23
Editor's Note: Like HBR's traditional case studies, this online-only "flash" case study dramatizes a dilemma frequently faced by leaders in real companies. This fictional story is inspired by "The Art of Piloting New Initiatives" by Rhoda Davidson and Bettina Büchel in the Fall 2011 MIT Sloan Management Review. Please contribute by offering solutions and insights from your own experience.
Heinrich: Come on, Artur — we're here at the 52nd floor. Why are you just standing there in the elevator? Aren't you getting off?
Artur: I don't think we've thought this through.Artur, the door is closing —
Come back into the elevator, then.OK, I'm back in. But what's the matter? Why are you pushing floor 19? We don't have time to go back to our offices — we need to meet with the executive board now.
To be honest, the view of Frankfurt from up this high up gives me a bit of acrophobia, but that's not what's stopping me. I don't think we're ready.
This is no time for fear. We've been co-running the steering committee for this innovation project for almost six months now. At times it's been a real Kopfschmerzen, as you well know, but the initiative is finally coming together. What's the problem?
I sense failure ahead. I can smell it.Failure! This is a great project. We're going to be the first elevator manufacturer in the world to offer customers a comprehensive, real-time dashboard showing how much energy and money they're saving with our dispatching algorithms. And the first company in the entire industry to provide a complete sustainability pedigree for every elevator system — showing where each and every piece of raw material came from and how much carbon was emitted in its creation and processing. These doors, this beautiful wood paneling, these electronics, the cables that are holding us up, the light bulbs — everything.
It's a great project, and it was all your idea, Heinrich. Even though I'm twice your age, and I'm a marketing guy and you're an IT guy, I've always been your biggest fan and defender.I know that.
But I was up half the night worrying about today's presentation, and I think we're jumping the gun. We're not ready to request a pilot launch. We still haven't figured out how to put the energy data in a format that's truly useful to customers. And the sustainability pedigree is going to require a huge amount of input from managers all along the supply chain — they're going to balk at that. In my opinion, the project isn't yet credible, replicable, or feasible. You've heard what Stefan's been saying in all of his talks to every division: that rapid innovation must become our company's lifeblood. He emphasized rapid. Remember his quote? "I want you collecting more speeding fines than parking tickets."
He does have a way with words. You know me well enough to know that I'm not boasting when I say that Stefan has a lot of confidence in me and my ideas. So far I've never disappointed him. If we put off requesting a pilot, he'll be disappointed. I'm going to send us back up again to the executive suites. This is no time to give in to your worries about failure. Be experimental! That's what Stefan always says.
The mistake we're making is that we're confusing a pilot with an experiment. They're not the same thing.Sure they are. The purpose of a pilot is to test ideas. That's what Stefan says.
That's wrong. The purpose of a pilot is to generate commitment to the initiative — to demonstrate that the idea will be a success. Remember what happened to the pilot to centralize customer calls — the one that was rolled out in Sweden in 2010?
That was different —
Just like you, the steering committee for that pilot assumed that if anything went seriously wrong, all would be forgiven, because a pilot is just an experiment. But when customers started complaining about their calls getting misrouted and lost, it was amazing how quickly the managers in Norway and Finland and a lot of other places made up their minds that the project was a loser. They did everything they could to undermine it. You know the rest — it went down in flames. An experiment is low stakes. A pilot is high stakes, because people start imagining what implementation would really look like. But we're planning the pilot for the Netherlands, not Sweden! The personalities in the two organizations are completely different. You and I have a good relationship with Martin in Amsterdam, and he runs the Netherlands operation. He told us — he swore to us, in fact, don't you recall? — that he's behind us and he's got the budget and the bandwidth to manage the pilot. He's handled complex IT initiatives before. And he's got clout: Netherlands is one of the most high-profile, high-growth countries in the company. That will give us credibility with the other countries.
Netherlands is definitely high-profile — I'll give you that.We've done our homework, Artur. We've listened not only to customers but to the IT and operations people, the ones who are going to have to implement this project. And with you on the steering committee, we've made sure that we're getting constant input from marketing. Here we are again, where we're supposed to be. Are you getting out with me? Or are we going to have to tell the executive committee, after all this effort, that we're afraid to move forward? Where's your confidence? That's it — step right off the elevator, and we'll walk together into the board room. Artur, why are you hesitating?
The thing about a high-profile country, Heinrich: A high-profile country can mean a high-profile flop. A high-profile flop will fatally taint this project that we've sweated over.
Artur, the doors are closing!
Question: Should Heinrich and Artur request permission to launch a pilot program in the spirit of experimentation or wait until all of its flaws have been fixed?
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