Friday, May 20, 2011

Powerful Ideas Drive Transformation


Olleh KT (formerly Korean Telecom) has to change. Its goal is to double revenue by 2020; however, its core business is in decline.

To grow, and even survive, it will need to fill the revenue gap with new products & services. Doing this requires ideas. New ideas. Powerful ideas.

For more than a year, Bud Taylor led teams of KT professionals in the Mobile & Enterprise business units in their quest for radical ideas that could be implemented in a short cycle.

Crashing Lenses = Ideas
Generating radical ideas starts by asking new questions to find new answers. This is done by using the power of four lenses:
1. Discontinuities
2. Customer Insights
3. Core Competence
4. Orthodoxies

By crashing these lenses we can see opportunities that used to be concealed.

At KT we generated 1000’s of idea candidates from every corner of the organization. Small, dedicated teams synthesized and grouped these candidates into domains and from here they selected the first business opportunities.

Next the high impact business opportunities were explored and expanded; business models were refined; action plans developed, approved, & implemented.

The teams made big changes in:
• Customer service
• Online sales channels
• Retail operations
• Smartphone & tablet sales
• Account management, &
• Operational processes

Idea Graveyard
It wasn’t always easy. Often we had to call on the executive team for help to stop ideas from going to the natural graveyards caused by:
• Silo politics
• Committed resources
• Lack of priority, &
• Bureaucratic controls

In fact we leaned heavily on the executive team. We involved them as sponsors in all of the work & we held working sessions every month to break through barriers & develop their skills as leaders of Innovation.

The Result
It’s been a long & continuing journey that has engaged employees, changed the culture & built capability for the future.

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