Overcoming the Fear Factor

Breaking Down Customer-Facing Organizational Silos

for Product Strategy Excellence

Top 3 takeaways for participants

Learn how to identify and recruit potential ‘landing zones’ for your ideas

Build evidence to reduce risk and gain buy-in

Learn best practices for equipping others to promote on your behalf

Marla Hetzel Director of Innovation at AARP Services Inc

“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Well behaved women rarely make history.”

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Jennifer Draklellis Director of Innovation at UnitedHealthcare

A story of innovation

The Problem

• AARP and UnitedHealthcare

• Sought growth through innovative products and services

• Limited market impact

Becoming innovative = HARD

Why aren’t

we better at

innovation?

Achieve

Impact

Develop

We became the student

and the teacher

Brand trust.

Advocacy.

Expertise and

Knowledge

of 50+ consumer

and issue area.

Data and clinical

expertise and

knowledge.

Health care

delivery.

Technology.

UHG

50+ Consumer

Growth &

retention

Capabilities of

organizations

SHARED

CAPABILITIES

PERSPECTIVE

ACTIONABLE,

SHARED PURPOSE

VISION FOR INNOVATION

VALUE FUND

A COLLABORATIVE

innovation effort

between ASI and UHG

established to make

healthcare better by

leveraging shared

organizational

capabilities and aligning

with strategic objectives

to create actionable

concepts in a limited

number of important

focus areas that

transition to business

owners.

AARP/ASI

Operator vs Innovator Mindset

Operator

• Is uncomfortable with uncertainty,

ambiguity and risk

• Is able to make data-driven and

analytical decisions

• Works hard to be both accurate

and precise

• Works to avoid failure and reduce

errors to zero

• Wins by reducing variability and

executing to plan

Innovator

• Is comfortable with uncertainty,

ambiguity and risk

• Is able to make analytical or intuition-

based decisions (including “blink

responses” based on minimal information

• Settles for order-of-magnitude estimates

and does not let precision exceed

accuracy

• Sees failure as inevitable and even

desirable (as long as it happens fast / at

low

cost and one learns from it)

• Wins by maintaining flexibility / openness,

and preserving options

Decision Making Biases

Biases Impacting Innovation

Action-Oriented Overconfidence or Competitor

Neglect

Self Interest Inappropriate Attachments or

Misaligned Incentives

Pattern Recognition Confirmation, False Analogies, or

Champion Bias

Stability Anchoring, Loss Aversion, Sunk Cost

Fallacy, or Status Quo Bias

Social Groupthink or Sunflower

Management

Accountability in Innovation

Types of Accountability:

Results, Action and Learning

Predicted

outcome?

Good

execution?

Learning

process?

Source: Govindarajan and Trimble, The Other Side of Innovation

Accountability

Serious planning? Clear hypothesis?

Team understanding? Improving predictions?

Reacting fast? Facing facts?

Low spend high learn? Evidence of learning?

Critical unknowns clear?

“We now accept the fact that learning is a

lifelong process of keeping abreast of

change. And the most pressing task is to

teach people how to learn.”

Peter F. Drucker

An Inherent Tension the challenge of the performance engine

IDEAS are only the

beginning

IBM INNOVATION MAN

INNOVATION

=

IDEAS

+

EXECUTION

But there is a problem... Companies are built for efficiency, not innovation...

“Landing zones” Identifying and recruiting

“When it comes to embracing a new idea,

most will demur unless you can pack a

parachute that will allow them to jump safely

from their [way of doing things] to yours.”

Source: Whitney Johnson, “Make Your Innovative Idea Seem Less Terrifying”, HBR Blog

7 HINTS FOR

SELLING IDEAS

Source: Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “Seven Hints for Selling Ideas”, HBR Blog

Seek many inputs #1

Do Your Homework #2

Make the rounds #3

See Critics in Private and Hear Them Out #4

Make the Benefits Clear #5

Be Specific #6

Show That You Can Deliver #7

Advocacy Equipping others to promote on your behalf

Become a champion

What

Find 2-3 meetings to present

our work to an audience

When

Between now and

when we next meet

Why

It will help us to socialize the

learning and neutralize the critics.

It will help us identify “landing

zones”.

How

We will prepare you with

stories and statistics.

You will let us know the feedback

you are receiving – both good and

bad.

Rose, Thorn, Bud experiment

ROSE (beautiful bloom, great smell):

Positive or ‘bright spots’. What are the positive or bright

spots? THORN (finger prick, ouch!):

Negative or pain points/problematic. What should we be concerned

about?

BUD (new life): Having potential

What are new opportunities, goals, or insights?

A technique used to gather feedback, help us understand and then take

action.

Facilitating execution

Remove the roadblocks

and create a path for

execution

What When

Throughout the investment

decision-making process

especially

as we approach development

and execution

There are deep and

fundamental conflicts

between innovation and

ongoing

operations and execution

needs to be facilitated by

leadership.

Business owners should be

participating in

experimentation and

business case

development to enable

collective ownership.

Why How Serve as a champion...

Understand how decisions

will be made and how

resources

will be made available for the

investment decisions.

Prepare business owner in

both capacity and capability

Co-creation exercise We used prototypes and engaged our steering committee in a co-

creation

to understand their needs and make the materials most effective.

Questions?

Continue the Conversation

Marla

mhetzel@aarp.org

Marla J Hetzel

(LinkedIn)

@hetzelmj

Jennifer

jennifer_draklellis@uhc.co

m

Jennifer Draklellis

(LinkedIn)

@jdraklellis