We developed the BLOOM® performance management system to take bigger picture questions into account, and you should be asking those questions if you’re not already. Specifically:

1. How often will the organization complete formal reviews?
2. Will reviews be completed at the time of each employee’s anniversary date or will there be a unified annual process where reviews are completed at one time throughout the organization?
3. Which rating scale will we use?
4. What do we want the review to measure?
5. How many people will give input to each employee’s review?
6. Will managers be expected to work with employees and set individual development goals and training at the time of the review?

A sound performance management system like BLOOM® will help you manage your performance review process. Here’s how:

1. How often will the organization complete formal reviews?

BLOOM® accommodates 90, 180, and 365 day review cycles, which you enter when you first implement the system. BLOOM® then automatically schedules new reviews and due dates so you don’t have to monitor the calendar or notify managers. When you enter a new employee, BLOOM® sets up a 90 day Introductory Review that the HR administrator can disable if needed. When the manager completes the Introductory Review and HR approves it, BLOOM® schedules the next review based on your review cycle. Some organizations conduct informal check‐ins between formal reviews, and we often provide our clients with resources to guide these informal check-ins so they align with the bigger picture, too.

2. Will reviews be completed at the time of each employee’s anniversary date or will there be a unified annual process where reviews are completed at one time throughout the organization?

How you structure review schedules is up to you. BLOOM® can accommodate either option. Having said that, we believe that a unified annual review cycle helps streamline the review process and save paperwork time. It also forces a sense of urgency for completion throughout the organization.

3. What rating scale will we use?

BLOOM® offers a 3, 4, and 5 point rating scale. If you read our post about rating scales you know that we recommend a 5-point scale because we believe it gives an opportunity to communicate all conditions of employee development.

4. What do we want the review form to measure?

With BLOOM® you can customize your performance review form based on the following criteria:

• Work Relationships
• Creativity & Initiative
• Communication Skills
• Role Knowledge (view training record)
• Organization Standards
• Individual Goals (imported from the employee record)
• Competency Review (imported from the role description)
• Pay Data (this can be turned on or off by role, giving managers the ability to view their employees’ pay data)

One approach is to choose criteria based on the company values and the current priorities required to achieve the strategic initiative. Another approach is to solely base the performance review on the role requirements and individual contributions of each employee.

5. How many people will give input to an employee’s review?

It’s important for employees get perspective and input from more than one person. BLOOM® can currently capture a variety of information in each employee’s review form:

• Primary and secondary supervisor can enter feedback.
• Executives can view and edit reviews for anyone who reports to the managers directly reporting to them.
• Employees can complete self-reviews without seeing managers’ comments until the review interview.

6. Will the managers be expected to set individual employee development goals and training at the time of the review?

Your company procedure for setting employee goals will determine the answer to this question. However, we recommend making it a part of the review process because goals are the most effective way for managers to communicate individual performance enhancements. At the very least these should be reviewed. Additionally, it is good to revisit the existing goal notes and review progress and resources needed to complete open goals. Use BLOOM® to enter new goals that require attention before the next review period.

Let’s talk about strategic performance management

Contact Insight Strategic Concepts – maker of BLOOM® – to learn more about strategic performance management and the BLOOM® system, or comment below with more questions you’ve found helpful.

Let’s acknowledge some assumptions about performance reviews

Performance reviews are subjective by nature, and that makes them an opportunity for managers to have a positive impact on employees’ performance. Performance reviews have emotional impact that will make or break relationships between employees and their managers, and those relationships affect the organization’s overall health. Your managers must understand the power of influence and how to use any scale you choose.

Why are 5 points better than 3?

Opinions about the “right” number of points vary.Some researchers claim that 3-point scales are sufficient (Jacoby and Mattel 1971). Others claim that when a researcher is interested in averages across people or will combine several individual rating scales in order to create a new scale, then 2‐ or 3‐ point scales are “good enough” (Lehman and Hulbert (1972). If, however, the researcher is working with one rating scale and is interested in individual behavior, more scale points are needed and the recommendation is to use of a five‐ to seven‐ point rating scale. There is also evidence that the more scale points used, the more reliable the scale (Churchill and Peter 1984).

One thing is clear: a rating scale needs enough points to extract meaningful data. Friedman and Friedman conclude that that researchers should consider using anywhere from 5‐ to 11‐point scales. At Insight, we believe this is especially true when making observations and conclusions about human behavior and its implications for development and improvement.

BLOOM’s 5-point approach to performance reviews

A 5‐point scale gives an opportunity to communicate all conditions of employee development:

• 5 – Exceptional performance. The employee changed the way the company operates and has provided great value to customer experience and profitability.
• 4 – Above average performance. The employee excels over others in a talent area. (It is manager’s job to find and cultivate these talents.)
• 3 – Performance meets expectations. Every job has tasks that need to be done consistently well. Discuss and acknowledge these so that employees can focus on the most opportunistic aspects of their jobs.
• 2 – Needs improvement. Without this rating there is no opportunity to convey areas where an employee seems to be slipping and needs support. This is a great opportunity for the manager to develop a better relationship with the employee.
• 1 – Poor performance. Behavior exists where an employee is experiencing apathy over a period of time even after developmental interventions.

What you can do to improve your organization’s performance reviews

Educate managers about how the review system affects the sense of connection between manager and employee. It’s unrealistic to believe and operate as though a strict performance system achieves company goals without potentially damaging the relationships required to make those goals happen. That’s why we stress the importance of addressing the use and purpose of the rating scale from the top down in your organization.

Build flexibility into your new review system. Managers must be trained on how to understand and communicate with different types of people in relevant ways to achieve results. They should use performance reviews as a tool to inspire employees and to help them grow. A well-developed performance review system will engage the skills, talents, and interests that ultimately contribute to the organization’s goals.

What scales has your organization considered? What are you currently using, and what are you learning?

Works Cited

Churchill, Gilbert A. Jr. and J. Paul Peter, (1984), “Research Design Effects on the Reliability of Rating Scales: A Meta Analysis,” Journal of Marketing Research, 21(4), 360‐375.

Friedman, Hershey H. and Esther M. Friedman (1997), “A Comparison of Six Overall Evaluation Rating Scales,” Journal of International Marketing and Marketing Research, 22(3), 129‐138.

Jacoby, Jacob and Michael S. Matell (1971), “Three‐Point Likert Scales are Good Enough,” Journal of Marketing Research, 8(4), 495‐500.

Lehmann, Donald R. and James Hulbert (1972), “Are Three‐Point Scales Always Good Enough?” Journal of Marketing Research, 9(4), 444‐

446.

Employee assessments are mutually beneficial: they provide the employee with valuable information that they may not realize about themselves and your managers with greater insight into the employee’s mindset. Such knowledge provides a foundation for further employee and, by extension, organizational development. Here’s how that works:

1. Organizations that want to make an impact and to contribute to their communities need a passionate, collaborative spirit and effective teamwork in order to succeed.
2. True collaboration requires team members who share a common goal and have the relationship-building skills to help the team run smoothly.
3. To develop relationship-building skills an individual needs self-awareness; when a person is tuned-in to who they are and how they operate they are better equipped to understand and relate to other people.
4. Assessments yield information about a person, thereby increasing that individual’s self-awareness.

Where to begin? Assess more than one area as you work at strategic performance management.

When you plan assessments be sure to address all three parts of the mind to get a more complete picture:

1. Affective: the feeling part of the mind
2. Conative: the striving part of the mind
3. Cognitive: the thinking part of the mind

All three parts intertwine to formulate how a person feels, acts, and thinks. Assessing only one or two leaves knowledge gaps that can result in misunderstanding or misinterpretation.

Knowing more about your current and prospective employees enables your managers and HR department to:

1. Better match people to teams. Too much inertia or polarization of talents and skills in any team will bog it down and stunt creativity and decision-making.
2. Recruit the best fit for a job. You know what you need for a specific position, and greater insight into a potential team member enables you to align the right person with that role. Many assessments are unbiased (e.g. gender, sex, and religion) and appropriate to use in the selection process. For more information about Insight’s Whole Mind Assessment (pdf).
3. Develop skills and optimize talents. When you understand how your individual employees operate you can better develop their abilities and help them learn how to enhance their talents.
4. Bring awareness that might otherwise be overlooked. Most of us are not aware of how our feelings about ourselves and about the world impact others. Some people may think they know, but do not see how it continues to impact others. Assessments can help employees objectively see how the three parts of their mind interact and influence the workplace. Assessments also highlight areas for development and can open a door for dialogue about improvement strategies that help individuals better communicate, listen, collaborate, be less defensive, and be empathetic toward others who need improvement.

Interpreting assessments requires understanding and a strategic approach

At Insight, when we work with clients who are addressing employee development, recruiting, team formation, or leadership development we typically use 5-6 assessments. Results should never be used as an excuse for a person to do things a certain way because assessments are intended to increase awareness in order to learn how to modify affect and skills to work more collaboratively with others.

Without collaboration and effective and balanced communication in the work environment, it can be very difficult to be an efficient and productive team. By equipping employees with self-awareness, you empower them to take ownership of their behavior and to become valuable contributors in your organization.

5 Steps to Implement the BLOOM® Performance Management System

Each of the implementation steps builds on the previous phases so that you will have all the right pieces in place when you introduce BLOOM® to your employees:

1. Create wage scales
2. Create training classes/programs
3. Enter role descriptions
4. Enter employee data and define and enter individual employee goals
5. Create and enter strategic initiatives, objectives, goals, and action steps

Step 1: Create Wage Scales

Using your performance management system to keep track of wage scales is essential if you want to monitor the wage analysis for some or all of your employees. Although this step is optional, we strongly recommend including compensation data so that you will be able to easily identify top performers in your organization as well as those who are not pulling their weight.

Step 2: Create Training Classes/Programs

Training classes and programs provide opportunities for employees to gain knowledge, which ultimately benefits the organization. Enter training opportunities and requirements in BLOOM® and later connect the classes and programs with one or more role descriptions to ensure that employees continue to develop the skills and knowledge they need to work effectively.

Step 3: Enter Role Descriptions

Role descriptions are critical to any performance management system. They enable employees to understand exactly what their position entails, and managers and leaders to delegate responsibilities, determine compensation, and conduct performance reviews.

Step 4: Enter Employees and Define and Enter Individual Employee Goals

Employees are the heart of your organization, and they are the heart of the BLOOM® performance management system, too. Once you reach this step you will begin to clearly see how BLOOM® reveals the bigger picture; you will see which employees fill each role, how their compensation compares – an indicator of who is ready for a promotion and who has a ways to go – and how they contribute to your company’s strategic growth.

Step 4 is also a time to enter individual development goals, too. Including these goals is optional, though they provide another chance for employees to engage the organization, see how their ambitions contribute to the company’s mission and vision, and have a sense of ownership.

Step 5: Create and Enter Strategic Initiatives, Objectives, Goals and Action Steps

The company’s mission and vision provides guidance at a macro level, and how that mission is carried out requires detailed initiatives, objectives, goals, and action steps. Make the most of the opportunity BLOOM® provides for you to keep track of your strategic plan – including assigning tasks and deadlines to teams, roles, and employees. When employees see where they fit into the bigger picture they understand how valuable their work really is.

Putting It All Together

For any performance management system to have an impact on your business it must be used effectively and consistently. BLOOM® is no different. Your managers must understand the importance of strategic performance management, be able to use the system, and see it as an asset to their work since BLOOM® provides a place for them to keep track of team data, log performance notes, and track employee goals.

The BLOOM® team has extensive experience in human resources and will guide you through the five steps of implementation. Contact us for more information or to schedule a demonstration.

• Methodology based on Insight’s experience. You save the time it would take to develop, track, and support an in-house performance management system.
• Automated features. Wizards and email notifications provide guidance and reminders, and its documentation and tracking save you the time and hassle of tracking down information and generating reports from scratch.
• Develops better habits. An effective human resources program requires commitment. Small businesses that adopt the right habits and use BLOOM to manage strategic initiatives, roles, and employee performance can save the expenses of an HR person and haphazard in-house talent management systems. Like any tool, though, BLOOM is only effective if it is used regularly.
• Support that small business needs. BLOOM is Software as a Service (SaaS) and includes support services for related management development.

Now we’ve updated our pricing structure to better meet the needs of small businesses. The 30-day trial is free. Take a look at BLOOM to see how you can effectively align your business strategy and employee performance for less than you might expect.

Understand why strategy is important

In their book Strategic Planning: A Practical Guide, Peter Rea, Ph.D. and Harold Kernzer, Ph.D. note that no strategic approach fits all situations, and as a result “contingency theory rules the day” (2). What is equally true, the authors say, is that all strategies require good sense and judgment. Further, while there is no singular school of thought on strategic planning all definitions speak to these concepts:

• Formulation of long-term goals and allocation of resources
• Serves as a “vision of success” and how to achieve it
• Necessity of free will and intentional design (qtd. in Rea and Kerzner 2)

Strategic planning sets the course for your organization’s future and as a result impacts not just the organization as a whole but each team and employee as well. Strategic planning, say Rea and Kerzner, “must function beyond an office of well-educated executives who are insulated from those who make the organization work” (3).

Strategic planning determines your organization’s direction, and a lack of focus leads to an erratic, uncontrolled lurching into tomorrow.

Formulate a strategic plan when conditions are right

If your organization has skills, resources, and the commitment of key decision makers then creating an implementing a strategic plan will serve you well (qtd. in Rea and Kerzner 9). Without this trifecta that forms a stable foundation, though, any plan you make will not endure. Further, your strategic plan must head in a direction that others are willing to follow (Rea and Kerzner 9); this may mean initially making decisions and changes that are agreeable to most everyone, and once those pay off push a bit further with more innovative plans.

Strategic Planning offers several questions to use as a basic framework for any organization’s strategy:

• Strategic issues
• Competitive advantages
• Compatibility of products/services and customers
• Innovation and growth
• Stakeholders’ satisfaction
• Strategy integration/measurement (Rea and Kerzner 11-12).

Think about the many ways your organization can grow

Insight has identified 44 diverse ways to grow – from sales to profit to people. Specific examples include ideas like branching into e-commerce or licensing, diversifying offerings, empowering employees as experts, and implementing a performance management system enables management to track progress. We encourage you to review the 44 strategies for yourself by downloading the PDF.

Get ready to make your organization BLOOM®

Our proprietary performance management system, BLOOM®, enables administrators, managers, and employees to form the big picture – the strategic plan – organize it into meaningful goals and milestones and then into actionable tasks, and see where each employee fits into the overall plan. Administrators provide the vision, managers provide the necessary notes and resources (e.g. spreadsheets and PDF files), and employees help carry out the plan to reach the goal. Because BLOOM® includes timelines and due dates anyone can see when a milestone has been completed and what’s past-due. Contact us for more information or to schedule a demo of BLOOM®.

In his book The Manager’s Book of Questions: 1,001 Great Interview Questions for Hiring the Right Person, John Kador identifies seven types of questions that serve specific purposes in a job interview:

• Icebreaker and Background Questions
• Behavioral Questions
• Questions to Determine Fit
• Core Competency Questions
• Ethics Questions
• Brainteaser Questions
• Closing Questions

Each type of question has its place, yet you must know how to interpret each response. After all, “the specific content of the answer is rarely the key element you should be listening for” (Kador xvi). Even non-verbal cues like body language and eye contact reveal volumes about an applicant.

Insight has experience with each type of question, and the one we find most revelatory is behavioral. Kador hypothesizes that “the most accurate predictor of future performance is past performance in a similar situation,” and we couldn’t agree more (9). Past performance is related to instinct, which is what the tools that Insight uses — the Kolbe Indexes® — identify. We also use the Whole Mind Assessment process; download a PDF overview.

Asking the right questions doesn’t always involve questions

As Kador notes, behavioral questions are focused and offer possibilities for follow-up (9). They take the form of “Tell me about . . .” imperative statements rather than interrogative sentences. They investigate reality rather than hypothetical situations, requiring the interviewee to explain how they did respond to a situation rather than how they would respond.

Kador’s book offers 187 behavioral questions, each naturally fitting into a specific script or line of questioning that he also provides. He reflects briefly on the shift in the hiring process from one that Human Resources once managed from start to finish to one that Human Resources initiates by qualifying an applicant before passing his or her name on to another department for further interviews. That shift means that employees previously removed from the hiring process are now playing the vital role of interviewer and need to be well-prepared (Kador xiii).

Consider learning from the experts

Because the current job market is so competitive you may be tempted to rely on a down market providing top-notch applicants who are desperate for the job. We maintain that résumés alone are insufficient to determine which applicant is the right hire. Insight’s extensive experience in the hiring process and performance management gives us, well, insight into a prospective employee’s overall fit and the potential contributions to your organization. To ensure a meaningful, successful hiring process we recommend reviewing The Manager’s Book of Questions and also working with an expert who can guide you through the interviewing process. Contact us to talk more specifically about what a partnership between Insight and your organization could look like and what results you can expect.

For the American economy to rally and re-establish strong growth trends, we must examine at its foundation: manufacturing. The foundation is eroding at an alarming rate, and rather than reinforcing it we must focus on renovation through innovation.

In his book Saving American Manufacturing: Growth Planning for Small and Midsize Manufactures, manufacturing expert Michael Collins offers ideas to shifting the downward trend, and again we provide an overview so that you have a sense of the kind and degree of change needed and to give you some direction in how your company can be among those that remain strong and competitive in the changing marketplace. The concepts Collins discusses are ones that Insight helps clients explore, and we can help you set your organization on a new innovation track, too.

The Crisis in American Manufacturing

The crisis isn’t the surface symptom of lost jobs, it’s the residual effects on the trade deficit, job creation, and strategic industries (xi). Historically, a large portion of the middle class income came from the manufacturing sector; as that sector shrinks, so does the middle class and its ability to help sustain the economy.

A 1987 report issued by the Office of Technology Assessment as an early prediction that is nearing fulfillment:

During the next two decades, new technologies, rapid increases in foreign trade, and the tastes and values of a new generation of Americans are likely to reshape virtually every product, every service, and every job in the U.S. These forces will shake the foundations of the most secure American businesses. (qtd. in Collins xii)

Why should we care?

Manufacturing touches nearly every aspect of American life in one way or another. Collins notes that, among other things, manufacturing:

• Creates secondary jobs (xx)
• Generates exports (xxi)
• Supports state economies (xxii)
• Affects our infrastructure (xxiii)

More specifically, the report makes four predictions:

1. “Change can lead to wrenching dislocation and pain for workers with obsolete skills, for management unable to recognize opportunity, and for communities where traditional businesses have failed” (qtd. in Collins xiv).The data bears this out. From 2000-2006 the United States lost more than 2.3 million jobs in the manufacturing sector alone.
2. “Change can create an America in graceless decline – its living standards falling below those of other world powers” (qtd. in Collins xv).While the upper class and those with top-tier jobs continue to experience high standards of living, that of most Americans is on the decline.
3. “Change can result in a gap between those fortunate enough to have the talents, education, and connections needed to seize the emerging opportunities and those forced into narrowly defined, heavily monitored, temporary positions” (qtd. in Collins xvi).In short, the gap between those who have and those who don’t is widening.
4. “Will people be able to find a variety of attractive opportunities for work, or will only the credentialed elite enjoy such opportunities?” (qtd. in Collins xvi) More jobs are being lost than college degrees are being issued, which indicates that a college degree does not guarantee a well paying job. Collins notes that reasons for this include the advent of the Internet, which has eliminated many tasks that service industry professionals once performed (xix).

What can we do?

Collins is upfront: it is impossible to save all manufacturers (xi).

Success Through Transformation

1. We Must Grow: stopping the decline isn’t enough.
2. Process Solutions: solutions like lean manufacturing help, but they alone are not enough.
3. All Customers Are Not Good Customers: demands prices so low that profit margin is non-existent are demands by customers you can afford to lose.
4. Finding New Customers and Markets: you must find new, good customers to replace bad ones.
5. A New Organization: focus on exploring new markets and developing new products
6. Mindset Change: be market-driven rather than operations-driven.

(Collins 1-2)

Collins, Mike. Saving American Manufacturing: Growth Planning for Small and Midsize Manufacturers. Chicago: First Flight Books, 2006.

Written by Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Profiting from Uncertainty: Strategies for Succeeding No Matter What the Future Brings, paints a clear picture of how responses to uncertainty can make or break a company.

In this post we offer a taste of the first chapter, “Embracing Uncertainty,” because it addresses many of the concepts that Insight does when we work with clients to grow and transform their businesses.

Embracing Uncertainty: An Overview

There is no sure-fire way to plan for the unknown, but let’s be clear: risk is not the unknown. Risk is calculated by identifying known contributors and variables; uncertainty is the space outside of risk. It is the unknowable. “The most challenging uncertainties that managers face,” says Schoemaker, “are those they haven’t a clue about – when they wake up one day to find that the Berlin Wall has crashed to the ground or to recognize that the Internet has merged or faded as a powerful new market space” (2).

Why should managers focus on something so unpredictable as uncertainty?

“Firm-specific actions account for just over half the value of a firm,” and the remainder is attributable to external forces that cannot be controlled, but that a company can prepare for through scenario planning (Schoemaker 6).

A few reasons to give uncertainty due consideration:

• Uncertainty affects the external environment
• The level of uncertainty appears to be increasing significantly
• Humans have inherent limitations in dealing with uncertainty 
(Schoemaker 5).

It is also, says Schoemaker, the only source of superior profits (3). A brief look at past examples reveals that stakes are high and that a future that managers fail to see is the one they failed to prepare for (Schoemaker 3-5).

Why is uncertainty increasing?

There are innumerable factors that contribute to uncertainty. A few that are easily identifiable include:

• More complex socioeconomic systems
• New technologies
• Demographic changes
• Changing values
  (Schoemaker 7)

Discomfort with uncertainty is a human response

Humans prefer the predictable. We have myopic eyes that limit our range of sight and timid souls that miss the bigger picture (13). We tend to trust our instincts, but the inherent problem is that instincts develop from past experiences, and uncertainty assumes that the future will differ greatly from the past (Schoemaker 14-15).

Uncertainty = opportunity

You can profit from uncertainties if you’re prepared, and you can prepare with scenario planning. “The less ambiguity we experience, the more we feel a problem can be structured, managed, planned for, and controlled. But competitors can do this as well, so the opportunity for advantage is diminished. We must learn how to welcome and indeed embrace ambiguity” (Schoemaker 10).

Schoemaker’s book includes a number of approaches that help prepare for uncertainty:

• Scenario planning
• Key success factors
• Robustness analysis
• Strategic vision
• Options thinking
• Dynamic monitoring (17)

Schoemaker, Paul J.H. Profiting from Uncertainty: Strategies for Succeeding No Matter What the Future Brings. New York: The Free Press, 2002.

8 building blocks that support an innovation mindset

To achieve a true mindset of innovation takes commitment. Kuczmarski submits that eight building blocks that rest on three interconnected platforms:

1. Planning for innovation
2. Defining the innovation process
3. Crafting a holistic innovation organization

Platform One: Planning for Innovation

Building Block #1: Create an innovation vision and blueprint

A vision enables you to see beyond what you’re currently doing to what you want to become (Kuczmarski 126). Kuczmarski says that, while related to the corporate vision, an innovation vision more specifically:

• Highlights the role that new elements will play
• Describes mission and purpose
• Examines how strategic direction is effected by innovation (128)

Give the innovation vision some parameters and structure by developing an innovation blueprint to guide the way.

Building Block #2: Develop an innovation strategy

To set the vision in motion you need more than a blueprint: you need a plan to implement what the blueprint outlines. That plan is innovation strategy, and it clarifies expectations and defines:

• Financial growth gaps that will be filled
• Financial objectives to meet
• Strategic roles

Building Block #3: Design a technology and innovation portfolio

“Aligned to each strategic role should be an identification of the core technologies or technical expertise areas that you anticipate will be necessary for developing new products” (Kuczmarski 136). In other words, what core technologies do you already have that you can (and will) use to develop new products? Using existing technologies will give you a leg up on your competition.

Platform Two: Defining the Development Process

Building Block #4: Design a staged development process

To transition from a concept to a tangible product your innovation team (see block #5 below) will need a process to follow. Such a process, says Kuczmarski, will:

• Provide a logical approach and system
• Articulate the required approvals
• Offer a framework to manage multiple new concepts (137)

Platform Three: Crafting a Holistic Innovation Organization

Building Block #5: Form innovation teams

To be effective you need a team effort, and the team should consider itself committed for the long haul. When forming an innovation team include these components:

• Cross-functional representation, including expertise, perspective, and experience (140)
• Full-time, dedicated leaders who can motivate, communicate, and solve problems (142)
• Performance-based rewards to motivate team members and recognize a job well done (e.g. peer recognition and career advancement) (145)
• Regular meetings

Building Block #6: Establish reward systems

Rewards do not have to be financial, but they do have to motivate. Particularly for an innovation team whose objective inherently involves taking big risks there is opportunity for big reward, which may come in the form of career advancement, option to buy stock, or some other form of compensation.

Building Block #7: Measure progress and returns

Because the members of innovation teams are pushing boundaries and working to expand the company in new directions they are taking risks. This puts them in a different position than other employees who are supporting the current product and service lines. For the innovation team evaluate members with company-wide, team innovation, and individual innovation measures; having a unique evaluation format further signals a commitment to innovation and cultivates that mindset in the innovation team (151).

Building Block #8: Infuse innovation norms and values

Norms and values, while somewhat informal, help a team establish a sense of community because they form a common set of standards and expectations. When the team members understand the ground rules, there’s no need for rules or regulations (Kuczmarski 153).

Kuczmarski, Thomas D. Innovation: leadership strategies for the competitive edge. Chicago: NTC Business Books, 1996.