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A guy from a very successful quick-service restaurant (some of us call it "fast food") asked me yesterday what to do to develop a culture of innovation among the company's supply chain managers who might be inclined to rest on their laurels. He said they've become incredibly efficient and have succeeded in cutting costs, but as reinvention guru Tom Peters says, "You can't shrink your way to greatness."

So, since you asked my opinion, "Set a BHAG."

A "BHAG," in the lexicon of "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies," is a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. It's the kind of goal that grabs your imagination, the kind of goal that makes you excited to get up in the morning, the kind of goal that drives innovation.

This is not a goal about market share or percentage of revenue from new products. Those are pretty ho-hum.

Set the kind of goal that gets people passionate about their work. Galvanizing that passion will lead to success. What kind of goal can your people get behind?

Try this one on for size. What would it feel like to work for a company striving to make the world a better place?

Interface Americas, Inc., is one such company. CEO Ray Anderson decided in 1994 that the flooring company would not allow any finite fossil fuels to be wasted in the process of making carpet or let any carpet end up in a landfill. In fact, the company should not only have a benign impact on the environment, he decided the company should have a POSITIVE impact on the environment. Since that declaration, Interface has had five years of phenomenal growth, and it's slowed in 1999. They say they're about 50% there in terms of eliminating pollutants and waste. A couple of questions arise:
* What could you see and feel that would indicate that Interface has a culture of innovation?

* Do people on the factory floor really care about the company's environmental goals?

* What are the obstacles they've encountered?

* Will the company remain committed to the environment?
These questions and more will be addressed when Interface hosts an Innovation University (IU) site visit June 26-29 in Atlanta. IU Fellows and Sponsors are sent by their companies to observe, discuss and figure out how to apply what they learn back at the home office. There are still a limited number of spaces available for this visit to Interface, Skaltek America and The Coca-Cola Company. For more information on IU, contact Ruth Ann Hattori at (303) 604-1981 or Andrea Woodward, andrea@thinksmart.com.

For more on the background on Interface, see the April 1998 article in Fast Company magazine:
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/14/sustaing.html

Andrea Woodward

Join the Innovation University Fellowship Group

Call Ruth Ann Hattori at 303-604-1981 or e-mail andrea@thinksmart.com for more information.

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