Lack of Accountability

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Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's easy to come up with a new concept or thought that seems revolutionary at the time, but it takes much more effort to turn that idea into a reality. This is where structure and team accountability come into play.

Here are some ways you can add accountability to your innovation process.

Get buy-in early

Once you have determined that your idea is worth pursuing, it's important to identify the "Decider," or the person who has the authority to approve or reject your idea. Consider reaching out to them with a brief overview of your idea and a commitment to follow up with more details at a later date. This simple act of promising to follow up with the Decider can help hold you accountable to continue working on your idea.

Don’t go it alone

Your alarm clock goes off early in the morning. You want to sleep in, but you know your workout buddy will be waiting for you at the gym. Choose a partner at your organization. They can help you generate more ideas, vet the good ideas, and hold you accountable when you get distracted. And they make the whole process more fun.

Follow a process

Building in public, a movement gaining traction on Twitter, is all about sharing the process of creating something new with others. It's a way to be transparent and accountable to a community, which can help keep you motivated and focused on your goals. But it's not just about sharing updates and making progress visible to others. It's also about having a structure in place that helps guide you through the process of turning an idea into a validated product or service.

Having a clear roadmap can help ensure your idea isn’t left stuck at the 63% complete mark.

Don’t forget to measure the results

To stay accountable and achieve your goals, it is crucial to establish clear criteria for success at the start of your project. Identify specific, measurable benchmarks that will allow you to track your progress and determine whether you are on track. This will help you stay focused on the tasks that are most important and avoid getting sidetracked by irrelevant distractions.

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PS - Looking for more ways to hold your innovation processes accountable?

Our team used to have no clear process, so we created a step-by-step framework that anyone on our team could use. We were then able to turn “possibly good ideas” into a solid product that has already been battle-tested and de-risked.
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PPS - This is the 8th post in a series of the 10 problems all innovation teams face.