Roger La Salle’s innovation approach is now practiced in 26 countries. His material is licensed through Deloitte, and he has written several books on the subject. He says he retired about 18 years ago, however in reality he works a half day on most weekdays. “I'm an electronic engineer and I've also done a graduate diploma in business and marketing,” he explains. He’s also been tinkering with inventing from a young age.

At some point he became particularly interested in the thinking around innovation, and he now makes his living from sharing those insights. He’s written several books about innovation. Many of his learnings transfer neatly to those trying to innovate with social media in organisations.

Setting goals

Innovation is a broad goal though, and La Salle is sure to establish clear aims early on. “Before I work in any business I ask them four vital questions and I want one-sentence answers,” he says. “I say, I'm not interested in waffly answers, I need one sentence. And the four questions are: what are you trying to achieve? I need to have an answer to that. Where are you now? How are you measuring growth? And what outcome defines success? Now if people can't answer those questions, then I'll work with them to try and find the answers before we start work.” They’re four questions which could just as easily be applied to a social media plan.

Measurement

Many clients La Salle meets haven’t thought about their aims. “They just say, ‘We want to achieve innovation,’ I say, ‘For what purpose?’ To build profits. Well, in what area and how are you measuring your progress? I mean, I won't mention names, but there was one very large company, an overseas government company, they'd spent $5million on innovation initiatives in their organisation. I said, ‘Are you measuring your progress? Are you actually getting somewhere? And they said, in fact I can quote, ‘some things you measure you spoil’. I said, ‘Not as an engineer, in my world, you're spending $5million of public money you better know you're headed in the right direction.”

Getting buy in

“Senior managers in large companies are often there because they're quite good politicians,” says La Salle. “And they're very busy people. The last thing they want is for you to walk in the door and give them another job to do. The first reaction is, ‘I wish this person wasn't here,’ Because they're already very busy, they've got big KPI's, they're already being paid, work is pretty good, you're just giving them another job and if I take this on I've got a bit of risk for my career, if it doesn't work and it's a lemon.”

Resistance to change

“There is a natural tendency for humans to try and resist change. The way to overcome this, and this is what I do in companies, is I form innovation circles, which is my equivalent of the old Japanese coffee circles. I try and get people to think about innovation and what are opportunities. I do more work in opportunity these days than in innovation quite frankly.”

Project teams

La Salle recommends creating small teams with members from a cross section of the company. “You allow them to meet once a fortnight for maybe half an hour, ideally at lunch time, you put on lunch. Give them an area of the business to work on, product, process, service, whatever, it doesn't matter, say, ‘Right, work on it for six months and in six months we'll have a competition and the winning team gets a weekend away with their partners,’ or whatever.” He says the return from this investment will be far higher than getting in a consultant to deliver a one-off talk. “I'll tell you now, if someone goes into a company and gives a one shot inspirational schpeal and walks out, I can promise you, nothing happens.”

You can read more about Roger La Salle on the Matrix Thinking website. You might also wish to watch La Salle's TED talk on Innovation.