Mediocrity is relative, so it's not usually something that can be monitored. You can monitor the people you put in charge of leading your business, however.

Innovation is rarely the reason companies fail, but when it is, it tends to be a acute failure. On the flip-side, mediocrity is like a chronic sickness that will kill a company, but can keep it alive for decades.

I'm usually hired to help guide marketers toward achieving their goals by improving user experience. However, doing this can sometimes lead me down a path I was never expecting to go.

Late last year, a major Canadian financial institution hired me to improve online customer experience. It started off as a great project, they had huge budgets, and have been stagnant for years - so they were focused on getting it done right, over getting it done fast.

I'm now involved with a inter-departmental restructure, and the distribution of talent. When I started the project, I never thought I'd be involved with something like this, but I feel very lucky to be able to be a part of it.

Although I'm not allowed to reveal the name of the financial institution, I've been authorized to share some key learnings, and solutions to issues that ran much deeper than a mediocre online customer experience.

Insight #1 - The organization has too much red-tape to be innovative.

Solution: Institue TOMB protocol

Description: To enable innovation from every corner of the organization, I worked along side an ethnographic research firm to identify key barriers to achieving this goal. We created the TOMB protocol to expedite potential issues, and ensure those issue don't prevent forward thinking & innovation.

TOMB stands for: Technology, Operations, Minority customers, and Budget. Essentially, there are interdepartmental directors that facilitate the TOMB protocol, which can be used to identify concerns without placing restrictions on a concept. Whether there be technological concerns, operational/ organization concerns, concerns regarding minority customers, or budgetary concerns, the TOMB protocol can be used to ensure a concept can make it through the red-tape without being shot-down or diluted.

Cutting through the red-tape doesn't mean a concept will actually make it to implementation, but it's surprising how much money, time, and resources can be made available for good ideas that might never have gotten past gate-keepers.

Insight #2 - Jaded business leads are relying on outdated thinking to inhibit innovation.

Solution: The 3-Year Glitch

Description: I'm not sure if this is as pervasive as I think it is, but it was definitely a big issue in this company. Many business leads have held their positions for decades, while producing mediocre results. They weren't doing anything that would require disciplinary action, but they weren't doing anything that required recognition. They were meeting their goals; many seemed to be struggling to even do that. We found out the reason was the goals were often set on market analysis that put very little weight on the decisions made by the business lead. As long as they maintained the status-quo their goals should be achieved.

So, when business analysts and external consultants were hired to identify how the business could move to the next level, many business leads resisted any suggestions that put the status-quo at risk. I actually used a quote I took from a business leads email correspondence to her business analyst to explicitly illustrate this point: "Well, yes, we NEED to get better, but we don't want to change anything substantial to do it."

This helped us to pass a new HR policy called The 3-Year Glitch. Essentially, once a business lead has held their position for 3 years, they will be moved to lead a new part of the business. We created a series of programs that supported this in terms of training, peer reviews, mentoring, skills/ interest analysis; but essentially, after holding a position as a business lead for 3 years, you got to own a different piece of the business. The rationale was that the open-mindedness of business leads within the first three years of holding the position, encourages innovation, discourages mediocrity, and fosters trust & reliance on subject matter experts & consultants.

Insight #3 - Fear of failure is causing inter-departmental sabotage

Solution: Transparent Non-Departmental Bonus Structure

Description: This one still hasn't passed, but is being presented to the board of directors. The issue we identified was that business leads were deflecting potential failure by transferring issues to other departments. An example was, rather than improving recruitment & training for call centre representatives; the business lead for online customer service buried contact numbers. Although this might help short-term figures in the sense that there's fewer calls, and less of a requirement to have staff available to take calls; it eventually will lead to customer dissatisfaction, or a branch visit. Either way, the offset cost, is simply a band-aid solution for an overwhelmed call centre. So, instead of rewarding the business lead for saving money in his department, we'd penalize the entire corporation if the bottom-line fell.

This suggestion has a substantial appendix of methodologies to improve collaboration, communication, and team work among different departments. Essentially, we want to enable employees to identify root-causes of issues & ideate innovative solutions. With regards to the call centre issue; we'd prefer the business to put the contact numbers up-front, and staff properly. Ideally, some of the collaboration methodologies should help him identify that the root cause of an overwhelmed call centre is because of unclear communications, lack of self-serve options online, and improperly trained customer service representatives. These would all be actionable items that could increase profit for the entire company.

Although these three insights & solutions are specifically designed for one large financial institution, many of the principles can be applied to any size company, from any discipline. I know that some of these solutions don't contain enough detail to be implementable, but I'm not writing this article to provide you with specific, actionable, solutions - but am writing to (hopefully) inspire you to join the fight against fear-based mediocrity. If you have business leads who're afraid of a lower bonus, losing their job, or just being blamed; you're encouraging fear-based mediocrity.

I encourage you to find solutions. If anyone else has run into issues like this, I encourage you to share them & share solutions you think could correct the problem.

Obviously, not all companies are willing to change; but those that are open to it are setting themselves up for success.

@thejordanrules