REBEL practices to implement innovation initiatives #RebelJam15 #vanrompay #PNOFrance

THIS PRESENTATION HAS BEEN DONE 24-hr REBEL JAM WEBCAST HELD ON JUNE

26/27, 2015

Hello all of you all over the world.

So this is it… From a hot and sunny Paris evening, we start our « Rebel

practices to implement innovation initiatives ».

Thank you for being here….

Like you all know now, Rebel practices is all about doing things differently

to achieve something nice…. And I am going to tell you the things I did to

make it happen. Sometime versy unconventionnal… but that was the way

to get things done !

1Copyright ERIK VAN ROMPAY - June 26, 2015

So this session is about my experiences CHALLENGING THE STATUS QUO

Yes… I BREAK THE RULES

And I will SAY THE UNSAID

As you will learn…. I HAVE NO FEAR TO SERVE A CAUSE TO DO GOOD

WEBSITE OF CORPORATE REBELS : http://corporaterebelsunited.com/


First… innovation is hard as we have NEW UNKNOWN MARKETS – we have new

unknown technologies…

And everyone knows you. Your reputation limits the way you can act. If you are

known as an operations guy, it will be hard to start something radically new as people

don’t understand what you are doing.


And in most cases… you have a lack off things while the others have too much off…

You can have a lack of infrastructure… whiile historical player have already a nice

network in place. If you are in a large company, you have an internal infrastructure

that is slow and very rigid while on your mobile phone… you can have access to lots

of data at a swipe and a click.

Same thing for people… they can lack commitment, or they have too much

commitment. When I directed a startup company, my IT team was highly committed

to implement new things but they didn’t care at all about keeping the system going

down each day. We were leading edge but had no user-commitment at all.

Same thing for the portfoilio. To do the business you want to run, you have not

enough products or you have too much products. I never found a company that was

portfolio streamlined.

Reputation… nice to have one as this facilitates business for you – but also nice if you

have no reputation on the market as this can open new doors for you.

Same for Channels and Information… you lack them or you have too much of them.

Rare to find are companies that have the right size of volume.


CLARITY….

AS AN EXECUTIVE… YOU HAVE LOTS OF TOOLS AVAILABLE…. BUT WHICH ONE TO USE

???

WHICH KNIFE IS THE RIGHT ONE FOR THE THING I NEED TO CUT

WHICH SCREWDRIVER IS THE RIGHT ONE FOR THE THING I NEED TO FIX

IT IS ALL ABOUT CLARITY


So the thing is to find the right business tactic.

Finding the right balance of « doing things differently » and

« doing the right things right »

Finding the righ balance between « doing things in an

unconventional way – to get things done in a conventional

world »


From the start… you are in a loosing position as your reputation precedes

you.

The thing is… just make it work for you !


Or like Pablo Picasso once mentionned :


Some Sun Tzu wisdom…


We all know this from our tactical management lessons…. It is all about how to

fight.

So you have to do something difficult and in fact, it is not at all a question on what

to do but on the way you need to do it to get things done.

If you just look to all great battles… they are hardly frontal attacks. In most cases,

they are a sequence of different modes.

Bypassing a difficulty

Hitting the difficulty from the side

Guerrila attacks to undermine the difficulty

Encircle your difficulty..

I know… we all know that but why are we not implementing this ? Why don’t we use

the intelligence we have on the field ?

A good question… so now get to some of my field examples….


1995 –

2 elements : I had to lay of 50% of the staff and restructure completely

the company. Most people moved positions so impossible to do. Also

laying off 1 on 2 will create reactions and strikes.

So I announced that I would communicate my restructuring plan at 10

am in the morning. The evening before, I left on my desk a file

announcing I had to lay of 65% of the staff and that all wages had to be

cut by 10%.

So relying on the fact that they were spying me and got the information

during the night that was laying on my desk… I announced in the

morning I just had to kick of 50% of the staff (and not 65%), that I

repositioned the company and that this would take 3 months to do.

During those 3 months, everyone would have some training – those

that stayed and those that had to leave.


We were all going to fight to save each week an extra job… and that

could only be done through teamwork.

Conclusion : instead of strikes, angry unions… I got a team that was

following me. The layoff plan got executed smoothly.

Copyright ERIK VAN ROMPAY - June 26, 2015 11

1997 : I was COO in a large company with several difficulties.

We needed a new kind of internal support service but how to do that. First, we were

known as weak performers and as missing completely the Internet wave. So our

reputation was against us and if I implemented a website, people would say that we

were doing things wrong … building a website instead of solving our company

problems… just insane.

The solution : I made a deal with 3 developpers to create a website for our internal

support services. The website was calles « PIRATE » and we created a buzz that one

of our servers was hacked by some intelligent people.

People loved it as it had good information and at the same time, it was against the

establishment which was extremely nice.

After 3 weeks, and because too many people were wondering who were the pirates

behind this movement, I was obliged to tell them that we were the pirates.

So… we got a new image of being dynamic and at the same time, doing operational

things.


1998 – it was the early days of the Internet and Advertising.

So once again, our web site was up and running since 3 months, somme 200.000

pageviews a month – and the banners and sliders on our site brought in some

money but not enough so things had to change.

Result : we created a new homepage (nothing spectacular – it was more an excuse)

and we installed on 2 old desktops a robot that connected with a script to the

homepage, cleared the cookies and reconnected.

So instead of 200.000, we suddenly got 1 million pageviews per month. The price of

our banners and sliders got up and we send out a press release that we broke the

one million pageview per month barrier.

At the same time of the press release, we disconnected the robot and we got in the

next 30 days a nice « 800.000 page views » and we got 1,5 million pageviews 3

months later.

So yes, I cheated a little bit but it was for the good cause.


I am also glad that those things disappeared quickly.


Once again, it was about reputation management.

Our webportal was seen as unreliable, old, badperforming…. While we as IT guys,

were measuring nice performances. We also went on site in shopping malls to test

the user experience and all was OK.

So how can people complain while at the same time, you can’t find the problems.

As we had in reality 5 frontal machines and I decided to change the CSS of one of

those frontals. Roughly said, everything is the same but with one website

displaying the pages in different colors. We promoted it as a beta-site / still under

development but solving several bugs and performance issues. In reality… we

didn’t change anything – same machines, same software programs, same

databases… the only thing I did was creating a user exceptation.

Two days after the launch, everyone wanted to be on the what they called « new

infrastructure » as it was what they wanted. So we changed the CSS on all frontal

servers. Everyone was happy.

It was turning the bolts slightly to make a working thing an excepted thing.


2002 : board meeting where I had to present our annual numbers. And those were

once again very bad.

I decided to present just the 3 best contracts that gave us some interesting money.

It was like a race where you arrive in last position – so extremely bad – but where

you announce that you achieved the best lap time of the race indicating there was a

lot of nice things to be expected for the next months.

Result : with this partial perspective… - giving hope – the group gave us some extra

millions to continue.


2005 – I was president in an analytics consulting house.

For strategical reasons, we could enter a new market at that moment « Measuring

Mobile Usage » but we had to go fast. And of course, everything linked with

measuring a marketplace in France required the validation by a team of experts.

Going into that process would take us 9 to 12 months to get the definitions

settled… Much to long for us industrial people.

Result : I ceated my own way to measure mobile usage. Wrote the way down into a

2 page note and send that on August 5 to the office managing the expert team. As

all 3 people of the coordination office were on holiday… I could announce 2 weeks

later that noone expressed any concerns about my rules.

Result : we deployed it and it became instantly a kind of way to measure mobile

usage.

I got things done in 3 weeks instead of 9 months.


2006 – Another problem.

I executed a heavy restructuring program – with once again many layoffs and many

projects stopped.

One of the projects I had to kill was great… but I had to kill it.

6 months later, I saw an opportunity to convince my board to restart that project.

But how convince them as I kicked out the whole team ?

So I recruited 4 freelancers – very experienced people and we learned our roles. We

as 4 actors got in front of the board, presented our project. The marketing women

sold why people needed it, the IT guy the things we needed to create, the finance

women translated all numbers in operational step by step P&L pitch and the

inventor just for the visionary part.

Result : the board loved it, we got the money to start it and I recruited 4 real

professionals to replace my 4 actor. The job was done.


Last experience in the list, 2009.

I launched a pre-release of a social network for teachers but I didn’t know exactly

how to start. So I contacted several professional groups for their input –

mentionning of course that others were already testing and I created a kind of

discussion board.

So quickly, I had several people joining and giving comments. I also created some

« extremely simple webpages » to get the discussion rolling.

Each time, they brought in 15 extra people of their network so quickly, I got up to

500 active people on the social network (in total, I got 3500 people but only 500

connected each 3 days).

In fact… everyone was discussing about the product they wanted while in reality,

there was still no product.

With the growth rate… I got funded and could build the social network around

content for teachers.


Lesson learned : it was the community that created the specifications… I just

executed what they wanted.


Thank you very much for your attention.

Please feel free to connect.

Questions ?


REBEL practices to implement innovation initiatives #RebelJam15 #vanrompay #PNOFrance

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