Stimulate innovation, cherish your red monkeys

To survive, companies have to reinvent themselves and innovate heavily. But how do you organise that? By giving room to the ‘red monkeys’ within your company, says UC Group founder Pascal van Beek. In this blog he explains what he means by this and how he also applies the innovation model successfully within UC Group.

Every company once began as a start-up. Someone had an idea for a product or service, tested it with a first customer and then built a company around it. This sounds simple but is anything but. Of all the start-ups that are founded, only eight per cent last more than five years! Only a fraction reaches the scale-up phase and then two thirds of that group drop out again before the tenth anniversary is reached. So hats off to all the companies in the Netherlands that have existed for more than ten years and that, through good entrepreneurship and very hard work, have grown into mature organisations where people enjoy working.

New innovation curve

Unfortunately, that does not mean that companies can now sit back because they were so successful in the past. However fine a company you have built, past success is less and less a guarantee for the future. We are in a transition phase towards a new era, professor of ‘transition studies’ Jan Rotmans stated during our INEX event. Under pressure from the climate, energy and raw materials crises, supply chains need to be overhauled. Companies will have to reinvent themselves by starting an innovation curve comparable to when they were a start-up. The problem is that as an organisation they are not (or no longer) set up for this at all.

Organisational model no longer works

Companies with a certain degree of maturity often use an organisational model like the one developed at companies such as Ford at the beginning of the last century. Processes are split into tasks that can be carried out by unskilled operators, and managers make sure that everything goes according to plan. And as efficiently as possible! This model works fine in a stable, predictable environment, but falls short as soon as circumstances begin to change. In the dynamic and disruptive market we are in now, such a command & control principle is actually counterproductive. It is focused purely on efficiency and makes employees blind to anything outside their own company.

Red and grey monkeys

But what is a good model for an innovative organisation that adapts to the changing demands of the market? According to learning & development guru Jef Staes, it is a model in which people are encouraged to look beyond the walls of their own company. A model with people who are open to the outside world and arrive at new and fresh ideas there. Staes calls these people the ‘red monkeys’, the monkeys that differ from the ‘grey monkeys’ in an organisation and have the courage to do things very differently for once. Red monkeys are in contact with other ecosystems to gain inspiration there, while the grey monkeys, of which there are many more, are turned inwards. They are stuck in the existing business processes and company culture.

Pioneers needed too

An innovative, future-proof organisation should not consist of grey monkeys, but not of red monkeys alone either. You also need people who can give a new idea substance and turn it into a working model or product. These people are called pioneers and have different skills again from the red or the grey monkeys. Only when the pioneers have forged a red monkey's new idea into a working whole do the grey monkeys come into the picture. As soon as they see that something can be done differently, and better, they will adopt a change of their own accord. The red monkeys initiate, the grey monkeys follow.

Facilitate entrepreneurship

Within UC Group we firmly believe in this innovation model. We therefore explicitly encourage our consultants and interim professionals to behave like red monkeys. What do they see happening at our clients? What new types of products or services do they need? Could we as UC Group perhaps respond to this? From the back office and the rest of UC Group, this entrepreneurship is encouraged and facilitated in every possible way. This regularly leads to new products, such as recently the CO2 reporting tool Loginex, which is then shared with the organisation via our tribes. In this way our ‘grey monkeys’ are also informed and made enthusiastic about applying the new services themselves from now on.

The world is in transition and that calls for sustainable, circular business models and innovative ideas. Within a traditional command & control structure those ideas will not arise; for that you need red monkeys. Make sure you employ them and give them the room to be entrepreneurial. Accept failures but share successes with the grey monkeys so that they also get on board. You cannot force innovations, but you can make sure they arise. Staes's innovation model is a proven instrument for that.

Want to know more?

Would you like to know more about innovation models and how you can implement them within your company? Then feel free to contact us. We are happy to tell you about our experiences and can certainly help you to get your company ready for the future too.