“There’s A Department That Does That”

Last night I had dinner with “MM,” the senior brand manager for a huge global product that most of us use every day.  In fact, the company MM works for manufactures more than a dozen products most of us use within the first few hours of the morning, every morning.

His company’s mastered the the rhythms of our daily routines and programmed itself into our behavior.  In the process, it’s locked itself into its own corporate routines, believing that even the slightest deviation will throw off margins. 

We got to talking about how to get things done inside such big corporations, how innovation actually happens instead of just getting talked about on a blog.

Often, we see a good or great idea die on the vine because “there’s a department  that does that.” 

“Well,” MM said, “Guess what?  That new thing we wanted to try?  There is no department that does that.”

Instead, there are departments who should do that, pretend to do that, and don’t want you to do that.

MM had a pretty good take on this.  So I wrote it down:
 


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