1. Our Own Worst Enemy
Breaking Down the Mindsets that
Compromise Execution
2. Objective
• Innovation is not an easy toss over the fence to the core business
• There is a need to invest in building champions for an idea
• The investment in champions often takes the form of what we’re
not used to in business
To Understand:
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3. Key Takeaways
Why it is important to build
leadership engagement to enable
innovation
How to build bridges with those
needed to support execution
Understand ways to persuade
business owners to execute your
ideas
Why the mind-set is the greater
challenge (i.e., “the soft stuff is
the hard stuff”)
How these two different yet
complementary organizations are
collaborating to execute
innovation
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4. Meet The Team
Marla Hetzel
Director of Innovation, AARP Services, Inc.
About Marla
Marla is the director of innovation at AARP Services, Inc.,
which is the for-profit subsidiary of the nonprofit,
nonpartisan organization AARP that helps people 50 years of
age and older improve the quality of their lives. She leads a
collaborative innovation initiative with United Healthcare that
creates actionable product and service concepts that are
innovative and offer distinct new value to AARP members.
“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person
then.” Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
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5. Meet The Team
Jennifer Draklellis
Director of Innovation, United Healthcare
About Jennifer
Jennifer brings over 20 years of experience to shaping
UnitedHealthcare’s innovation strategy for the Medicare &
Retirement business segment. As a director of innovation,
she pioneers the development of new health management
solutions for people aged 50+ and works closely with AARP to
deliver groundbreaking health products and services to their
membership.
“Well-behaved women rarely make history.” Laurel Thatcher
Ulrich
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6. A Collaboration in Innovation
IMPACT
50+ Consumer
ACHIEVE
Growth
and
Retention
DEVELOP
Capabilities of
OrganizationsAARP/ASI
• Brand Trust
• Advocacy
• Expertise and
Knowledge on 50+
Consumer and Issue
Areas
UHG
• Data and Clinical
Expertise
• Health Care Delivery
• Technology
ACTIONABLE, SHARED PURPOSE
A COLLABORATION IN
INNOVATION
A COLLABORATIVE innovation
effort between ASI and UHG
established to make healthcare
better by LEVERAGING the
SHARED CAPABILITIES of the
organizations and ALIGNING
with strategic objectives in
order to CREATE ACTIONABLE
concepts that TRANSITION to
business owners.
SHARED CAPABILITIES
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7. Internal examination of strengths and
opportunities for improvement
Historical analysis of activity
and the impact of activity
Collected stakeholder feedback
Input fromthought leaders on innovation
The Innovation Team took
an informed approach to
developing a new way
forward.
Reflecting on the Journey
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9. “The Performance Engine: Companies are
Built for Efficiency, Not Innovation” –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pl1KTNA1
G0
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10. Operator Mindset
• Is uncomfortable with uncertainty,
ambiguity and risk
• Is able to make data-driven and analytical
decisions
• Works hard to be both accurate and
precise
• Works to avoid failure and reduce errors
to zero
• Is comfortable with uncertainty, ambiguity and risk
• Is able to make analytical or intuition-based
decisions (including “blink responses” based on
minimal information)
• Settles for order-of-magnitude estimates and does
not let precision exceed accuracy
• Sees failure as inevitable and even desirable (as long
as it happens fast/at low cost and one learns from it)
• Wins by maintaining flexibility/openness, and
preserving options
Innovator Mindset
Why aren’t we
better at
innovation?
Becoming
innovative
is HARD
Innovation is
IDEAS and
EXECUTION
Companies are
built for
efficiency, not
innovation
Why aren’t
organizations
designed for
innovation?
The Operator Mindset Drives the Performance Engine
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11. Decision Making Biases:
The Violation of Rational Principles
Action-Oriented
Overconfidence or
Competitor Neglect
Self-Interest
Inappropriate Attachments
or Misaligned Incentives
Pattern Recognition
Confirmation, False
Analogies, or Champion
Bias
Stability
Anchoring, Loss Aversion,
Sunk Cost Fallacy, or Status
Quo Bias
Social
Groupthink or Sunflower
Management
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12. Facilitating Execution
“When it comes to embracing a new
idea, most will demur unless you can
pack a parachute that will allow them to
jump safely from their (way of doing
things) to yours.”
Whitney Johnson, Harvard Business Review
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14. About Vernice
• I am from the Southeast
• I attend church at least once a week
• My community is very important to me
• I am the head of my household
• I am trying to lose weight
• I have some college education
• I have some level of dissatisfaction with
my health
• I am active on social networks like
Facebook
• I have tried various weight-loss
programs
• I have children
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15. Tell a Human Centered Story – a
video of our persona Vernice
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16. tt
Identify Potential Landing Zones
In MulticulturalLeadership,we are:
• Focused on increasing awareness of AARP among multicultural
audiences nationally and locally and engaging them in programs,
activities and membership,
• Telling the AARP story in a culturally relevant way that benefits and
enhances the quality of life for 50+ multicultural America,
• Focused on embedding multiculturalism into all we do at AARP –
that means adapting the AARP experience so it aligns with
multicultural audiences, and
• Available to work with all staff to ensure that AARP’s efforts have
maximum impact for these audiences.
EdnaKane-Williams,
SVP Multicultural
Leadership
Look for Common Goals
FeedingHungryPeople50+ and Developing SustainableSolutions for the
RootCauses of Hunger
• AARP Foundation's Food Security team is committed to helping nearly 9
million older people obtain food security by redefining hunger as a health
issue and mobilizing food companies, health insurers, community
organizations and others to help foster sustained solutions. Our initiatives
are based on three principal solutions:
• Educate:Increase awareness and understanding of older adult hunger and
food security through ongoing research and awareness programs.
• Extend:Consolidate, integrate and leverage efforts by organizations,
industry and government agencies to address gaps and challenges in more
efficient, focused and prioritized manner.
• Elevate: Bringing together key experts who work across the food supply
chain to develop new market-driven pathways that can increase access to
safe, affordable and nutritious food.
Jim Lutzweiler,
VP Impact
Programs-Hunger
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