Short clip: Verizon CIO: Quick failures, generate quick learning

October 7, 2009, 11:24am PDT | Length: 00:02:00
Shadman Zafar, CIO of Verizon Telecom, talks about how focusing on the growth of the company acts as a great incentive for employees to innovatively come up with ideas and create new business cases around those ideas.

Transcript

Short clip: Verizon CIO: Quick failures, generate quick learning

>> What are some of the keys to innovation then when it comes to IT? Specifically how do you promote innovation and creativity within your organization when you know a lot of the time people are focused on getting the job done for the day?

>> Well I'll tell you one thing creativity is a funny thing that when you bring and give our people an opportunity to be creative they will go above and beyond the call of duty to do that because then the job that's when the job becomes fun. You want to do extra to bring your creativity out. It's almost like you know doing art. So what we do is the fact that IT teams are focused on actually doing and focusing on the growth for the business it's a great incentive for a lot of our employees to innovatively come up with ideas, submit those ideas and create new business cases around those. So what I promote is couple of things. Number 1 is we ask people continuously that you know don't just do what you are being told but promote, get into the business, propose ideas so as many ideas come from ITT invest from business teams for the new opportunities in the business, so that's number 1. Number 2 is you give an opportunity for people to try and fail quickly. It's quick failures which are important as opposed to coming up with grand, big programs that takes multi years to do and after that you have a 50/50 chance anyways if it goes one way or the other.

>> Why do you say the quick failures are important?

>> Because that generates quick learning in the organization. You learn this is right idea, this is a quick course corrections allows you to be fast in the market, fast in the market and course corrected to get to the right solution.

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====

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