The Rise Above Podcast EP: 6 Ally Muller

Innovation Leader, Speaker, Author, Founder & Managing Director of an Innovation Consulting Agency Ally Muller joins Bram Bains on this episode of The Rise Above Podcast. Ally talks about modern day Innovation in 2021, shares some stories that illustrate a modern day approach to Innovation, and speaks about her book - Corporate Innervation: Unlocking the Genius Inside Your Organization.  

Follow us on Instagram @TheRiseAbovePodcast

***

Update June 15 2021:

I just received my copy of Ally’s book in the mail and I realize that I mistakenly referred to the book as Corporate Innervention in the Podcast...Sometimes I write too fast and I can’t read my own writing.

The correct title of the book is Corporate Innervation: Unlocking the Genius Inside Your Organization. 

Just wanted to take a moment to put up the link for anybody interested in purchasing the book and taking a deeper dive into Ally’s work and theory surrounding Innovation in the Corporate space!

Link to purchase book:

https://www.amazon.ca/Corporate-Innervation-Unlocking-genius-organisation/dp/1922391042/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Corporate+innervation&qid=1623763261&sr=8-1

Follow us on Instagram @TheRiseAbovePodcast for bonus content - Be sure to pay it forward and share it with a friend!

************************************************************

Interview Transcript

[00:36] Bram: Welcome everybody to episode number six of the rise above podcast. Today I've got a very special guest Ally Mueller. Ally is an innovation leader. Ally is a speaker. Ally is the author of corporate intervention, unlocking the genius inside your organization. Ally is the founder and managing director of Goya Consulting. Ally, how are you doing today?

[00:59] Ally: Good, thank you. Thank you for having me on.

[01:02] Bram: You're very welcome. Thank you for agreeing to do this. We're definitely getting into a few fun things here today to get the ball rolling. I do have some icebreakers here for you. The floor is all yours. Feel free if you want to answer a short, simple, or if you want to elaborate on anything, it's all yours. What is your favorite movie?

[01:24] Ally: Well, it's a tough one cause I'm a bit of a cinephile. but my favorite movie is actually Casablanca and I know a lot of people love that, but I actually thinkthat's a perfectly written and executed story. That's why it's my favorite.

[01:41] Bram: Classics. Awesome. Okay. Aside from your own, what is your favorite book?

[01:47] Ally: My favorite book, well, I love reading novels, so I really love the book Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. That's something I read when I was in high school and something I reread quite regularly. I really love it.

[02:01] Bram: Awesome. Okay. What is your favorite place to travel?

[02:06] Ally: I really love France. I've been there probably about 22 times. I think it is. I am looking forward to this post COVID world, so I can get back there and do a bit more travel. I just love traveling through the countryside and speaking the language and eating the foods. All those beautiful things.

[02:27] Bram: Who are some of your mentors or influences?

[02:31] Ally: Some of my mentors and influences, I've got some people that I worked with in Australia, some personal mentors, and things like that. They've certainly helped me on my journey. In terms of looking for a wide audience, I'm always looking to many different people and many different things. I don't like to narrow it down into just one set of people. I really love the work of Simon Sinek. I think that is really great, but it's really only one aspect. I like to couple that up with the work of people like Renee Brown and what they've done in that space.

Then if we think about, what people like Michael Porter have done at Harvard University and how they've brought management theory to life in a whole different way and giving it a really strategic perspective. I like to look at all the different pieces of work that people have done and put it together like that. I don't really get into people that are probably a connaissance, so much in the business world. I think we can get away from that a little bit. I think I'm just a bit more grounded in the theory of what people doing. That's what I like to read about.

[03:51] Bram: Are you a morning person or a night person?

[03:57] Ally: Both actually, it sounds to like, I get up really early. I love to get up really early and I love to exercise and, fuel my day with some coffee. I'm a huge coffee fan. Then, I love to work really hard all day. Then, after I've done the family thing and all that type of stuff, I'm still up at night. I'm either, thinking about something or I'm reading a novel because that's my time to read something that's non business related. I suppose I'm doing a bit of both. Burning the candle at both ends, which probably isn't a great thing for an entrepreneur, but that's me.

[04:28] Bram: What is your favorite type of food?

[04:30] Ally: My favorite type of food. Depends on the day, I really like either some really authentic Mexican with some good quality tequila or some Japanese, depending on that. That's probably my two go-tos.

[04:52] Bram: Nice. Okay. What is the most out of character thing that you've ever done?

[05:00] Ally: Well, that's a really hard question. I don't really know, actually. I've done lots of different things in my life. I've done everything from music, dancing, snowboarding to everything. I'm not sure what would be out of character for me. I'll give anything a go. That's probably me.

[05:17] Bram: Awesome. Okay. If you could be immortal, what age would you stop aging and why?

[05:23] Ally: I think I would stop aging at about 40. When I turned 40, which is not that long ago. I'm not too old yet. Because I feel like that's when I started to really embody who I am as a woman and all the wisdom that I developed over time and really started to feel comfortable in who I am. That would probably be the time to stop aging right there. 

[05:48] Bram: If you could go back to being 10 years old with all the knowledge you have now, or if you could skip ahead to the year 2030 with $20 million, what would you do and why?

[06:04] Ally: I think I'd go back to the little ten-year-old girl. Money can be earned, but wisdom can be relearned in different ways. I'd go back to the 10-year-old girl. I'd tell her not to stop writing. She stopped writing for a period of time and thought she needed to be something else. I think I'd go back to my 10-year-old self and tell her to keep up with her creative writing. 

[06:26] Bram: Nice. Okay. If you could travel anywhere in the world or if you could visit the moon, which one would you choose?

[06:35] Ally: I think I'd see the world.

[06:38] Bram: Awesome. Okay. Some really goodanswers in there. Some gems I think we might touch on a little bit later. Thank you for going through that exercise. I'd love to hear your story Ally. I know you're the founder there of Goya Consulting. You're in the innovation space. Can you share your path that led you to start this company? 

[07:03] Ally: Sure, absolutely. It's a bit of a way with journey actually. Might need a cup of coffee for this one. It's a bit long. But the reality is, I have done many different things over the course of my career, and I think that that's what led me to be really good at what we do and starting a business that helps large organizations innovate. The core purpose of Goya Consulting is we help large organizations and leadership teams build innovation ecosystems so that they can take their ideas from Genesis into something that creates bottom line value. 

This isn't just about the whole ideation thinking process. This is about everything along the journey. We build a whole systemize and process flow for them but getting there is a really interesting journey because I come via way of, I started my career in politics. I started in a graduate program working for a politician who was the leader of the house in Australia and working in an advisory model in that space. Which is really different, which took me to London, which I worked for a minister in the house of Lords in London doing quite a similar thing.

That entailed lots of research, lots of advice, lots of politics which is very different. Just by chance, and by luck, I was offered an opportunity to work on really large infrastructure projects. What would it look like to lead a team of people in a world first project? I was like, why would they want me to do that? You know, why would I not do that? But also, I was all of 23. I had older bravado in the world, and I thought, sure, why not? I'll give this a go. I had the mindset of there's nothing I'm not willing to learn. There's nothing I'm not willing to research, have a go at ask. I went from there into being an infrastructure, public private partnership, finance expert.

From there, I went into investment banking. From there I came back to Australia, and I was working in the banks over here. I was doing corporate structured finance. Then from there I went into mergers and acquisitions. I got an opportunity for someone to say to me, would you come and work on a startup with me? It was at that point that I was really tired of what I was doing. I felt that it was a little soulless. Sure, you can earn a great way and lots of money, but that wasn't enough for me. I want a full life with everything that goes along with that. I was given the opportunity to do something that I was really passionateabout, which is around sustainability. 

We started up a sustainability startup, which was focused on how we were accessing government funding and grant money that couldn't be used in other ways and what we were doing to leverage that in the commercial market, to create solar opportunities and sustainable energy ventures in ways that we weren't able to do before. I really loved that and I thought that was fascinating and fun. Then I took a break and had a family and realized that I couldn't really go back to that in the way that I was previously doing, because I wanted to make sure I'm here for my daughter and I'm doing lots of things with her. 

I wanted to rebalance my time. I got an opportunity for one of the companies that I previously worked at one of the major banks and they said, what would it look like for you to come back and build some of your models for us? SureI can do that. I can help you spend your money. That's really what it was about. We've got a really large bucket of money, but we've got a desire to do projects that's double the amount that's in that bucket. How are we going to build, decide, prioritize, and ensure that we hit our targets. 

I started to build some structural organizational models for them and some processes. Then that got me on my own startup journey. I did a couple more startups and sold them. Some did really, really well. Some we just sort of got to even, and some didn't fit [inaudible 11:35 not so bad. Then at that point I decided that I could never go back and be an employee ever again. I'm an entrepreneur through and through. I want to do lots of different things. Then I started a business that I had before this one, which was around venture capital investments process around that. That was really fun, really enjoyed that. But venture capital in itself can also be a little soulless. It's also a little unforgiving from time to time and it wasn't giving me what I wanted basically from a soul perspective. 

Then I realized that where my true genius is, I do believe everybody has a genius and it's how we tap into it and find it, is that part of my genius is how do I help organizations do this in a particular way so that they can achieve the same results that we were and therefore unlock the genius that's already sitting inside their organizations. So that they can build innovation ecosystems that actually makesense that make money. They stopped looking to different outside replication style sources because it's never a shortage of ideas. You've already got the genius inside. It's how we bring it to life. How we make it happen and how we create the right processes to make sure it truly works inside the organization. 

I can talk with them about that because there's totally different rules for innovation. It's how we teach organizations that. That's my long-winded journey on why I started Goya Consulting, why it makes me so happy. It makes me soul happy. If that makes sense, because I spend my day helping other people find their genius and I spend my days showing innovation leaders how to do that for the people that they're leading inside their organization. I don't think there's anything better than that for me.

[13:37] Bram: Wow. I love it. That's a great story. I mean, I think you've got all kinds of amazing background that led you towards this path, which is great. I can see this smile in your face when you speak about it. It's definitely something you're passionate about. I can feel that energy and I think that's amazing. What does the process look like? Like getting a little tactical here for a moment. When you're entering into an organization you've been hired to come in and help them set up this framework, what does your process look like? What do you try to establish first in terms of a framework before you can start tapping in and mining some of those ideas?

Well, we've actually built something. We've got two things actually. We've built the theoretical strategic framework, which we call the corporate innovation operating system. We've also built software to match that. Because there's an understanding that we need those two flows. Part of what we do from a strategic and framework perspective is we need to align the organization on what innovation truly is. Part of the first step is having that mission knowledge inside the organization, the leaders, the people, the board, the CEO, everybody, which is around what actually isinnovation, and what innovation is not. 

Then what is the mission that we're here to do. The purpose that we're here to deliver on, as part of this organization. And what are we willing to work through to make that happen? Because one of the things that we need to do first and foremost is we actually need to debunk a lot of those myths. Which is that, we can just replicate something and call that innovation, or we can buy new technology systems and call that innovation.

Or we can say that we're doing digital transformation and working from home and calling that innovation, but let's be clear, none of that is innovation. Somebody else already created that. We are implementing amazing ideas, technologies, and solutions in our businesses to become more efficient, to become better at what we do or to become more connected, whatever the case may be. When we do that and we call it innovation, what we do is we do a couple of things. First and foremost, we turn off the people inside the organization. They say, these guys aren't really interested in innovation.

They're just going to tick the box because it's a trendy fun word, and I also say it's a bit of a buzzword that we almost need to stop using because it's almost become one of those foul four little words that don't mean anything anymore. Then secondly, we're not really understanding what we're doing if we say that. Like, what do we really want out of this? That becomes a bit of a challenge for people, because then they don't know how to deliver their ideas then. Then thirdly, we create a combination of things. We create learned helplessness inside the organization, by saying, if I buy that new thing, I can be innovative.

Or we create laziness in our thinking. We don't have to create. We don't have to think outside, all the different challenges. We don't have to dig into our core customer problems and work out how to fix them if we can buy it off the shelf from somewhere else. We try and get rid of that process and build a new thinking process around culture around that.

Part of that is doing what we call getting rid of innovation theater. Anything that's not truly contributing to innovation really has to go. You kind of have to put that in the bin and think about how we're going to reinvigorate that. Then what we also need to do is once we've done that is we need to get the leadership and the business systems online to say innovation plays by different rules. You can't expect an innovation idea to operate in the same business model, prioritization, budget framework, strategic thinking model that you do for every other piece of work that you do. 

It is not business as usual. It is not fully formed and thought out, and we don't know exactly what's going to happen yet. We don't know how much it's going to cost. We definitely don't know what the benefits might look like as yet. We need to build a separate operating model inside the organization to do that, to make sure that the ideas that we want to do from a strategic perspective are flowing, and the innovation ideas that we need to do from the other areas are also flowing. And we're testing out what's going to actually make sense for the organization.

Because if we try and mash it together, we're going to start comparing apples and cows. Those cows, which are the innovations are never going to stand up. They're never going to get budget. They're never going to get resources and they're never going to get the time that they need and deserve to see if they might actually work. That's part of what we do to start the process. Then that whole innovation what would I call it? Critical innovation flow throughout corporate innovation operating system is quite a large piece of work, but it creates a whole new methodology inside the organization that sets it up for huge amounts of success.

[19:09] Bram: Nice. Okay. I take it that your political background comes in very handy here with all the different stakeholders as you're trying to set something new up.

[19:19] Ally: Sometimes. But I wouldn't say I'm very good at that. Quite interestingly enough, I don't really like to play that game. I'm really just a straight shooter. I will say exactly what it is. I'm not looking to do anything other than how do we actually get the best out of this? How do we do this to say, if we do this, these are the benefits, but I think the finance mathematical brain in me that sits in there really well, it's like, what happens if we don't do it? What is the cost of not doing this? I have stories and examples of what is the cost of not doing this. What I tend to do is talk to the boards and leadership teams, and I tell them the real-life examples. I'll give you one right now of an organization that I worked with. They were a very large infrastructure organization.

Obviously, that entails that they have heavy amounts of compliance that they need to work with. They're working with regulatory bodies and plants. Most people say ah, boring. That's not very exciting. You know, these are the things that we need to do. There was a team of compliance experts inside that organization that were quite frustrated with the way that they needed to work at that point. It wasn't very efficient. They came up with a number of different ways that they believed that they could do it better that it would be more efficient, and they would get much better outcomes for the organization.

They put business case forward year after year, they wrote business models. They did some financial modeling. They did some cost assessments. They couldn't get it up in the budget process year on year. It's just one of those things. In their mind it was not as sexy, not as fun as some other projects. They decided to do something about it. They knew they really had an idea. They took a punt, and they left the organization. They pull their funds; they hired a series of really savvy tech developers. They built software as a service compliance model program that they ended up selling back as a subscriber to that organization. They really created something. The best part of that was, they actually then became the world standard of what needs to happen in this particular infrastructure industry around the world. 

They became the gold standard. I always say to people, what happens, what would have happened if you'd have kept those people inside the organization? Sure. You know, like you, might've had a software product. You may have chosen to license that to others or you may not. But you have had a significant amount of IP on your book, and you would have kept those brains inside the organization. That's something that's now lost forever. Good on them for following their dreams, but what did the organization lose by not listening? And that's what we try and teach them all the time.

[22:24] Bram: It's a great example. Through your experience and all of the different organizations that you've worked with, what is that gap there between the employees with the ideas and the decision makers that they're not communicating the same way, or they're not understanding what the idea is? Is there anything specific that maybe you can highlight for A organizations in the future, not to miss those opportunities or B for those employees with the ideas, to be able to communicate them more effectively and to the right people.

[23:00] Ally: There are some really significant gaps. These are things that we see all the time. They can come up in a number of different ways. One of the ways that we see this idea gap happen is that a lot of organizations are onto this now. They believe in innovation. They see it as part of their core value for delivering on their future mission. They have portals, receptacles, whatever you want to call it, to gather innovation ideas. 

The challenge is that it's decided by quite often, one person. There's usually one innovation lead, one innovation manager. That singular perspective can be a really significant problem because there's always going to be a bias in our individual's brains. Quite often the other really large gap is organizations haven't hired the right person to be the innovation manager. This is quite a controversial conversation that we have with organizations a lot.

we step into organizations and they say, I've got this entrepreneur, I've got this tech person or whatever. It is a really startup type of mentality person to be an innovation lead. But that's actually the wrong type of person that you need in that role. I've got a whole chapter dedicated to who an innovation leader should actually be. We need to think of them as the coach, the lead, the guide, the mentor. Not necessarily the decision maker, because what we're trying to do is we need to think of all the people inside our organization who have all these beautiful genius ideas. 

We kind of need to treat them like athletes. The innovation leader is like a coach. The coach isn't running on to the track in the Olympic games. The coach is standing on the sidelines because it's shown them how to compete, how to train, how to manage their diet, how to do everything in that place, so that when they get on there, that they can perform to that elite level. That's what we need to be doing at that point. The other problem that we see in the massive ideas gap is that organizations want innovation. They have an innovation leader, and one of the problems that innovation leaders, general managers, whatever, when they come and speak to me, they say, I've been given this amazing role, and I'm going to do innovation. I'm going to do all these wonderful things. I've got zero budget. What can you do with zero budget? 

You can't really turn these ideas into anything. You're trying to create something from nothing. You're borrowing time from people, resources and other areas of the business to try and turn an idea into something. Quite often, it's really hard to do, and therefore it fails. Then what happens is people say, oh, nothing's going to happen. I'm not going to give you my idea, because what are you going to do with it? Nothing's going to happen with it. We have those really significant gaps. There are more, and I could probably talk all day. But they're the two major ones in really large organizations at the moment.

[26:13] Bram: Well, that's a great answer. I like that the athletes and the coach concept. Can we just rewind a little bit? I wanted to ask you to define innovation. I know you kind of touched on what it is not, what would you define as modern day innovation in 2021.

[26:33] Ally: Modern day innovation from an organizational corporate perspective is something new that creates value. What I like to do is add on to that, and it creates value for a customer, not forgetting that a customer can be an internal customer or an external customer. Why I like to add that in is because quite often, when we look to innovation, we're so busy trying to do something from an external perspective. We forget that our internal customers are just as important as our external customers, because if we can help the business do everything it needs to do internally better. Then we in effect help those people that service those external customers better and more efficiently. I know you said you are working in insurance and it's exactly that. If we can clean up all of our backend, that allows all the claims management, the money management and everything that goes along from that perspective, to give a better experience to the customer.

Ideally what we need to do is not only think of new ideas for customers to make it better for them but give them a seamless process in the background. I like to think about innovation as new things that add value. I say new things because efficient things should be put into business efficiency and different things. That's how we separate those things. We think we need to do both, but new is new and making it streamlined and more efficient because we're adopting different processes or new technologies is business efficiency. Because they are two different things and two different ways of thinking.

[28:23] Bram: What role should senior executives play in innovation?

[28:29] Ally: I like to see this as what I call it top down, bottom up. Senior executives need to play a role of a visionary vision offices in the innovation space. Point us in the direction that we need to go give us our strategic objectives and show us where the long-term future in your mind of this organization is. Then where necessary take a step back, because the ideas are going to be coming from the bottom up. Those senior executives need to take on those coach guidance mentoring roles, as well.

As opposed to the owners of the ideas. They need to support guide and when necessary provide the guard rails to make sure we're operating in the strategic objective, because we need the ideas to come from the bottom up. Because they're the people that are doing the work every day. They see our customers every day. They're doing the workaround on the problems, the challenges, and the issues that we've already got. Because they see our customer internal and external every day, they can see the future of where something could go. 

How do we tap into their genius and their thinking? That's the role of the senior people, is to give them the opportunity, the space, the guidance, the time, the processes, to allow them to test their genius in that space.

[30:02] Bram: From the bottom up, the frontline where all the gold is laying, waiting to be mined. What are some strategies around getting those employees to engage and getting people involved and starting to get the conversations going? Starting from zero? How do you get the ball rolling? Do you have any do you have any strategies and pipelines that you create?

[30:26] Ally: Yeah, that's actually something that we do a lot of. We do create those strategies and pipelines. To be honest, we come into organizations where these people are a bit jaded. They're like, oh, we've heard this before. You're not going to do anything with my idea are you? These are things I hear every day. One of the things that we have to do is get them used to putting them into a separate type of innovation process. This is not like giving it to our team leader or a manager anymore. We're putting it into an investment process. That's how I view it in innovation investment process, which is how it's being assessed in a completely different way than they've ever had before. If someone has provided an idea into that, I want to bring them into the process.

If we can, and if we can support that process, we either bring them into an incubation team to help deliver on that idea or we help them become the subject matter expert for collaboration of information, depending on how we need to operate in that space. I never let them go from the idea. Once they've given us an idea, they're with me on the whole journey, and that creates a different culture. It shows that they've added value and it gives them a little bit of satisfaction. They can see that, hey, something really happened with this idea. This wasn't just something that somebody took away and took some credit for. 

They become part of that holistic team that is delivering value back to the organization. It's also knowing that it's never one person that brings an idea to life. It is a huge number of people. It's how we bring them into an entire team to create value. Then we give credit and recognition and rewards to that team in that space. It takes time. It's not something that happens straight away. You know, we do have those cynical behaviors to get past because they [inaudible 32:24] heard it before. No one's going to be thinking, this is just going to be the golden ticket to innovation. But it's how we work through that slowly and change that culture. It does take time.

[32:39] Bram: Yeah, that's true. I mean, changing a culture that can definitely take quite some time. It's a very long process, perhaps at least to get the ball rolling. Then once some of those successes start happening, I think people start to really change their mindset and get more active and involved. That makes sense. A couple of key things you said there. You mentioned throughout the conversation about finding genius, what does that look like in terms of finding individual genius? 

[33:11] Ally: Well, for me, it's about knowing that you never know where the ideas might come from, and everybody's got a little bit of something inside them and an idea it's just whether they're ready to talk about it at that point. How do we then work with them to show them that they are actually capable of going through a full process and an innovation process to enact that? We've got all the tools, the thinking processes. We've got everything. We've got massive toolkits of how we work with organizations, but it's taking that to an individual level and showing that just because they had an idea that doesn't mean they need to leave it there.

They can actually do something with it. The other side to the genius is that quite often people think of ideas in alternate areas of the organization, from where they work. Somebody who's in claims might think of a new idea for a sales management software solution, or something like that. We've had all sorts of different things come together with us, and especially in the banking and finance insurance world, which is something that we work within. It's how we tap into that and bring them together with other people to build collaborative teams and show them how to have some strategic conversations and build up those thinking tools. 

Then we can tap into that genius and then we can show them how to run an incubation process and keep them on the journey all the way through. Then they've gone from, oh, I might've just been a claims processor, but for whatever time during the week or the day, I get to build out some thinking over here and we're elevating, creating, and making people have greater skills for the future in what they do. That's what I call tapping into their genius. Because you never know what you might find.

[35:07] Bram: Very true. I like that. Ally, if there's anybody out there listening, they want to get in touch with you. They would like to get some more information. What is the best way to contact you?

[35:22] Ally: Just shoot me an email at [email protected]. Or you can actually pick up a copy of my book, which is called innovation on Amazon. You can read that and then, yeah, shoot me an email. I'll always reply. I'm always interested in hearing what other people have to say. I think we just need to expand this conversation. Please get in touch.

[35:47] Bram: Definitely get in touch with Ally. Pick up a copy of the book again, the name of the book is called corporate intervention, unlocking the genius inside of your organization. Ally, thank you so much for your time. This was episode number six of the rise above podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. Be sure to share it with a friend, share it with somebody that you think it may benefit. Until next time, have a great day.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the rise above podcast. Make sure to subscribe for future episodes, leave a review and share with a friend who would love to hear this episode. This was the rise above podcast.