"Ship-It Day" - An Effective & Low-Cost Solution to Innovation in Large Companies💡💭
A guide on how to pitch "Ship-It Day" to your leadership team and a step-by-step guide on how to organise the event in your company
Innovation is not easy. Just like a recipe, successful innovation requires several quality ingredients; insights, critical thinking, an optimal environment and willingness to learn. Get these wrong, and it is likely your recipe will fall flat. One solution that has worked at Kraft Heinz is “Ship-It Day”, a two-day event where employees drop their day-to-day work to solve a problem that engages their passion. People are split into cross-functional groups to brainstorm and solve company-related or process-driven itches. The only condition is that each team must present their project outcome to the whole company at the end of the event.
This article will provide you with recommendations on how to pitch Ship-It Day to your leadership team and a step-by-step guide on how to organise the event in your own company. This summary is based on my own experience of pitching and running the event at Kraft Heinz. I loved running Ship-It Day and seeing the intrapreneurial energy flowing over the two days. This could be a great event for you to pitch in your own company and hopefully this guide gives you the confidence to get started.
Origins of Ship-It Day
The Australian software company Atlassian were the original creators of Ship-It Day. Through these events, they have managed to enhance employee satisfaction and drive innovation. The video below captures the enthusiasm and energy that Atlassian has created amongst their people with Ship-It Day. To appreciate why a hackathon-like event is so successful in driving engagement, it is worth considering a theory of how to motivate employees in the first place…
What Gets Us Motivated Anyway?
Herzberg’s theory states that traditional extrinsic motivators, like financial rewards, are a “hygiene factor” in the workplace (i.e. a necessity to retain talent). Extrinsic factors are a requirement to reduce dissatisfaction in the workplace. However, alone they are not enough to create satisfaction or optimum results. Extrinsic factors tend to provide good motivation for simple, repetitive workstreams, which are not usually the workstreams that create innovative breakthroughs. This is where fostering intrinsic motivation becomes a necessity. The three drivers for this are mastery, autonomy and purpose. By considering these key motivators, a company is more likely to foster the climate necessary for good performance in creative, complex tasks. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend this TED talk from Dan Pink. It’s an interesting and fun watch! In my view, Ship-It Day is a great tool in the box of driving intrinsic motivation.
Step-by-Step Guide to Organising Ship-It Day
So for those of you that are convinced that Ship-It Day could work in your company, see below the steps I took from pitch to final presentations.
Step 1: Secure Leadership Buy-In
Present the Benefits: Highlight increased innovation and improved employee morale using case studies from companies like Atlassian.
Come Prepared: Provide a clear structure and timeline to build leadership’s trust in your organisational skills (e.g. you can include an itinerary as shown in step 6).
Align with Strategic Goals: Show how Ship-It Day can drive strategic objectives and financial benefits by addressing current company challenges.
Step 2: Plan the Timing and Logistics
Schedule Wisely: Hold the event over two days leading into a weekend to provide ample time (i.e. Thursday & Friday). Choose a time without major business deadlines or peak business activities to make it easy for your colleagues to participate.
Share the Date & Create a Logo: Inform everyone well in advance to block the dates and create a cool logo to generate excitement. I would recommend involving your internal communications team to help you with sending the invites to reach the maximum amount of people and make it look more “official”.
Ask for Project Submissions: Encourage everyone in your company to submit projects (i.e. problems they would like to solve) through a simple Microsoft teams form. Besides the project name, ask them to outline in more detail what the project focus and objective will be. Everyone who submits a project becomes automatically a “project owner”.
Step 3: Form Multifunctional Teams
Share Project Lists: Provide an overview of all project ideas and owners with the wider company via email and encourage team formation. Employees can join a team by reaching out to the project owner or they can be recruited by the project owners.
Encourage Diversity: Form teams with people from different levels, ages and departments. However, it is important to ensuring that each team has at least one subject matter expert.
Limit Number of Teams: Try to restrict the number of teams to how many presentations you can fit into Friday afternoon (~10 is the maximum).
Step 4: Prepare for the Event
Develop Strategies: Encourage project owners to create a clear strategy and plan, focusing on defining problems before jumping to solutions. Use design thinking principles for thorough problem-solving.
Create Excitement: Generate buzz through internal communications and pre-event activities.
Plan Catering & Fun Activities: Arrange meals and refreshments to keep participants energised and organise an informal social activity after the end of the event on Friday afternoon.
Step 5: Facilitate Collaboration and Creativity
Dedicated Spaces: Reserve office rooms with necessary materials for brainstorming and development (flipchart, post-its, markers etc.).
In-Person Participation: Encourage physical presence to enhance collaboration.
Break Down Hierarchies: Mix seniority levels to foster open communication and idea sharing. Having the most senior members of the company joining forces and presenting together with the most junior people gives everyone the feeling of having an impact in the company.
Step 6: Conduct the Event
Kick-Off Session: Start with a motivational speech from the event organiser and/or senior leader to get everyone excited. This is a good moment to remind all participants of the order of events and give each project owners the opportunity to introduce their project.
Encourage Interaction: Foster open communication within and across teams.
Step 7: Conclude with Presentations and Voting
Presentation Session: Schedule a session for each team to present their projects in 5-10mins. All Ship-It Day participants as well as the leadership team are encouraged to attend the final presentations.
Flexible Formats: Allow teams to choose their own presentation style.
Company-Wide Vote: Organise a voting process where the audience can vote for the best projects. We used a very simple Microsoft Teams poll that the audience could access via link.
Step 8: Implement and Follow-Up
Leadership Review: Present winning project(s) to senior leadership for further development.
Integration Plan: Develop a roadmap for integrating projects into operations.
Regular Updates: Provide updates on project progress and impact.