Why is it so hard to get commitment for upfront new product expenditure?

The idea of investing extra effort in new product development up front to prevent problems, rework and extra time and cost later is generally accepted as a good principle.

Yet, from all the feedback I get from delegates on our courses, few organisations do it well in practice.

Engineers and project managers in client organisations tell me they are always under time pressure to get through the early stages of new product projects.

They get pushback from senior leadership when they advocate taking more time in the early stages to make sure they get it right.

As well as having some serious fun with Lego putting these ideas into practice, this is one of the topics we discuss with delegates on our New Product Introduction course at The Institution of Mechanical Engineers

Here are some key reasons I’ve uncovered:

❌  our basic genetics works against us – our subconscious is designed to protect us from ‘immediate threats’, so doesn’t cope well with the idea of a risk that is uncertain and a long time in the future

❌  our belief that “we’ll do better next time” – yet without any mechanism to capture or apply “lessons learned”

❌  we love “heroes” – those people who will rescue a failing project close to launch are seen to be more valued than those who calmly work ahead of time to make sure that problems won’t occur

❌  people are consistently overloaded in the name of “efficiency”, so there’s not enough resource to do the work well

❌  past experience works against it where budget/resource has been allocated and doesn’t actually deliver because the proper processes etc haven’t been put in place to make good on the intention

So, countering these takes intentional effort to challenge some deeply held beliefs.  Understanding the thinking and concerns of the decision-makers and presenting the case in ways that make sense to them.

And make some different decisions about how to organise new product projects.

Which of these do you recognise in your organisation?

And what is the effect?