Copyright 2011 – Bruce Madole, CMC SR&ED Champions

Accelerating change with SR&ED Champions

Incremental and gradual change always seems like the slowest way to effect

change in a large company – until you’ve tried all the other ways. However, training and

recruiting SR&ED Champions for key points in your organization is one approach that

promises to accelerate effective change.

What do I mean by the phrase “SR&ED Champion”? I mean a person who:

is both knowledgeable about and experienced with the program criteria and

claims process,

has embraced the strategic importance of the program, as it relates to their

own technical or operational domain, and

is able and willing to engage, persuade, and lead others toward the same

conclusions.

How do you persuade an organization that, done properly, SR&ED is well worth

the effort, if the organization is unfamiliar with (or effectively uncommitted to) the

SR&ED program? Any organization can undermine an unfamiliar program by the simple

expedient of doing a half-hearted job of its initial attempts to introduce it. Doing

something badly is often the proxy for refusing to do it at all. Every new idea or thing is

in a fight to the death with the old ways of working. It is infinitely easier to build a new

SR&ED process into a small and growing company than it is to introduce the same

changes to a large firm.

This document is the property of Bruce Madole, CMC, and is used by permission. All rights are reserved. The opinions expressed herein are personal, created for entertainment
and information purposes, and are not intended to be relied on in place of professional counsel or advice. No part of this document may be re-used, transmitted or re-transmitted
without the express prior written consent of the author, who can be contacted at: brucemadole@sympatico.ca
Copyright 2011 – Bruce Madole, CMC SR&ED Champions

Organizations resist change exponentially, I think, in ways that somehow exceed

the inertia or resistance of the individuals who make up the organization. Large

organizations resist change on a grand, unimaginable scale – simple human resistance is

augmented by technical, procedural and policy complexities, not to mention economic

barriers, internal and external politics, and inter-personal, organizational and stakeholder

issues. Almost any reason you can think of… and many that you can’t imagine … will

stand in the way.

Even if, like the Pharaoh of Egypt in a certain Hollywood movie, one could

decree, “So let it be written – so let it be done”, the real effective change would be a long

time in coming. Compliance always lags behind policy, and achieving agreement on the

best policy is usually an uphill struggle all its own.

This is where the SR&ED Champion idea comes into its own. (Of course, the

very idea of pursuing and adopting such an approach assumes a level of leadership buy-in

that is atypical of many organizations.) The idea is that certain people, key stakeholders

with the right skills, have the ability to really accelerate change. Among these people are:

the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), key technical architecture or product development

primes, key financial leadership, and key project/program planning and project

management primes.

Even given a decree from Pharaoh (or the CEO), it’s hard to achieve effective

compliance at any level without the engagement of such strategic champions – and you

need them all for different reasons.

This document is the property of Bruce Madole, CMC, and is used by permission. All rights are reserved. The opinions expressed herein are personal, created for entertainment
and information purposes, and are not intended to be relied on in place of professional counsel or advice. No part of this document may be re-used, transmitted or re-transmitted
without the express prior written consent of the author, who can be contacted at: brucemadole@sympatico.ca
Copyright 2011 – Bruce Madole, CMC SR&ED Champions

The CTO and/or CIO have vested interests in their future technical vision of the

company. That’s what they are paid to do – to think ahead and make things happen.

(Note: A SR&ED program may appear to be an unwelcome distraction, until it becomes

clear that SR&ED is a strategy for mitigating technical risk and the costs of innovation.)

No other single individual has as clear a view of the technology gaps and challenges that

need to be overcome in the pursuit of a technical vision, so the CTO/CIO are vital allies

(and critical sponsors) for the success of SR&ED. Also vitally important are the key

technical primes who variously direct or manage the detailed execution of the technical

vision -- to identify, train, (or even hire), one or more SR&ED Champions within the

ranks of such individuals is to enforce both leadership and policy traction at a level where

it can become immediately useful.

Leadership support from within the Program and/or Project Management Office is

also vitally important, and the same is true of the official “process owners” for technical,

product and service development processes -- all of these areas are often required to

enforce some degree of change to support SR&ED, depending on the extent to which

current processes actually generate useful technical and costing evidence. These are

stakeholders whose support and engagement are essential for driving effective process

change.

Finally, and not at all least, key financial and taxation leaders need to be willing

to help you make the case that SR&ED is fundamentally worth building into the financial

and taxation processes. Creating process-level support for such change is a lot of work,

and they need to agree that it’s going to be “worth it” when done properly.

This document is the property of Bruce Madole, CMC, and is used by permission. All rights are reserved. The opinions expressed herein are personal, created for entertainment
and information purposes, and are not intended to be relied on in place of professional counsel or advice. No part of this document may be re-used, transmitted or re-transmitted
without the express prior written consent of the author, who can be contacted at: brucemadole@sympatico.ca
Copyright 2011 – Bruce Madole, CMC SR&ED Champions

In all of the above areas, the opportunity exists to develop your SR&ED

Champions internally, over time, by building on a foundation of successful claims and

trying to persuade and “win” support from your internal SR&ED stakeholders. Internal

training and awareness programs can help, as does a wide-ranging program of

communication and long-term advocacy with those same key stakeholders.

Developing a SR&ED Champion requires that you have effectively listened to

these critical stakeholders, that you have understood and addressed their concerns where

possible and that you have enlisted their active participation and constructive

“sponsorship” within the confines of their own reporting structures. It should also,

ultimately, entail a transfer of the glory and the “ownership” of the program results to

those same SR&ED Champions. Give them a “skin in the game”, and eventually, it’ll be

their game: mission accomplished.

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This document is the property of Bruce Madole, CMC, and is used by permission. All rights are reserved. The opinions expressed herein are personal, created for entertainment
and information purposes, and are not intended to be relied on in place of professional counsel or advice. No part of this document may be re-used, transmitted or re-transmitted
without the express prior written consent of the author, who can be contacted at: brucemadole@sympatico.ca