“You can’t do today’s job with yesterday’s methods and still be in business tomorrow.” This quote lays out the challenges that an organization and personnel in management jobs today face. The new corporate mantra for most organizations specially post the 2008 recession is “innovation”. Everyone wants to provide new services, cutting edge technology, niche services that differs from others existing in the market.
But what is the workplace doing to encourage innovation? How are organizations laying the groundwork for innovative thinking?
“Optimizing the organization to facilitate innovation is critical, and requires a culture where it’s safe to share, diversity is valued, new ideas are welcome, and there is time for reflection.”
– Clark Quinn
Innovation has to be an organization-wide drive to align every process and every person with the delivery of new products, services and customer experiences. So to consciously move towards an innovation mindset means taking the time to devise a culture of innovation and an intensive coaching strategy, which will transforms mindsets and approaches.
“If you really want a culture of innovation, you have to lead people differently, value them differently, and encourage them differently”
– Sir Ken Robinson: Creativity is the key to company success
Steps for creating innovative thinking for individuals in organizations
Challenge the status quo
Organizations across the world demand innovation from their workforce, yet most of them are still terrified by ideas, behaviors or lifestyles that break with tradition or conventional wisdom. Businesses ask people to innovate, but only within the set paradigm.
They set the box for “OUT OF THE BOX’ thinking. It is imperative to see what is the status quo and question every aspect of it to advance.
Corporate innovation teams must identify the key reasons for failure in their organizations and build an internal system that drives innovation behaviors like training management in pro-innovation behaviors and have it enforced top-down.
Make THINKING cool
Another way businesses can encourage innovation is to make it “cool.” Promoting opportunities for employees to try new and fun things in the workplace—as well as offering rewards for innovative activities outside the workplace—teaches that experimentation, creativity and exploration are worthwhile pursuits.
Google asks its employees to spend 20% of their time working on projects outside their usual job description to encourage innovation.
If employees regularly see innovation displayed in a positive and fun light, and are rewarded for their more innovative personal pursuits, they will be much more likely to mimic that behavior in the workplace.
Entrepreneurial culture centered on passion
The best method of developing employee ownership is to develop an environment where problem-solving is encouraged. I believe we are all inclined to innovate and problem-solve within our own space, so empowering employees to see the workplace as an extension of that space can give them the confidence they need to bring new ideas to the table.
When employees are regularly given ownership of their problems, as well as the freedom to find and implement solutions of their choosing, they begin to realize no obstacle is insurmountable. Once problem solving becomes a part of one’s daily work responsibilities, solving larger organizational issues becomes much less daunting.
Encourage failure for its own sake
The best organizations lauded for innovation and brilliant products have it written, “It is alright to fail”. When failure is equated with innovative thinking, employee feels free to experiment.
There is a quote that says, “Fail fast, fail often and learn from every opportunity. In a book called Happy Accidents, it is listed that half of the medical advances had an accidental origin.
It is imperative to “ embrace and foster a culture of experimentation in which failure is acceptable as long as the intentions were relevant and if the learning of the failure was captured so that you don’t go on repeating the same failures repeatedly”.
Ideas, Ideas…Everywhere
There are innumerable creative methods of generating ideas from brainstorming to mind mapping that can help conjure up useful ideas. To truly be innovative, it is necessary to take opposing thoughts and combine them. Groundbreaking and innovative ideas come from finding inspiration and combining ideas from different industries, cultures, fields, and disciplines.
Steps for creating innovative thinking at organizational level
On an organizational level, there are steps that can helps like:
- Bring together a team of diverse people with different cultural backgrounds, types of education and job experience.
- Build a community space or a culture lab conducive for people to sit around and talk about innovative ideas, or use creative digital communities.
- Have an idea board or a idea repository in the intranet for employees to come up with ideas for the company.
- Reward good ideas as well as smart failure.
- Create teams with unlikely partnerships that meet regularly to brainstorm key issues and opportunities.
- Create monthly innovation days, or put together a fund to recognize innovative brainstorming.
Hopefully as a senior professional you are listening in and realizing the opportunity that is present for encourage stronger innovative thinking!
More reading:
Think with Google – Pillars of innovation
Enabling culture innovation – Accenture
