When it comes to innovation, the candid organization will outperform the nice one every time. The latter confuses politeness and niceness with respect. There is nothing inconsistent about being frank and respectful. In fact, I would argue that providing and accepting frank criticism is one of the hallmarks of respect. Accepting a devastating critique of your idea is possible only if you respect the opinion of the person providing that feedback.
To outsiders and newcomers, the people may appear aggressive or hard-edged. No one minces words about design philosophies, strategy, assumptions, or perceptions of the market. Building a culture of candid debate is challenging in organizations where people tend to shy away from confrontation or where such debate is viewed as violating norms of civility.
Senior leaders need to set the tone through their own behavior. One way to encourage this type of culture is for them to demand criticism of their own ideas and proposals.
A good blueprint for this can be found in General Dwight D. I have no sympathy with anyone, whatever his station, who will not brook criticism. We are here to get the best possible results. Eisenhower was not just inviting criticism or asking for input. He was literally demanding it and invoking another sacred aspect of military culture: duty. How often do you demand criticism of your ideas from your direct reports?
Well-functioning innovation systems need information, input, and significant integration of effort from a diverse array of contributors. They have a sense of collective responsibility.
But too often, collaboration gets confused with consensus. And consensus is poison for rapid decision making and navigating the complex problems associated with transformational innovation. Ultimately, someone has to make a decision and be accountable for it. An accountability culture is one where individuals are expected to make decisions and own the consequences. There is nothing inherently inconsistent about a culture that is both collaborative and accountability-focused. Committees might review decisions or teams might provide input, but at the end of the day, specific individuals are charged with making critical design choices—deciding which features go and stay, which suppliers to use, which channel strategy makes most sense, which marketing plan is best, and so on.
Pixar has created several ways to provide feedback to its movie directors, but as Ed Catmull, its cofounder and president, describes in his book Creativity, Inc. Accountability and collaboration can be complementary, and accountability can drive collaboration. Consider an organization where you personally will be held accountable for specific decisions.
There is no hiding. You own the decisions you make, for better or worse. The last thing you would do is shut yourself off from feedback or from enlisting the cooperation and collaboration of people inside and outside the organization who can help you. A good example of how accountability can drive collaborative behavior is Amazon. For Jassy, collaboration was essential to the success of a program for which he was personally accountable. Leaders can encourage accountability by publicly holding themselves accountable, even when that creates personal risks.
This stops with me. An organizational chart gives you a pretty good idea of the structural flatness of a company but reveals little about its cultural flatness—how people behave and interact regardless of official position. In culturally flat organizations, people are given wide latitude to take actions, make decisions, and voice their opinions.
Deference is granted on the basis of competence, not title. Culturally flat organizations can typically respond more quickly to rapidly changing circumstances because decision making is decentralized and closer to the sources of relevant information. They tend to generate a richer diversity of ideas than hierarchical ones, because they tap the knowledge, expertise, and perspectives of a broader community of contributors. Lack of hierarchy, though, does not mean lack of leadership.
Paradoxically, flat organizations require stronger leadership than hierarchical ones. Flat organizations often devolve into chaos when leadership fails to set clear strategic priorities and directions. Amazon and Google are very flat organizations in which decision making and accountability are pushed down and employees at all levels enjoy a high degree of autonomy to pursue innovative ideas. Yet both companies have incredibly strong and visionary leaders who communicate goals and articulate key principles about how their respective organizations should operate.
Here again, the balance between flatness and strong leadership requires a deft hand by management. Flatness does not mean that senior leaders distance themselves from operational details or projects. In fact, flatness allows leaders to be closer to the action. First, I flattened the organization. I had to reduce the distance between me and the people making decisions. At both Fiat and Chrysler, Marchionne moved his office to the engineering floor so that he could be closer to product planning and development programs.
He was famous both for being detail oriented and for pushing decision making down to lower levels in the organization. With so many direct reports, it was nearly impossible for him not to! Getting the balance right between flatness and strong leadership is hard on top management and on employees throughout the organization.
For senior leaders, it requires the capacity to articulate compelling visions and strategies big-picture stuff while simultaneously being adept and competent with technical and operational issues.
Steve Jobs was a great example of a leader with this capacity. He laid out strong visions for Apple while being maniacally focused on technical and design issues. For employees, flatness requires them to develop their own strong leadership capacities and be comfortable with taking action and being accountable for their decisions.
All cultural changes are difficult. Organizational cultures are like social contracts specifying the rules of membership. When leaders set out to change the culture of an organization, they are in a sense breaking a social contract.
It should not be surprising, then, that many people inside an organization—particularly those thriving under the existing rules—resist. Metrics fuel motivation: You need to give public recognition to innovators.
However, when you promote someone based on their contribution to and collaboration on successful innovations, coworkers take note. Emphasize speed and agility. Innovation happens best when people move quickly. Innovation requires a blend of real-time data gathering and smart decisions on whether to invest more now or change course. Successful startups seem to know this intuitively, and that agility often helps them disrupt established companies that have far more resources. Think like a venture capitalist VC.
VCs tend to focus on big ideas that make the risk worth taking. You should do the same. When you hear a new idea, ask if it can make a significant difference. When you find an idea that matters, the next question in a traditional mind-set would be: What are the risks? Which of those could kill the idea? How will we mitigate them? Balance operational excellence with innovation.
The truth is they not only can, but must. If the business plan developed in the first step is released, the employees are removed from their departments and can set up their company for the company.
This measure is very effective, on the one hand, on the culture of innovation, because it demonstrates impressively from above how important innovation is for the company and, on the other hand, it mobilizes an enormous potential for innovation. Innovation Labs are outsourced innovation forges. They are decoupled from day-to-day business.
As a result, the resources dedicated to innovation are not consumed by day-to-day business, and the usual obstacles and barriers to thinking are removed by distance under the motto "everything is possible and permitted". Innovation Labs can be organizational innovation units, but also a physical place where everyone can go, use the infrastructure and develop their creativity.
Creative rooms, tools such as 3D printers and workshops are available for the development of ideas and prototypes. There are many ways to fine-tune the culture of innovation and make it positive.
This does not always require immense budgets and well-thought-out five-year plans with hundreds of measures. You can also start small, harvest the first "Low-Hanging-Fruits" and build on it. Born and raised in Vienna. We would be pleased to advise you on a possible cooperation to make your innovation management future-proof. Category: Innovation culture. Leverage to create a culture of innovation In order to create a positive innovation culture , one must sensitize employees to innovation and its opportunities.
Be it actively in the role of the innovator, but in which ideas and projects of others are supported. Provide employees with the necessary information, tools and skills to enable them to innovate. Provide employees with the necessary resources, structures and space to enable innovation.
The undisputed basis of the innovation culture: Strategic clarity First of all, the most important thing is that it must be clearly defined which innovation strategy the company is pursuing.
Communication of the innovation strategy The innovation strategy sets the direction and framework conditions. Cascade workshops for active employee involvement The communication of the innovation strategy raises awareness, but is very one-sided. Even more important, however, is the dialogue with employees and their involvement. Through cascaded workshops on innovation across all functions and top-down through all hierarchy levels, the employees are picked up.
Jointly, initiated by the manager, it is to be defined, what innovation means for their field, what role they play in the innovation process and what they can contribute to the success of innovation. Forming a shared and specific vision of what innovation means as you go about your daily work will. There is much to be gained from changes that provide value to your customers and employees. This is called incremental innovation.
Responding to existing or anticipated change to keep your organization vital, viable, productive and relevant so you can benefit the people you serve and contribute to economic growth and prosperity in the places you operate. The intention of innovation is to make our lives better and easier. The outcome of innovation is measurable value for the organization and the economy. The reward is the sustainability of the organization. This is where having an innovation strategy comes in handy.
The trick is to translate a general definition of what innovation is to what it specifically looks like and is intended to do in your organization. An organizational culture that supports innovation is one that supports creativity—one where creativity is welcomed, can be expressed, and is accepted with respect. In the s, Swedish researcher Goran Ekvall set out to discover what organizational conditions hampered or stimulated creativity and innovation. He found ten dimensions that impact the environment, represented in the diagram below.
To better support innovation, individuals and teams must be equipped with innovation skills. The challenge is, much of our educational training focuses on developing critical thinking skills and searching for the one right answer. To be innovative, we need to think and act differently, and to leverage creative thinking. The Conference Board of Canada has conducted research that identifies the skills, attitudes and behaviours individuals need to contribute to innovation in the workplace.
They are grouped into four skillsets:. Learn more about these four skillsets and how to assess and develop your innovation skills in our previous blog post, How to Develop Innovation Skills.
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