Category: Company Innovation & Leadership
Audience: Leaders
Overview: This article outlines practical steps for leaders committed to fostering an innovative culture, emphasizing the importance of defining innovation, estimating ROI, learning from past attempts, and creating a comprehensive roadmap for success.
By: John K Moore, President, Client Performance Solutions, The Culture Think Tank
Read Time: 5 Minutes
The title says it all – if you’re in a leadership position and believe innovation and having an innovative culture is important, you probably fall into one of three categories:
Driver – You believe you’re the best one to drive any innovation effort in your organization, but don’t have the time, desire or capability to do anything about it.Your ego might be standing in the way.
Don’t Rock the Boat – The status quo is acceptable since you want to avoid any risk to your career or next promotion, so innovation isn’t happening how it needs to. Your risk avoidance posture might be standing in the way.
Believer – You truly believe in the benefits of innovation and having an innovative culture, but aren’t quite sure how to proceed.
This article is for those who fall into category three above – Believer.
Many, including myself, have tried changing the minds of those in categories one and two, but it simply isn’t worth the extra time or effort.
Let’s focus on those Believers who really want to make a difference!
Step 1 – Define Innovative Culture
Create your own definition of “innovative culture” for your entire company.
Strive to come up with something that’s concise, easy to remember, and agreed upon by your leadership team.
Once you have a definition for your company, you will also benefit from a more detailed definition for each of your supporting departments.
This approach will make it much easier when performing some of the other steps below.
Step 2 – Estimate ROI
Estimate the potential annual monetary value of having an innovative culture.
For example, if it enables you to design, develop and launch one new product or service each year, then make some assumptions regarding the annual monetary value and arrive at an acceptable figure.
Be sure to document those assumptions, which may turn into key milestones and/or metrics for your ongoing monitoring purposes.
Any investments you make in achieving your innovative culture can be thought of in terms of ROI instead of just price.
As an example, let’s say you’ve been handed a proposal for $100,000 to help create your innovative culture.
Normally, you may believe that’s a lot of money, but if a $100,000 investment will allow you to realize $5,000,000 in new product or service revenue each year, that’s quite a rate of return and something to seriously consider.
It’s really all about the ROI and not just the price tag.
Step 3 – Learn from History
Examine your prior attempts at innovation and identify what went well and what didn’t.
Document your positive and negative lessons learned so you can avoid making the same mistakes next time.
There’s real value in realizing mistakes, so cultivate as much value as you can.
Your lessons learned will play a major role in defining any innovation methodology or approach you’ll be following in the future.
Step 4 – Assess the Current Environment
Understand your current innovation environment and identify specific areas for improvement.
Identify who the innovators are in your organization regardless of level or department.
Identify your current approach to supporting creativity and brainstorming.
Do you have any innovation projects currently in play or planned for the near future?
Do you offer any training or workshops regarding innovation?
How many innovative products or services are you generating each year?
If the trend moving in a positive or negative direction?
Is there anyone in charge of innovation?
Is innovation a topic on your Employee Satisfaction Surveys?
Do Employee Performance Scorecards have at least one line item related to contributions to innovation?
Is your Recruiting team asking candidates for examples of prior innovation accomplishments?
Do your job descriptions even mention the word innovation?
You get the idea.
Step 5 – Generate Improvement Ideas
Generate ideas and suggestions for improving your ability to innovate. Collaborate with leadership and employees at all levels to identify perceived barriers to innovation.
Are leadership team members serving as good role models?
Are meetings conducted in a supportive manner?
Are ideas and suggestions being captured in any way for further analysis, prioritization, and possible implementation?
Do you have an environment where “no idea is a bad idea”?
Be sure to review your Exit Interview results for hidden ideas that could be useful.
Don’t forget to consider some type of reward and recognition program(s) to help motivate and compensate those who contribute to your innovation effort.
Step 6 – Build Your Innovative Culture Roadmap
Prioritize the ideas and suggestions from the prior step and organize them into logical phases of work to guide what needs to be done to get your organization to where it needs to go.
The Roadmap should list major deliverables or work products required, one person responsible and a target date for each one.
Avoid listing “activities” here – the focus should be on actual deliverables.
Be sure to include the identification and baselining of specific innovation performance metrics that will be tracked to reflect progress and ongoing culture alignment.
Step 7 – Design an Effective Communication Plan
Determine which stakeholder groups need to be kept informed regarding progress with your innovative culture. A good Communication Plan also addresses the message type(s) required by each group, along with the format, frequency, and ownership of each message type.
This is a fundamental component of any change management effort.
Step 8 – Implement the Roadmap
Adding more work to already overloaded teams just won’t work. Figure out how to allocate each task to personnel who have enough time to do the work. Employees who are challenged by performing the work for which they were hired and attempting to do extra work will always resort to the former.
Consider reaching out for temporary assistance to help achieve your target dates.
Step 9 – Measure & Track Return
Remember, the innovation performance metrics identified during the creation of the Innovation Culture Roadmap?
These metrics should be reviewed on a quarterly or semi-annual basis to identify positive and negative trends along with the identification of required course corrections to help keep them on track.
Any negative trends should be supported by one or more projects and assigned to those who have the time and capability to get them done.
In conclusion, while there are certainly more than nine steps to consider, these guidelines will give you a solid foundation to start fostering an innovative culture.
If you need assistance, don’t hesitate to reach out — sometimes, a 15 or 30-minute conversation is all it takes to get on the right track.
Investing time in building an innovative culture is crucial for significant ROI. Do yourself and your employees a favor by making the time to implement these changes and create a workplace that benefits everyone.
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