6 Ways To Create A Culture Of Innovation
Reward employees with time to think,
while providing them with the structure they need.
Every organization is designed to
get the results it gets. Poor performance comes from a poorly designed organization.
Superior results emerge when strategies, business models, structure, processes,
technologies, tools, and reward systems fire on all cylinders in symphonic
unison.
Savvy leaders shape the culture of
their company to drive innovation. They know that it’s culture--the values,
norms, unconscious messages, and subtle behaviors of leaders and
employees--that often limits performance. These invisible forces are
responsible for the fact that 70% of all organizational change efforts fail.
The trick? Design the interplay between the company’s explicit strategies with
the ways people actually relate to one another and to the organization.
Here’s how to influence the soft
stuff.
1.
Be intentional with your innovation intent
Most corporate visions and missions
sound alarmingly alike: Become the #1 provider of blah, blah, blah. These
generic, broad-based goals might rev up sales teams, but they do little to
spark ingenuity. Perhaps the worst thing a company can do is give “innovation
marching orders” without any guide posts. That’s when the focus gets lost and
teams spin their wheels.
The goal: Frame the way you want to
change the world, and make it about the customer. For example, the software
company Intuit--the developer of Quicken, Quick Books, and TurboTax--makes its
mission abundantly clear: "To improve our customers’ financial lives so
profoundly they can’t imagine going back to the old way."
2.
Create a structure for unstructured time
Innovation needs time to develop. No
one ever feels like they have time to spare. People get so consumed with
putting out fires and chasing short-term targets that most can’t even think
about the future.
Giving up control when the pressure
is greatest is the ultimate innovation paradox. That’s why iconic brands like
3M and Google give their employees about 10% “free
time” to
experiment with new ideas. The software company Atlassian encourages employees
to take “FedEx Days”--paid days off to work on any problem they want. But
there’s a catch: Just like FedEx, they must deliver something of value 24 hours
later.
Companies
such as Intuit use time as a reward because they believe it’s the biggest
motivator of corporate intrapreneurs. Intuit gives its best business innovators
three months of “unstructured” time that can be used in one big chunk or spread
out over six months for part-time exploration of new opportunities. So using
time wisely creates a major incentive to get more time to play with (hopefully
wisely).
3. Step in, then step back
Providing
“free” time for employees to experiment with new technologies, products, or
processes can catalyze the next big thing. But too many companies--and the consultants
they hire--attempt to over-engineer the innovation process. A better option:
Give just enough structure and support to help people navigate uncertainty and
tap into the creative process without stifling it.
There
are some pretty good off-the-shelf tools that can help build employee skill
sets. Some of the best are freely available, such as the Stanford Design
School’s Boot Camp Bootleg. Intuit applied the design
thinking underlying Stanford’s model to create its Catalyst Toolkit, a guide that was made
available to all employees and the public and which includes self-serve
ingredients for cooking up innovation.
People
as diverse as software engineers to human-resources managers have used the
toolkit to innovate internal work processes or create new products, including
SnapTax, which lets customers file their taxes in less than 15 minutes on their
mobile phones. Promoting these types of toolkits help convince employees that
leaders care about their development while they also promote best practices
that can be adapted to the needs of the individual or team.
4. Measure what’s
meaningful
Management
guru Peter Drucker once said, “What’s measured improves.” Said another way, You
get what you measure. For many companies, coming up with ideas often isn’t the
problem. The challenge is turning them into something real that delivers an
impact. So what metrics should you use?
First,
you have to figure out what to measure. In its early days, Facebook measured
how often its users returned to its site. Everything they did focused on
blowing out this single metric. OpenTable, the restaurant reservation service,
focused on two metrics that allowed it to become the dominant player: growing
the numbers of restaurants in its network and increasing the number of
consumers making reservations.
Customer-oriented
numbers are clearly essential. But other indicators can drive internal
innovation, too. After Proctor & Gamble realized the importance of outside
partnerships in driving market breakthroughs, the company decided to measure
(and increase) the percentage of new products that used breakthrough
technologies from partners. Externally driven innovation jumped from 10% to
more than 50% and resulted in new products, including Mr. Clean Magic Erasers
and Tide Pods.
Other
metrics that promote organizational innovation include:
- Percent of revenue from products or services introduced within a given period of time (say, the last fiscal year).
- A pipeline of new ideas that includes a set ratio of short-term products or services and longer-term game changers (say, 75%-25%).
- Percent of employees who have been trained and given tools for innovation.
- Percent of time dedicated to discovering, prototyping, and testing revenue-generating new products, services, or business models (say, 10-20%)
5. Give
"worthless" rewards
Recognizing
success is critical, but most companies stop there. An annual innovation award
is just not enough to catalyze a culture of innovation. Sure, formal rewards
are good for the short term--but they don’t keep people truly engaged.
The
most powerful and robust type of recognition--the kind that shapes
organizational values--often occurs more informally. Several members of
Colgate-Palmolive’s Global R&D group initiated a “recognition economy” by
distributing symbolic wooden nickels to colleagues who had made noteworthy
contributions to their projects. The fortunate recipients didn’t hoard their
winnings. They passed them on to others who had chipped in on projects that
they themselves had led.
Nickels
are now distributed in meetings, but it’s not uncommon for employees to return
from lunch and find a few nickels anonymously placed on their desks. It’s a fun
and validating idea; such informal acknowledgments encourage a collective
spirit and help promote the free flow of ideas.
6. Get symbolic
Symbols
represent the underlying values of an organization, and they come in many
forms--values statements, awards, success stories, posters in the hallways,
catch phrases, acronyms, and, yes, those wooden nickels. Those who
intentionally curate the innovation symbols of their companies essentially
curate their innovation cultures.
Intuit
installed the kitchen table where Scott Cook dreamed up the company with his
wife in its innovation center--and employees are encouraged to sit around it
for idea jams. Netflix names its corporate conference rooms after blockbuster
movies (for one, King Kong) as a reminder of the continuous breakthroughs its
employees are creating and promoting.
But
symbols can be more than just physical objects. Poignant experiences, for
example, live on as stories and folklore--and shape the mindsets and behaviors
of new and existing employees. At Google, the story of the time Sheryl Sandberg
made a bad decision that cost the company millions lives on--not because of the
error itself but because of co-founder Larry Page’s response: “I’m so glad you
made this mistake,” he said, “Because I want to run a company where we are
moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too
little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough
risk.”
Rather than let stories naturally unfold from leaders’ unconscious
behavior--which may or may not support innovation--some companies explicitly
shape stories to convey key values. The trendy fast-food chain Noodles &
Company created a kind of corporate folklore when it invited local marching
bands to show up and spontaneously play at nearly 100 locations around the
country. Finding differentiation in the fiercely competitive fast-food field is
a tough and ongoing effort, and the story remains a constant reminder that
everyone needs to consistently “march to the beat of a different drummer.”
No Rubber Stamps
Every
company’s culture is inherently different. So when you’re cultivating
innovation, you’re cultivating a unique system. Which means you have to be
thoughtful about your approach. Whatever you do, it should align with the
values of the company and with the company’s goals. And in each case, you have
to make it easy and rewarding for the people whose roles and dynamics influence
the very innovation culture you’re trying to cultivate.
Written
by: Soren Kaplan http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672718/6-ways-to-create-a-culture-of-innovation
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