3 Ways a Leaders Can Build an Innovation Culture

Culture is the organizational soup that can either emblazon or stifle innovation. Culture manifests in how we act as a group, say things and deal with conflict. It is also invisible. Despite our stated intentions, culture can lurk in what is not said. Covert and contagious.

If culture can be toxin or tonic. It is important to get the recipe right if you are leader looking to drive innovation. The fact is most companies and institutions need to innovate. Our world, markets and customer expectations are evolving in ways undreamt of a decade ago. If your culture is bureaucratic, fossilized around legacy processes and defaults to procedures, you may be on borrowed time. After all, the corporate world is littered with detritus of dinosaurs who moved too slowly and failed to adapt.

Here are three ways you can build an innovation ecosystem, regardless of the size or sector you work in.

1. Creativity is in each of us…Unleash It.

Creativity lives in all of us. Creativity is an individual thing. Each of us has the spark that can ignite ideas. When we are around like minds, the spark can burn more brightly. Flames that burn together can make irrepressible creative firestorms.

However, many offices and their controlling procedures are designed to banish creativity. Deadening processes, low-risk tolerance and defaults to established answers act to extinguish creativity. Often, people feel they need to hide their ideas and even worse conform to outdated ways of thinking.

To be creative, we all need autonomy, support and fascinating problems. It does not mean turning over the workplace apple cart. Regular work still needs to be done. But as a leader, giving staff this freedom will pay dividends. While also giving you insights into a moribund, legacy processes that are sucking necessary time away from generating customer value.

Remember bureaucracies repeat yesterday. Innovative organizations shape our tomorrows.

2. Set Tough and Creative Problems

Innovation comes when you try to respond to cracks appearing in the market. It is not business as usual. These cracks might not look dangerous today but they can corrode even the strongest competitive advantages.

So displace your organization’s complacency by setting your teams “big picture goals.” Problems on how the firm can respond to these dramatic trends appearing in the market. Give your team a blank slate. Set the parameters. But no preconceived solutions. State there are no holy relics. Push them to challenge the orthodox thinking that binds to every hierarchy.

Give your team a blank slate. Set the parameters. But no preconceived solutions. State there are no holy relics. Push them to challenge the orthodox thinking that binds to every hierarchy.

Remember it is not an intellectual exercise. Each solution must be grounded in a fierce and seemingly intractable problem. If you failed before to resolve it, ask what has changed in the environment? No phenomena remain static. Technology, digitalization and globalization are all moving too fast for that.

The response might amaze you. People will rise to the occasion. Teams will form and come up with a range of solutions that are beyond the current procedural mainframe. Remember the ideas may be embers at first. But allowed to grow and stressed tested they can be whole new value streams.

3. Internal Competition

Good solutions come from talented people. But great solutions emerge from creative abrasion, sparked by creative competition. All too often, corporate problems are tasked to the “think team” to resolve in isolation.

The result is one solution based on a narrow bandwidth of a select group. Take a leaf out of the design and digital world, set up multiple teams challenged with the same problem. Let them work and play with it. Then bring them all together, in a friendly competition, to pitch their ideas.

The aim is not to pick a winner. But to undercover the positive aspects of each proposal. Blend the best aspects and set this as the starting point for the next round. Mix up the teams with each given the composite of the best product and service attributes.

As you bridge toward a viable product and commercialization, evolve and enlist a wider team with production and marketing expertize. After all, half-baked is a prototype. A fully rounded product offering is shelf ready.

Final Thoughts

As the leader, you set the tone of the organization. You are a culture conductor, helping to shape the melody and get the greatest from your musician team. Creating an innovation culture is about ceding control to stimulate creativity. It is driven by being open to changing trends in your environment and setting the problem bar high. Finally, great ideas come from the meld of mind not the isolation of a group. Set challenges. Encourage and support. Watch the greatness grow in your organization.

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About the Author

Simon Trevarthen is Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of Elevate Your Greatness (EYG). EYG helps individuals, teams and organizations unpack the secrets of success by becoming even better versions of themselves through dynamic keynotes, seminars and workshops on innovation, inspiration and presentation excellence.

Learn more about Elevate Your Greatness see www.elevateyourgreatness.com

Follow EYG on twitter: @Simon Trevarthen

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