How to Build an Innovative Culture so You Can Leave Your Competition in the Dust
Earlier this week, my husband and I spent time with my
sister and her family near Portland. What on earth does
this have to do with innovative companies? Read on.
On Sunday, my nephew, Logan, was busily working on a
homework assignment with his friends Ryan and Dillon. It
was amazing what these three sixth-graders were doing. They
created a video about the Himalayas, complete with slides
culled from the internet, homemade cardboard mountains, a
painted-foam demonstration of how the mountains were
formed, an action sequence involving India moving through
the ocean to join the Asian continent, detailed
explanations about the earth's crust, and the grand finale
- Indian music played in unison on a cello, electric
guitar, and trumpet. O.k., it was an, um, unusual way to
score the piece, but I had to admire their boldness in
charting new musical terrain.
It was amazing how much innovative thought these three kids
put into their creation and in bringing it to the market
(the market in this case being their teacher, Mr. Lee).
Even more amazing was the all-out fanatical mobilization of
eight adults (all of the kids' parents, plus Kirk and
myself) to execute the project after it hit an enormous
speed bump. After spending hours trying to get their video
on to a DVD for the class, Logan asked for help. Many hours
later, the various parents who had tried to figure it out
threw in the towel, got a little sleep, and went to work.
Since they were unable to transfer the video to DVD, my
sister gave up her computer for the day (the one she needs
for her business, by the way), so Logan could take it to
class to play the video.
The kids tried to get the volume high enough for Mr. Lee to
hear, but he couldn't hear it, and admonished them for
wasting 30 minutes of class time. Believe me, I had a few
choice words to describe Mr. Lee at that point, none of
which can be printed in this newsletter.
He did, however, give them one more night to fix the
problem.
That evening, as the tension mounted, it was an all-out
technical SWOT team attack. Luckily for my family, I
married an IT guy.
Even though Kirk doesn't do much hands-on work with
computers these days, he dove in and started
problem-solving, eventually finding an obscure program that
was out on the internet, which he downloaded and used to
transfer the video to DVD. He is now the family hero.
In all, we estimated that the kids spent 15 hours creating
the video and at least four more trying to transfer it to a
DVD, and the adults spent a whooping 18 hours bringing the
creation to life, while also pursuing their other work
responsibilities, the ones associated with our jobs, that
is. We were tempted to send Mr. Lee an invoice.
Now, here's the connection with innovative companies.
Doesn't this make you wonder how the naturally creative and
innovative processes of children, and the rabid enthusiasm
of parents to support their kids' innovation, turn into the
idea-crushing, soul-smashing bureaucracy of the workplace?
The pithy answer is that companies and markets are bigger
and a lot more complicated, and adults don't care about
their own ideas as much as their kids' ideas, and there's
some truth in all that.
However, some companies do manage to pull off significant
innovation, much to their advantage. It comes down to a
dozen factors that are directly correlated with innovation.
Some of them are obvious, while others are surprising. They
are:
1. Support and encouragement of taking risks rather than
maintaining the status quo. In the words of Guy Kawasaki,
"Don't worry, be crappy."
2. A corporate leadership team that plans for most of the
company's growth through the development of new products
and services, and is diligent in ensuring that the best
ideas are exploited and less promising ideas killed early
on.
3. Inspirational leadership with an inspirational vision.
4. High trust relationships, relatively free of
interpersonal conflict.
5. Investment in and encouragement of skill development at
all levels.
6. Substantial, sustained information sharing, which
creates well informed employees. These employees can apply
their extensive knowledge of customer desires, the
company's goals and strategies, and competitive threats to
improve their own work, as well as offer innovative
solutions beyond their own immediate area of responsibility.
7. Family friendly or "life friendly" work practices. Some
examples are flexible office hours, child care, part-time
arrangements, or telecommuting. Take note: this one I found
through quite a bit of research, not through my direct
experience, and it amazed me that it was directly
correlated with innovation. I had always seen this as an
all-around good idea for attracting and retaining
employees, but did not realize that it is directly
correlated with innovation success. Go figure. I learn
something new every day.
8. Demonstrable valuing of differences. This includes the
traditional dimensions such as gender, race, physical
disability, etc. as well as the less visible dimensions,
such as different ways of thinking or approaching the work
to be done, different personal values, religious or
spiritual beliefs, different lifestyles, etc.
9. Semi- or fully autonomous teams, who are free to solve
most problems and make decisions on their own or by working
directly with other teams -- without escalating to
management for approval. This can and should include
decisions about which of their creative ideas to further
explore and which to kill off.
10. Direct employee involvement in innovation via routine
team briefings with feedback, and involvement in the
decisions on how work is organized and outcomes improved.
11. Goals relevant to innovation such as increase in number
of new services launched, success rate of innovative
products and services, decrease in non-value-added work due
to process innovation, better speed to market, etc., and a
means of measuring progress toward them.
12. Adequate resources to exploit ideas. Some examples
include hiring temporary staff to cover some routine
day-to-day functions while key team members dedicate
themselves to bringing up a new business, funding market
research for new ideas, and hiring process engineers to
teach employees how to map and improve their work processes
so they can free up more time to pursue new ideas.
As I look back on Logan's project, I see a lot of these.
The kids never questioned the necessity of going through
many creative ideas and rejecting them before landing on
the winner.
I must begrudgingly admit that Mr. Lee is excellent at
pushing the kids to grow through the development of
something new on their part rather than rote memorization,
and he invests an incredible amount of time encouraging the
development of their skills.
The kids and parents have gotten to know one another well,
and enjoy a high level of trust with relatively little
interpersonal conflict, and they accept their children's
individual personalities as they are--quirks and all.
The kids had to work as an autonomous team, working through
conflicts and making decisions without escalating to Mr.
Lee.
And the list goes on.
In a way, what it takes for a company to innovate is not so
different from what it takes for a kid to innovate, after
all. It just takes a lot more discipline, focus, change
management, and people skills.
The kids took their DVD to class the next day, and played
it for Mr. Lee. They got an A+.
----------------------------------------------------
Jennifer Selby Long, Founder and Principal of Selby Group,
provides executive coaching and organizational development
services. Jennifer's knack is helping clients navigate the
leadership and organizational challenges triggered by
change and growth. Visit Jennifer at: http://selbygroup.com
. For more on the secrets of innovative companies, go to
http://www.selbygroup.com/whitepapers.html .
