When exploring the concept of innovation, it is sometimes difficult to pinpoint exactly how to make your team or business function more effectively. Despite hundreds of meetings and discussions about business improvement, there may be a tendency to shout about innovation, without really thinking deeply about its application.
Resorting to implementing new technology is often seen as innovative, which it is. However, there is much more to it than that and when done correctly, can achieve more wider reaching benefits.
Although there are hundreds of ways to drive workplace innovation, there are three routes of focus (in this post) that, if applied effectively, can create the most meaningful change.
The importance of innovation
If it isn't obvious already, the importance of innovation revolves around the continued need to stay ahead of the competition and promote employee progression.
From an organisational culture perspective, the workplaces that embrace innovation have an increase in firm performance. This means that top employability prospects are going to be more attracted to work in these high innovation workforces, and be more likely to work there long term.
When looking at the bigger picture, innovation should be seen as an outcome, process, and a mindset. When considered from these perspectives, there are wider reaching benefits to the workplace that include: creation of a supportive culture, collaboration and improved decision making.
Driving innovation
Addressing the obvious artificially intelligent elephant in the room (I tried), we are looking at a tool which will make workplace innovation easier. AI offers an external view of the workplace, devoid of most bias and systemic perspective. Simply put, AI boosts the likelihood of making innovation happen to maximise performance.
So, why can't we just launch our business concepts and questions into ChatGPT and be done with it? Well, innovation relies on more than just AI; it requires collective support to drive change. In order to guide this process, I have outlined three potential routes:
1. Become more data driven
When it comes to data, we often collect it, without the understanding of how to use this information to drive change. Collecting data doesn't have to be on a massive scale, nor does it have to be complicated; in fact, it probably works better when it's as simplified as possible.
The larger companies in the world will have access to all of your data. In fact, Scott Galloway (professor and author) highlighted in his book about global tech giants that these companies know more about you than your friends or family know about you.
So, in short, it's pretty hard to compete with that. However, within the smaller workplaces, data collection doesn't have to derive from internet habits. There are still millions of pieces of information/data that are received daily: interactions, emotions, journey (employee or customer), habits, traffic, etc.
Three simple ways to harness this:
🏢 Employee training on innovation and knowing how to identify change-inducing trends
📈 Set up a data collection system and analyse
💼 Build innovation-focused objectives into objectives or performance indicators.
Data collection sounds technical, but it can be as simple as noting down negative interactions with customers over a month period and analysing the impact (we are even seeing AI built into our everyday applications, which can be used to identify trends).
2. Consider habits
By exposing the workforce to more projects focussed at boosting innovation, the culture of the workplace can be changed. Charles Duhigg shares this in The Power of Habit by outlining the habit loop, which highlights a cue, routine and reward (discovered by Ann M. Graybiel).
From an innovation perspective, this could be used to identify the negative cues leading to low innovation, highlight the ways of thinking which are hindering innovation/creativity, and to then realign the current rewards.
'We've always done it this way, it's just the way we do things here'. These are the buzz words associated with an organisational culture with low innovation.
The reward associated with poor innovation could be an employee wanting to stay within their comfort zone (due to the negative undertones associated with failure). It may be beneficial to experiment with different rewards and to reframe what failure means. The reward may be to gamify the process of reaching certain goals associated with demonstrating innovation. By setting goals outside of the comfort zone, the routine associated with following comfortable processes starts to become more challenging and allows daily processes to be questioned (based on innovativeness).
3. Think about innovation differently
Innovation can often be viewed in 2D by addressing fundamental issues with pre-existing solutions, or with ideas that haven't been tested or researched. I get into the poor habit of creating a process and just sticking with that system, simply because it works effectively enough. To think differently about innovation, there must be consistent questioning around the methods utilised to complete a task. Giving employees a voice in these scenarios allows for positive innovation and deters from bad decision making. The difficulty with this approach is that it may seem like you're undermining the leaders of the organisation, rather than trying to create change.
Depending on the organisational culture, it may be more effective to challenge ways of working independently, away from other employees. Our brains react negatively to certain words or phrases, as Michele Gelfand (cultural psychologist) explains in the threat dictionary.
For example, 'this way of working is causing too many problems and is terrible' has a much higher threat level than 'if we did it this way, we could create more meaningful change. What do you think?'. By avoiding words such as problems or terrible when questioning existing processes, there is less chance that unproductive conflict occurs.
Innovation doesn't just happen. It requires thought, structure and management, like any other workplace function. To think differently about innovation, there must be time dedicated to idea generation and personal projects. Take Google's example of the 20% rule, whereby workers were allowed to dedicate 20% of their work week to personal projects.
Granted, 20% is a lot for the standard workplace, but the concept still has merit. On a smaller scale, it may be that an hour is dedicated each week as an 'innovation hour'. This time could be used to discuss trends, improve processes or suggest better ways of working. Conclusions
Innovation is a complex topic, which has multiple contributing factors. Although I have explored three ways to drive innovation, the process of becoming an innovative workplace is not a one size fits all approach.
Encouraging employees to question current ways of working, embrace data collection/anaysis and consider current workplace habits, can (over time) lead to progress towards creating an organisational culture that moves towards transformation.
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