Innovation by Design - Inside Out!
Andrew Jones
Innovation is what every Business wants more of! It fuels growth, provides deeper more valuable employee experience and delivers greater value and differentiation through customer centricity.
So why is it also the thing that everyone gets to once “the real work” is done?
Perhaps it is because of how we have designed most organisations and manage teams?
Is how we design, build and operate organisations killing innovation?
-Probably!
Organisations are essentially human systems, structured and managed to pursue a collective goal. But, in my opinion, the trap most fall into is that they design a system that focuses on WHAT they do and HOW they do it, and thus, ensuring that’s all they can and ever do! We end up building organisations that are centred on themselves - they are designed to be “organisation centric”!
But as the speed and pace of change continues to rise and uncertainty increases, this structure is slow to respond to the changing wants and needs of both customers and employees.
Innovation requires organisations to be “Customer Centric”, to identify and satisfy customers’ needs, delivering value and memorable experiences faster and better than anybody else.
Organisational design is more than processes improvements, blueprints and efficiency gains. It ensures relevancy and provides a sustained competitive advantage that thrives through uncertainty and change.
Good organisational design and operation builds and empowers collaboration, knowledge sharing, exploration, experimentation and rapid decision making - and as a result, innovation flourishes.
Here are three of my favourite ways to help redesign how organisations work to fuel a culture of innovation:
1) Innovation is Everybody’s Business
Many organisations fall into a trap of seeing innovation as such high importance it requires a dedicated leader and appoint a ‘Head of Innovation’ or 'Innovation Lead'.
From what I have seen, this rarely works well in reality, as it typically becomes that leader’s, almost single handed, responsibility to innovate. Everyone looks to them for the big ideas and radical ways forward. While sitting back and waiting to be shown or told what they are innovating and how. It results in a culture that lacks accountability for innovation and leaves it all to the relevant appointed person.
In my experience, we should focus on democratising and building a culture of innovation, where all are enabled, empowered and enthused to innovate. Innovation becomes everyone's business. It is made a priority for all, and teams are given the support and coaching around the required mindsets, skillsets and activities to support its exploration. Obviously, this needs to be delivered in a fun and engaging way to keep engagement and maintain enthusiasm or it just becomes another tick box L&D activity.
2) Give People Time and Space
Innovation requires dedicated time; it cannot just be an additional activity tagged onto peoples ever-growing to-do list. There are distinct activities that can be done, and skills developed to ensure that innovation happens, and a culture around it develops.
Innovation is also rarely done in isolation; it requires collaboration and serendipitous conversations. Dedicated creative spaces, physical or on-line can help with this. Wherever they are, they need to be inviting places, conducive to creative thinking, where people want to hang out and explore thoughts and ideas with each other, not dark lonely bunkers!
We need to ensure innovation is on equal prioritisation as 'regular work'. It can't be in addition to people's normal job, it needs to become part of everybody's job, and this requires investment in time and resources. Otherwise, Innovation will stay as that thing people do, when they have completed everything else!
3) Encourage ‘Intelligent Experimentation.’
To deliver innovation requires getting comfortable with taking risks. Not reckless, ‘lose the company’ risks, but intelligent, considered ‘exploratory risks’. I like to call it 'Intelligent Experimentation'.
Innovation is a journey of discovery. If it were not then we would have all the answers and data we need and would have already done it. As we are talking about the 'unknown' it has, therefore, an element of risk for most organisations. Typically managed or mitigated with hierarchies, decision scales, committees and endless meetings. This almost certainly does the opposite of democratising innovation.
What I find works for more effectively is to have a clear vision and create goals and objectives around it, supported by any boundaries, guiding principles and explicit constraints. In my experience;
With the foundations laid, it's then time to get out of the team's way and let them explore and experiment to test their ideas.
Innovation is all about exploring the unknown and learning about what might be. Encourage exploration and intelligent experimentation. Support it with small budgets (again small budgets promotes creativity and rapid experimentation to learn fast) and ensure they share and celebrate their learnings and discoveries - no matter if it turned out how they thought or not. The key point is when an idea is explored through 'intelligent experimentation' the outcome is never a pass or fail, but always a learning and discovery! - The best win, win outcome there is!
When an idea is explored through 'intelligent experimentation' the outcome is never a pass or fail, but always a learning and discovery.
When you democratise, decentralise and give time and space, people and innovation flourish. The results usually far exceed expectations, and it builds teams and organisations that thrive and grow for the long term.
