Creating an Innovation Culture: A Complete Strategic Guide
- November 14, 2022
- Posted by: fqadmin
- Category: Blog
Do you think innovation happens only in wide-open spaces, cool studios, or colourful rooms? It isn’t so. Surprisingly, it can also happen in a cubicle or a conference room at a workplace filled with people in suits. Game-changing, innovative ideas can come from the unlikeliest of places, but only in environments that embrace and encourage diverse thinking. In short, all it needs is the right culture.
There are many ways in which innovation can be hard-wired into a culture in order to produce the highest levels of employee engagement and bottom-line success. But how do we create this? Here are some pointers to keep in mind when creating a culture of innovation in your organisation:
1. Autonomy, Trust and Clear Goal Setting
When business leaders communicate goals with trust, employees feel driven with purpose. Goals must be clear enough to align team members, and also loose enough that team members have autonomy in how to reach those goals. It’s this autonomy, that allows real creativity to flourish.
2. Matching Work with the Individual’s interests
Innovation cannot be forced, it just happens. A good leader pairs the work with people who have both the skill and the interest to do it. When this is done, we stand a better chance of seeing innovation happen.
3. Creating open Communication Systems
To enable innovation, it’s important to create open communication systems. One way is through developing strong co-worker relationships. High-quality relationships and the resulting psychological safety allow for greater learning in organizations and contribute to innovation.
4. Reward, recognise and embrace failures
It’s good to reward and recognize innovative behaviour. This might include giving employees free time for passion projects, offering raises, or simply celebrating innovation efforts during meetings. It is equally important to embrace failures, as the fear of repercussions of failures can be a massive deterrent to innovation.
5. Supportive Collaboration
A crucial factor in creating a workplace that’s conducive to innovation is to create supportive collaboration across teams, units, and divisions. Diversity and Inclusion helps in bringing a wide range of ideas, skills, and perspectives among the employees that can eventually contribute to the process of innovation development.
6. Practicing ‘Innovation Parenting’
Young employees often expect and seek out opportunities to interact with people who interest and excite them—exchanges that in turn, build innovation energy. This is even more important in today’s world where we have the new generation of employees enter the workforce.
7. Hiring the best and doing this fast
No culture can be innovative without great people. Recruit people who can bring a different perspective, as long as they are in sync with the organization’s culture. Creating a strong network within the industry as well as with universities can help in identifying the right potential and getting them onboard before others have an opportunity to do so.
A culture of innovation is simply an organizational culture that really values and supports innovation. The path to cultural change is a bumpy one and organizations need to expect resistance along the way. With time, an innovative culture becomes self-sustaining.
For more innovative practices, why not connect with our expert team? Write to us at connect@fourthquadrant.in today.