A recent Google search for the phrase “culture of innovation” yielded 665,000,000 results. There is no shortage of opinions on how to create an environment that enables teams to find, shape, and execute new products, services and experiences, whether incremental improvements or game changing disruptors. Indeed, inside any organization, top talent expects an environment that fosters innovation.
Since the pandemic hit, thought, much of the conversation about employee experience has focused on immediate needs: ensuring employee health and safety, enabling remote productivity, etc. But there is a whole other set of considerations where talent managers can take the lead.
As I speak with executives across business sectors, and at companies from startups to large and established, what I am hearing is an absolute need to innovate. That may mean accelerating digital transformation, rethinking business models, rebuilding supply chains, or tossing out assumptions for how the business operates and rewriting the playbook. All acknowledge that organizations must consider the environment they create for people to make their best contributions. This means establishing cultural conditions that set up great talent to be innovative.
It’s been a while since anyone has mentioned their foosball table or unlimited free snacks or open plan layout as fundamental elements of a culture of innovation. These are suddenly irrelevant and unlikely to return as more than superficial perks, artifacts of another time.
Beyond these symbols, certain orthodoxies have taken hold. However, they miss the nuances of what it really takes to make innovation part of how a place operates, and where innovation efforts translate into meaningful stakeholder results. For example:
Based on my research of real-world experiences of nearly 50 startup founders, corporate innovators, investors, and other hands-on participants in a wide range of innovation successes and failures, here’s a summary of the most important attributes of an innovation culture:
Top leadership — especially the CEO and their direct reports — must walk the talk, and commit head and heart to prioritizing innovation. Culture is the sum of the thousands of decisions, communications, and choices that happen every day inside any organization. But the beliefs and behaviors —down to the smallest — from the top of the house set the pace and are transmitted and internalized everyplace in the organization. The CEO and the CEO’s direct report establish the boundaries for how everyone behaves.
Beware of the appointment of a chief innovation officer if that person’s colleagues do not have skin in the game to ensure shared success.
Nothing matters without selecting and bringing together the right mix of talent. The leadership profile and skills of an innovator are quite different than the profile of people who shine in more traditional roles. As food for thought, here are some of the attributes that consistently rise to the top of the list:
A team of individuals who demonstrate these attributes collectively in their behavior can be a powerful force. They can also act as role models to others in the organization. Additionally, businesses committed to internal mobility, they can spread what they know by taking on new assignments.
Cultural attributes must translate into recognition and reward systems. Mature businesses recognize and reward based on the metrics they have honed over many years of experience to drive employee, customer, and financial outcomes. These can be disastrously inappropriate to measure the value of a nascent concept, or the contributions of employees progressing growth experiments. As a result, it’s easy to discount innovation contributions and not recognize and reward innovative employees adequately.
Innovation progress is measurable, but on its own terms. Through public recognition, formal or informal, as well as performance evaluation and compensation process, you can develop measures that appropriately acknowledge extraordinary work of innovators in your organization.
We have all been disrupted by the pandemic. Innovation is the antidote to disruption. But it takes leadership to establish and sustain a culture of innovation — and ultimately ensure that the organization is more strongly positioned to move beyond crisis to recovery and opportunity.