If you want to kick off innovation in your team AND you care about practical real-life doable things, not a theory, this post is for you.
It is popular to talk about how to ‘identify possibilities for innovation’ and ‘how to assess innovation’. The other day I watched a talk where a guy provided his top-10 steps for innovation and those were good points… for the team that already innovates on a regular basis. So most talks and articles I’ve seen are actually about how to innovate better. But what if we are at step zero?
In this post we will discuss exactly this, how to kick off innovation from the ground level.
I’ve been leading teams and organizations for more than 10 years. During this time, I’ve initiated innovation from scratch and elevated it to new levels multiple times in various teams and companies. In this post, I will share my top 3 proven methods for initiating innovation in the team and improving it over time, so you can replicate the same success in your teams or use my example as additional information.
If there is no one on your team except you who innovates, it doesn’t matter how many ideas you have. One person is not enough for company-wide innovation; you need everyone on your team to participate.
“Innovation is a development and implementation of an idea, which is useful and new to the organization at the time of adoption.”
Why does it matter?
Because everything changes, and you need to change too.
Imagine that progress is a fast-moving train, and you either jump on board or fall behind.
If your organization doesn’t keep up with progress or adapt to change, it will inevitably fall behind. The chances to succeed depend on how many people on your team can innovate and innovate.
To start, let’s define where you currently are with innovation.
Assess Your Innovation Level
For that I’ll ask you:
What’s your innovation number? In other words, how many people on your team regularly suggest and implement new ideas?
If it’s just you trying to make a difference, then your count is 1.
You probably have an idea what this number should be, but just in case I’ll tell you later in this post. And also, an important thing, a low innovation number does not mean you have a lazy team, not at all. Keep reading, and you’ll understand why.
If I ask you “Do you support innovation?” What’s your answer? Usually, leaders think they do, but here’s the thing… In one global survey, they collected responses from nearly 54,000 workers in 46 countries and territories. One section focused on whether a team manager encourages debate and tolerates small-scale failures. The question was addressed to both managers and employees.
Think how you would agree with these statements. I will simplify for the purpose of our discussion:
I encourage debates in my team
I tolerate small-scale failures
Think about it and try to honestly assess this for yourself.
…
While 56% of managers believe that they support debates in their teams, only 33% of employees share the same opinion. This trend is similar when it comes to tolerance for small failures.
As you can see, there’s a gap between how managers perceive it and how employees perceive it.
This indicates that you could be a part of the problem. Even if you are personally active and motivated to innovate. The good news is that you have all the power to change the situation and transform your team into an innovation powerhouse.
This is how we go to the How To part.
How to support innovation as a leader
How to start from ground zero in innovation?
There are three key elements: environment, process, and appreciation.
When you grow a flower, you need a suitable flower pot, proper soil, sufficient sunlight, etc. This is the environment.
You must dig a hole in the soil, cover the seed and regularly water it. This is the process.
Then, from time to time, you need to prune and remove leaves, stems, and branches, and this should be done at specific times. This is the appreciation, figuratively speaking.
So if you need creativity and innovation in your team you need to establish these three elements.
Environment As A Key Element Of Innovation
Your employees must feel safe to experiment and learn. The environment you need to create is one where people naturally want to innovate.
More precisely, this environment should offer these 3 essential components: safety, support and desire.
Safety
By safety in the mental worker setup we rather mean psychological safety.
Psychological safety refers to the perception of individuals within a group or team that they can express their thoughts, opinions, ideas, and concerns without fear of negative consequences, such as punishment or humiliation.
It’s a crucial element in creating a healthy and productive work environment where people feel comfortable taking risks, sharing their authentic selves, and contributing to discussions and decisions.
Psychological safety promotes open communication, collaboration, and innovation by fostering an atmosphere of trust, respect, and support among team members.
It should be ok to say “I failed”. It should be ok to say I don’t know, I was wrong. It should be ok to try something and find out that it does not work out. By OK I mean nobody should go crazy about the failed attempt, wrong assumption, no punishment should follow from management or from other team members.
It should be ok to say “I failed”. It should be ok to say I don’t know, I was wrong. It should be ok to try something and find out that it does not work out.
People should want to share their experience, including the negative one, the failure. Not only success stories. In the right culture, this should be safe to discuss. Small failures should be tolerated.
Of course the wise way to tolerate something is to ensure that the learning process is there too. And big failures should be avoided by creating persistent systems. But this is another topic and we will not go into it here.
The safe environment enables people to be open about their ideas and take risks and responsibility.
The next component of the innovative environment is support.
Support
You can find a lot of information about support. I’ve personally figured out ONE thing. It may not be what everyone expects or agrees with. But this is what has proven efficient for me many times. I’m talking about ego-less culture.
An ego-less culture refers to a work environment or organizational culture where individuals set aside their personal egos and focus on collective goals, collaboration, and shared success.
In an ego-less culture, people prioritize teamwork, open communication, and mutual support, creating a space where contributions are valued based on their merit rather than ego-driven motivations.
Many companies suffer from blame games and war rooms, where a lot of time and effort are wasted. This issue becomes even more prominent when there’s a focus on personalities competing rather than fostering teamwork. Such competition and the desire to win often result in isolation, a lack of learning, limited information sharing, and reduced collaboration.
In contrast, in an ego-less environment, people tend to learn from each other, and their teamwork becomes a mechanism for achieving innovation.
We listed Safety and Support as components of the innovative environment. And the third one is Desire.
Desire
Merriam-Webster dictionary explains the word as a “conscious impulse toward something that promises enjoyment or satisfaction in its attainment”. This presupposes a clear understanding of the desired thing.
In the context of innovation, we emphasize the need for a clear company direction or vision, which serves as the purpose of innovation.
Importantly, this purpose should be well-known to everyone within the team. While managers typically have a grasp of the company’s goals at any given moment, other employees may not always be familiar with them.
This lack of clarity leads to a lack of motivation.
Therefore, company leadership should invest effort in making this information accessible and comprehensible to every team member. This is the only way to address the ‘Why’ question that everyone has.
Smart people tend to feel confident and satisfied when they face challenges, achieve results, and can shape their own future. For that, they must also know where the company is headed. Therefore, if a company’s goals are not evident, individuals’ personal goals might diverge.
When the environment provides sufficient motivation, people are willing not only to propose ideas, but also to take the initiative and responsibility for their implementation.
So we’ve covered Safety, Support and Desire as essential components of an innovative environment. And by that we’ve also covered Environment as a key element of innovation.
The other two elements are process and appreciation.
Process As A Key Element Of Innovation
To foster innovation there must be a clear process for assessing each new idea. And you need to make this process as clear as possible so that everyone understands it, knows where to find and review it.
When you know what to expect, you are mentally more prepared. It takes less energy to decide to pursue this path. If before implementing an idea you need to learn how it will happen, the right way to suggest it, with whom to share, and so on, it becomes harder to decide. Because you have to do twice the work: suggest the idea and suggest a way to handle it. When the process lacks clarity, you typically see fewer innovations.
Furthermore, not every idea is a great one.
When there’s a lack of process, people may get offended because they don’t understand why their idea didn’t move forward. This issue typically doesn’t arise when the process is clear, and the evaluation and reasoning are transparent.
Employees will be encouraged to suggest ideas if they are confident that they will be appropriately considered. And ‘appropriately’ means ‘in the expected manner’.
Employees will be encouraged to suggest ideas if they are confident that they will be appropriately considered.
Encourage your employees to suggest all ideas, even if they’re not carried out.
Thus far, we’ve covered Environment and Process. The only element remaining is Appreciation.
Appreciation As A Key Element Of Innovation
While it is a straightforward concept, what matters here is that you…
1) Appreciate the effort even if the idea is not carried out. Because you want these ideas to keep coming.
2) Appreciate the experiment, whether successful or not.
3) Express your appreciation verbally, because people can’t read your mind.
By doing this you support the desire to suggest and implement more ideas.
Thus we’ve covered Environment, Process and Appreciation.
If we now go back to the question about your innovation number or how many people on your team regularly suggest and implement new ideas. The higher this number, the better. And the steps we’ve discussed here will help you in achieving this.
The only moment left is How do you measure that you are moving in the right direction?
If you do, You will notice that people: Regularly suggest ideas, Offer to lead initiatives and take responsibility, Share their feelings, problems, solutions and more.
You can download a more detailed list, it’s free, if you like. I’ve collected 17 Markers of innovation-ready environments that you can use to assess your team.
To Summarize
To kick off innovation in your team, you need to:
Create the right environment, meaning it should offer Safety, Support, and Desire.
Establish a clear process.
Foster a culture of appreciation.
Assess progress.
In conclusion, do you remember the fast-moving train we started with?
Whether you choose to jump on board or risk falling behind is entirely up to you. You now have at least one effective scenario for achieving it with your team. But the decision to act or not is yours to make.
Cheers,