If you agree that a leader’s prime directive is to deliver sustainable improvements that create value for your customers and business, then building a culture that values innovation is essential.
Innovation isn’t about predicting the future, but rather identifying evolving customer needs, and continuously improving how your business meets them.
When innovation is valued, the sustainability of your business is strengthened.
Financial performance is improved.
Customer relationships are more enduring.
Your company’s culture is reinforced.
And, your employee engagement, development and satisfaction are increased.
These 3 steps cultivate innovation:
- Make Innovation Mandatory.
- Explicitly communicate innovation as a strategic imperative. Encourage the challenging of existing assumptions, and allocate dedicated time for creative exploration.
- Create open channels for idea sharing to ensure that all employees can participate in idea exploration, and that novel ideas are thoroughly assessed.
- Reward innovative thinking and validated novel concepts.
- Create a “No-Fail” Culture.
- Eliminate fear of failure by accepting reasonable risk, and treating failure of a new concept as a learning opportunity.
- Allow employees to be authentic in how they choose to share their novel ideas; people are more creative and innovative when they are free to be themselves.
- Encourage the development of innovation champions who ensure that novel ideas have sufficient time to evolve and progress.
- Simplify Innovation Processes.
- Design and implement uncomplicated, accessible systems for idea development.
- Enable employees to easily research and test novel concepts.
- Transparently monitor and communicate the value created by a realized innovation using metrics like increased revenue, productivity, or profitability.
How are you building your innovation culture?