Encouraging Innovation Internally
As is the case in many businesses across the U.S., once an organization figures out what works for them, the focus is put on just that - doing the things that work. When businesses learn how to make money, most of their effort and energy is spent on doing what the organization already knows how to do. Since innovation is not a focus in the majority of businesses, it can sound like a scary thing. The reality though is that innovation can be much simpler than we think. Many organizations probably did not consider the recent efforts to move their workers remote as a result of COVID-19 to be an innovation. However, transitioning an entire organization’s operations to work virtually is an impressive feat and many companies had no choice but to figure out how to do it. It has been said that good ideas come to us in the shower, but my goal is not to give impractical suggestions like take a shower at work. My goal for this article is to inspire innovation by making small tweaks to the work day. Companies should think of innovation in simpler terms, because small changes can end up making a big difference.
The results of a 2016 study done by Adobe showed that over 85% of U.S. respondents believe emphasizing creativity at work is more likely to foster innovation, help the company become more competitive, provide a better customer experience, and make the company more financially successful [1]. Many of us may feel like we do not have creative jobs, therefore we should leave innovation up to the experts in Silicon Valley. The problem with trying to follow Silicon Valley organizations is that they are not representative of the typical American company. 88% of all the businesses in America are fewer than twenty employees, which means the vast majority of U.S. businesses are not equipped with the same resources as Silicon Valley. On the other end of the spectrum, it can also be incredibly difficult for mega corporations to roll out innovative changes like Google's famous initiative of allowing employees to devote 20% of their work hours to passion projects of their choice [2]. There is some disagreement for how formal this initiative actually is, however Google has claimed that many popular products like AdSense, Gmail, and Atlassian have all been a result of their “20% Project.â€
To calm the anxiety of initiatives around innovation, organizations can start by using more practical sounding words to get the point across. If innovation sounds too intimidating, here are some alternative ways innovation can be presented.
â— How can we transform our customer experience?
â— How can we remodel our site to make things easier for the user?
â— How can we modernize customer relationship management?
â— How can we renovate our office to increase productivity?
â— How can we improve our purchasing process?
â— How can we reorganize the supply chain to speed up delivery?
Or you could place the focus around pain points…
â— What is the most painful thing about ___?
â— How can we challenge our current way of doing ___?
Once there are ideas, organizations need to deliberately work to ensure momentum is not lost. One of the questions that needs to be thought through could be, how hard will it be to test out solutions for some of these issues? Or, if we make this decision, how long are we stuck with it? Jeff Bezos thinks about these decisions in a very simple way. If the decision is considered a “one-way door,†meaning once you make that decision, it will be impossible to back out, then the decision should be very carefully deliberated before proceeding. Most decisions however, Bezos considers, “two-way doors,†meaning the decision is easily reversible and you do not have to live with the consequences indefinitely. Bezos explains that the larger an organization becomes, the longer it takes to make any decision, even ones that are reversible [3].
In my experience, it often just takes a little bit of encouragement from managers to get the ball rolling. It should be clearly communicated that your team/organization is not afraid of new ideas failing. I am lucky enough to have a boss that is open to innovation and is constantly looking for ways to make improvements. I know that if I go to my boss with an idea, she will listen, and if it is something she thinks should be prioritized, I will get the support to see the idea through. As a manager, it is important to make sure your employees’ ideas are, at a minimum, heard. Knowing that my input is valued puts me at ease and gives me some reassurance in presenting new ideas. Organizations cannot expect game changing innovation to magically appear if they are not doing their part to cheer them on. Lastly, I know that if I have a creative idea that actually gets implemented, I will be recognized for it. Providing encouragement and praise leads to employees feeling more fulfilled at work. When employees are happy, they are more productive, and when they are more productive, they will make the organization better [4].
Every once in a while, the manager of my team will set aside an entire one-hour meeting to encourage idea generation and brainstorming. This is unstructured time for our team to build off of one another’s ideas and helps us to talk through what is or isn’t working. These sorts of meetings can incite conflict, but I think this sort of conflict can be very productive for the team. To make the most of these meetings, each person on our team completed a work style personality test (ex: DISC, Predictive Index). This helped us to better see the ways in which each of us think, how we approach problems, and how we can best communicate with one another. The final perk to these brainstorming meetings is that they are a great way to break up the workday. They get us away from the phone and email for an hour and allow our team to focus on something completely different from the day to day minutiae.
Innovation can take many different shapes and oftentimes minor tweaks can make a great impact. When I first started in my current role, I had to get used to “the way things have always been done.†I inherited many of the projects and processes that had been in place for years before I had joined the organization. One of these processes was the way we disposed of old documents. Since we never had that many physical documents to destroy in the past, we would pay a company to destroy each manila folder individually. This was a very costly and time intensive process, but year after year the process continued - since it was the way it had always been done. I noticed this inefficiency and inquired about changing the process. It turns out we could have the document destruction company do the same thing, but instead of manually disposing each individual document, they could instead incinerate entire boxes full of documents at the same time. By changing this simple process that had been on auto-pilot for many years, I ended up saving the company tens of thousands of dollars in document destruction costs annually.
To promote innovation at the group level, one thing my team currently does is provide monthly updates and visibility into each other's projects. At each monthly team meeting, a different team member spends about ten minutes sharing a success or failure that they recently experienced. This has been a great way for us to learn from each other's experiences and come up with new ideas for improving our own work. We have found that the ideas flow more easily when one person takes the lead on presenting a success or failure. The rest of the team is then able to build upon the discussion and share their own experiences and suggestions. We are always surprised by the way each of us frames problems differently and the specific routes we take to execute a task.
Another small thing we occasionally do at our monthly meetings is provide mini reports on books that we have read and share key takeaways from them. Although it may not directly lead to an innovative idea for the group, it still contributes to the overall cultural feeling of innovation and constant evolution in the workplace. It is also refreshing to hear about new ideas in the business world and have your colleague boil down a 300-page book to its most important bits. On the days where I am physically in the office, something I like to do to break up the day is walking meetings. Walking meetings have been shown to be an easy way to bring about innovation in the workplace [5]. Walking can help summon creative thinking by getting the blood pumping and providing you with some new sensory stimuli. It is also a unique way to bond with your coworkers, allowing them to let their guard down a little bit since it does not feel as formal as a conference room meeting.
If none of these proposed ideas work for you, then chances are there is an app out there that can help you with innovation. When teams are struggling with a process or task, looking to outside apps for solutions can also be helpful. My team used to have several different manual spreadsheets for keeping track of certain projects. Once we talked about the inconvenience of this at one of our monthly meetings, we ended up making a quick decision to migrate to a software called Smartsheet. This application helped us to combine all of these different spreadsheets into one shared account with controls on who can access/edit the data. There are tons of collaboration tools out there that can be used to achieve similar results. One company receiving a lot of attention recently for this is Atlassian, where their mission is to "Unleash the potential of every team." I have found their free playbooks to be especially helpful when you are in a creative rut [6].
In Dr. Hyoduk Shin's operations class at Rady, some key takeaways for me were around continuous improvement or "kaizen." Dr. Shin stresses that companies should never get too comfortable and that they should always be making mistakes. Of course we learn from mistakes, but making mistakes are not what create big problems for organizations. The big problems come from becoming complacent. Organizations should always be shooting to be better and the only way they can do that is by stretching and stress testing the current processes.
Every day at work, we encounter hundreds of hiccups, bottlenecks, and problems that could have solutions. If we can get out of the daily grind mindset, we can slowly address and correct many of these things. For example, if there is one task that you need to perform each day and it takes an unbearable five minutes to perform, that means that each year, you are spending about twenty-one hours of your life doing that unbearable task. But maybe you can change it. First, make innovation a priority and try to get some management onboard. With the support and encouragement from managers, it will help ensure that the innovation sticks around. Then, start small. Gather your ideas and consider whether or not they are easily reversible decisions. Next, try a bunch of different things and see what works best for your role, team, and company. Innovation is an iterative process, so do not get discouraged if the first attempts don’t work like you expected. There are an endless number of combinations of resources, people, and ideas out there to help you on this quest.
Article originally published in the Rady Business Journal.
References
3) https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/328284
4) https://phys.org/news/2019-10-happy-workers-productive.html