Pushing the Elephant: 4 Ways To Spark Innovation In Big Organizations!

Innovation and hierarchies do not mix. Rigid, vertical cultures stifle ideas and stunt creativity. Innovation requires an embrace of new ideas. You have to be in sync with your customer's unmet needs.?

In contrast, big bureaucracies often have an insular mindset. Layers of procedural and administrative sediment cocoons leadership. As a result, management becomes removed from the reality of retail, the shopfloor and the ordinary customer's experience. The organization's entrepreneurial roots often wither as process dominates over people.??

Part of the problem is size. As big companies grow, informal horizontal communication - I know X in Y department - gives way to vertical silos that control and even horde information. The bigger the behemoth morphs, the more likely decisions are removed from individual leaders and shift toward entrenched procedures. As the web of rules spreads, the ability to improvise and "think different" dwindle.

Leaders matter too. As large organizations supersize the type of leaders, they attract, promote and retain changes. Gone are pesky, risk hunting entrepreneur who seeks market-leading change. Now managers are the current flavour. Part of the reason is logical. Corporate managers bring stability and control; they work within the given paradigm. Moreover, management skills are elevated because they can deliver regular, repeatable, short-term results.

As an innovative leader, working in a complex organization, here are four strategies that can help you push the elephant of organizational change and innovation.

1. Buy New Capabilities.

Most large organizations owe their success to a set of core capabilities. These are the values, behaviours and technical skills that enable them to create profitable products and services. Sometimes these capabilities can allow you to stand out from the competition. Think supply-chain (Walmart), lean production methods (Toyota) or a seamless search engine (Google).

However, often what you are good at today can become tomorrow's millstone. Remember, Kodak, the iconic photography company. It became so wedded to its core capabilities, it just could not see the value of digital photography, even though it was a technology invented by its research teams!

One quick solution to overcoming these "rigidities" is to buy new capabilities. Acquire a zesty start-up with a fresh perspective, talents and product offering. For a big company with deep pockets, this is an obvious choice. Why recreate a success when you can cherry-pick a winner and supersize its market reach within your corporate muscle.?

However, adding a flashy new, small company to an established corporate stable is not without its risks. Culture may be strategy's breakfast predator, but it is a fragile thing. What makes a feisty start-up's culture zing is a unique combination of people, personalities, values (spoken and unsaid) and how we act together. The secret sauce of high-performing teams is the subtle interplay of these cultural sinews.??

The tightrope of an acquisition-innovation strategy is how far you can integrate the new fledging culture into the mothership without stamping out the very creativity which made it attractive in the first place. Rein in the new company too much, and a culture clash can ensue, where the more entrepreneurial talent finds the "new rules" suffocating—leading to an exodus of the best brains.?

Instead, diagnose what makes the acquired culture great. Decode its essential elements: rank them. However, we all know a coin has two sides, so be aware that some aspects of a less "mature" organization are not always perfect and need your expertise. For example, hiring and inclusion practices might rest too heavily on personal preferences, or operations could be shambolic.?

Once you have done the inventory, you will have a better understanding of how to harness a high potential team, without jeopardizing its creative and innovative essence. Well handled, the results can be gold dust. By zealously protecting the acquisition's unique culture, the effect can be not only more innovation but a dynamic transfusion of ideas and leadership back to the mother-ship.

2. Disrupt Yourself

Big companies often fall into a comfortable cadence based on past success. Steady profits, stable products and happy customers can lull leaders into limiting their ambition.

However, if COVID has taught us anything, it is that disruption can be unexpected. The competitive storm clouds of digitization and shifting consumer patterns have shattered the barriers between industries and evaporated the money needed to enter them. Customers are looking for immediate service: click to doorstep service. They are seeking service bridges to "vendors" who can meet their bespoke needs. Think Airbnb (hotels), Uber/Uber Eats (taxis and food deliveries), and retail (Shopify, Amazon and Taobao).

One strategy is a thought experiment: what would happen if we pressed Ctrl+Alt+Delete and starting with a blank page. Netflix is the exemplar of this self-disruption. Killing the golden goose of the company's past success. Netflix could have remained content as a niche "snail mail" DVD lending library with $80 million in profit. However, it was serving a distinct but dwindling market segment. So instead, it chose to burn its boats and strike out toward a different path. It punched through its "core competency" first by offering older movies on a video-streaming platform and then reshaping the television and movie industry.

Today Netflix has broken the divide between, hosting platforms, content makers and "broadcasters." As we all know - having been inside over the past year - it now produces its TV series and movies.?Altered Carbon, The Queen's Gambit, Ozark, Stranger Things and Bridgerton, Bird Box?and who cannot forget?Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness,?being its most popular pandemic blockbusters and all without owning a single box office, movie theatre or popcorn stand. Today, Netflix has 207 million subscribers worldwide and a profit of over $2.76 billion.?

3. Deep Dialogue?

Who sits around at the table determines what decisions are made. If we have all been reared in the same schools, programs and disciplines, have similar experiences and careers, how can we be surprised that decisions become, linear, limited and insular.?

In its worst manifestations, a pervasive "group-think" can paralyze a big organization to the extent that even bright people become subsumed to pre-existing dogma. As a result, options outside the "accepted" viewpoints can become unmentionable, even heretical. Often it takes an ethical or profound market failure to expose the flawed mindset.?

Working within such cultures is tough. Smart people curb their dissent to maintain a consensus. Rocking the boat can lead to ostracism and failure to advance in their careers.

The antidote to such conformity is a robust dialogue of the organization's underlying assumptions, methods and practices. It is brave work and requires leaders of stature willing to take risks.?The leader must be willing to tackle overt and subliminal values and behaviours head-on. At first, the answers can be superficial or excuses. However, you need to go further and deeper to understand the root causes. You will need tenacity and perseverance: uprooting rigid cultures is like an archeological dig. You have to move tons of dirt before the treasure is revealed, but it is worth the search.?

4. Embrace Doubt and Creativity?

For many large organizations, you need might be to go beyond words, rich dialogue and reinvigorate the leadership team. Broadening the bandwidth of ideas might mean creating greater intellectual diversity - people who think differently but are driven by a common goal.

It is human nature for us to like people who talk our language and share our outlook.?We find affinity in agreement. However, creativity demands the caustic rub of differing views. Tension creates heat, and energy fuses ideas into valuable concepts.

Being open to differences and actively promoting them can assure that your organization does not become an echo chamber. However, excessive conformity shrinks the aperture of ideas, cutting an organization off from courses of action that could save it. It is natural that any group, placed under external duress, will close its ranks. Undoubtedly, people look to leaders to provide certainty, action, and direction. In a crisis, their confidence can be contagious. When a leader emanates self-assurance, it helps others gain composure and builds their resilience to weather the storm.

However, overweening self-confidence can become ironclad egotism. As a more conscious leader, one should always have a fragment of doubt. You may not voice your fears — at first — but a crumb of doubt gives you the distance to examine your situation to see the proverbial "wood from the trees."

Stepping back and asking the humble question, "Do I believe that to be true?"

Asking this question gives you the breathing space to sieve facts and new data points with greater objectivity. It helps immunize you from filtered information that biases a critical decision.

Too often, we choose and prioritize information that confirms our standpoint. In large organizations, this "confirmation bias" can be compounded by each level deliberately filtering out information they think their superiors do not want to hear.

Wiser counsel opens up the aperture of information to embrace — with healthy skepticism — the instinctual. For example, innovation happening at the margins — embers of tomorrow's reality — can be early tell-tell signs of a more significant challenge or opportunity. Sometimes the vital information can be a fragment, an early signal that your strategy has gone awry, a product is not selling, or the service has holes in its value proposition.

Final Thoughts

Pushing the elephant in big organizations is tough. Few big companies are Google or Apple. Big tech giants with almost limitless resources and boundless aspirations. Most businesses are made of humbler clay. Being able to change them depends on a leader's willingness to embrace change. Culture plays a huge role.

Being open enough to realize tomorrow will be different from yesterday is a start. As the velocity of change accelerates, all innovators must challenge their and their team’s current thinking for future greatness.

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About the Author

Simon Trevarthen?is the Founder and Chief Inspiration Officer of?Elevate Your Greatness (EYG). We help individuals, teams, and organizations unpack the secrets of success by becoming even better versions of themselves through dynamic keynotes, seminars and workshops on innovation, inspiration and presentation excellence.