When was the last time you did something for the first time?

In our personal lives, we do this all the time. At the weekend, we escape from work and the freedom to try new things. We grow with our family and provide new experiences for our children, partners, friends and relatives. For some people, these new things are terrifying and involve risk. For others, it could be a skill or passion they have been meaning to follow and although not risky, still delivers excitement.

We thrive on challenge. We enter races at the weekend. We grow new plants in our garden and hope the look better than the neighbours. Our friends buy us vouchers for balloon rides knowing that we’ve always wanted to have a go. We encourage our children to take up swimming classes and watch as they nervously enter the water for the first time.

76% of leaders said they regularly empower employees to be innovative, only 42% of employees agreed (Accenture)

So why do we do this? Growth, personal growth. Or supporting the growth of others. We like to learn and gain new experiences as it makes us feel good. We get reward from this several times over. Whether it’s during our experience or after it when we tell our friends about it. Sometimes too many times!

So, when was the last time you did something for the first time?

It’s a powerful question but are we using it enough or at all? Should we ask this during the annual appraisal process or better still, ask it during a check-in so it happens on a more frequent basis. In our personal lives, many of us will enjoy challenges we have not undertaken before. So why don’t we do this at work?

A recent study from Accenture reveals while 76% of leaders said they regularly empower employees to be innovative, only 42% of employees agreed. This shows there is a disconnect at work and it’s something that we need to fix.

I visit many businesses where processes and people haven’t changed for many years and more importantly, they don’t want to. Some of these people operate with a belief that what they are currently doing will see them through to retirement. As employers, we should be encouraging people to explore options for innovation for the good of the business.

Businesses with processes routed in the 1970s will not survive. The world is constantly changing yet we are seldom helping people try to something new. We cannot afford to hold onto old processes as this will not deliver a competitive advantage in a technologically rich environment where the pace of change determines the future of a company.

We need people to look at new ways of working such as tours of duty and people will move between project teams to deliver outcomes.  This will afford people the opportunity to take part in a project for 3, 4 or 6 months to learn new skills or employ under-utilised skills. Tours of duty can bring together people to implement a project at pace and then return to their main team. This is where the next benefit arrives. These people can then share the experience they have had on the tour with colleagues to encourage new ways of working and be a beacon of doing something new. (Please read more about Tours of Duty in our recent blog.)

Employers who encourage innovation and creativity will thrive and succeed. So how do we bring that passion to try something for the first time to work? There are 5 key steps to start with:

• Challenge leaders to create the environment for innovation to flourish.
• Tell people it’s ok to try.
• Learn from what doesn’t work.
• Talk about willingness to change and make it normal.
• Create a fluid environment where people can move around departments and gain experience.

Small pilot schemes are great incubators and let people explore the feasibility of innovations. We don’t use pilot schemes enough to test a concept or to gain early buy-in from key users. We have talked about the 20% club in previous years but for many, this is beyond their capacity for the whole organisation. The allowance of time and resources to a pilot needs to be determined at the point of need and not through a formalised process applicable to everyone. And sometimes, it requires people to take a chance and try something new before a formal decision has been made! This is more about leadership and the willingness of people to seek forgiveness and not permission. Would this be shunned in your organisation?

As leaders, CEOs and CHROs have the ability to change the way we work. My call to action is that you encourage people to ask, when was the last time you did something for the first time?

#hr #futureofwork #innovation #change

Andy Davies