Innovation is not the monopoly of the R&D Department. Everyone of our staff has highly tuned antennae which pick up valuable commercial intelligence about consumer trends, supplier data and client feedback. Just because they are not wearing white lab coats, doesn’t mean their insights should be ignored. Yet that is what we do in most companies. Innovation is the application of creative ideas into practical products and services. The germ of the idea is where the creativity component comes in and this is available to anyone. The journey from creative idea to idea application treads a path which transcends the scope of one individual. This is where the wheels fall off and most companies cannot capitalize on the latent creativity inside their firms.
Our recent global survey on creative ideas at work uncovered some disturbing findings. Given the intense competition in the marketplace for companies, you would expect that leaders would be doing all they could to seize and shepherd creative ideas through to application. Yet the survey showed that only 21% of leaders were really actively seeking ideas from anywhere and anyone in their organisations. Only 23% of survey respondents answered that it is very easy to get support for good ideas in their firm.
That germ of an idea will start with one person, but will it start at all? If you don’t care about the firm and you are not engaged, you don’t care if the mousetrap being built is better or not. Our research on the emotional triggers for high engagement showed that leaders need to make their people feel valued, confident, empowered and connected. These are all leader soft skills and depend on attitude orientation and communication skills to work. However, the numbers do not look promising. Only 27% of respondents said their manager makes them feel really valued, just 24% strongly agree they feel empowered and 62% said they don’t feel particularly confident in their skills and abilities at work.
Purpose is a key word in business today. Are the leaders actively promoting an emotional connection to the team’s work? Are the daily tasks being connected back to the company’s purpose by the leader? You might be thinking, “no problem, I do that”. However, if we recorded your conversations with your staff for a full day, how much time would have been spent connecting work with purpose? By the way the boss waxing lyrical about “shareholder value” won’t cut it, as a defining purpose for the staff. We need a higher purpose here to motivate people to get out of first gear.
Psychological safety is a phrase we didn’t anything about at work until recently. Today, crusty old leaders like me, have to re-invent ourselves and become more skilled at creating, coaching and maintaining workplace psychological safety. This is not that easy. Many of us grew up in the “suck it up” ethos of fight or flight. “If you can’t take it, then leave and we will replace you with someone tougher who can handle the pressure”. Namby-pamby whiners complaining about their lack of psychological safety are an affront to everything we did in our careers, because we did tough it out and we did climb the greasy pole to the top.
So what? That is not the current workplace. Times have changed and we have to change with them. The War for Talent is unending and is actually becoming more intense. We can’t throw people overboard today, because replacing them will be a nightmare. We just cannot afford to ignore people with ideas, because we are running the show like a demented pirate captain. If the environment is considered safe for idea generation then there is a higher willingness to take risks such as putting forward new and original ideas.
