5 Tips to Drive Innovation in an Organization
How to move past "that's not how we do it here" — reinvent processes, share business problems openly, make failure acceptable, balance accountability with experimentation, and keep an open mind for ideas from anywhere.
How often have you heard "that's not how we do it here" in a meeting? When coworkers suggest new ways to tackle complex problems, are their ideas welcomed or discarded? In most organizations, the answers are often "no" or "never."
Great companies recognize that million-dollar ideas don't always come from senior management. They may come from an hourly employee, a contractor, or someone on the assembly line whose interpretation of a problem opens an entirely new market. Here are five habits that drive innovation.
1. Reinvent processes Right processes increase profitability and efficiency — but in a dynamic business environment, client needs change constantly. Organizations need to revisit processes periodically: remove obsolete ones, update existing ones, and introduce new ones.
India removed 1,500 redundant British-era laws from its constitution and jumped from 136th to 63rd in the World Bank's ease-of-doing-business ranking between 2014 and 2020. Continuous process improvement enables team engagement and fuels organizational growth.
2. Awareness of key initiatives and business problems Like a patient explaining symptoms to a doctor, leaders and team members need to share business problems openly until everyone in the company is aware of the issues worth solving. After that, leave your smart team with established processes to figure out the best solution.
All levels of employees should be aware of the company's key initiatives for the week, quarter, and year. If employees don't believe in those initiatives, they won't work wholeheartedly to fulfill them. When people believe in the dream, they make it their own.
3. Failing is okay Humans cannot figure out everything the first time. They need to experiment, make mistakes, learn, and try different approaches. In typical organizations, failure has consequences — but in successful companies, leaders encourage teams to experiment and fail in order to innovate.
Failure should be an option. Failing fast is the requirement. Always follow an agile approach when teams want to experiment. The pharmaceutical industry illustrates this well: the success rate from phase-1 to launch is less than 10%, yet the industry advances because experimentation is built into the model.
4. Balance accountability and innovation Every person needs accountability for assigned tasks. Great leaders avoid the blame game in cases of failure — they take responsibility and let the team save face. As a result, teams try harder next time, increasing chances of successful delivery and creative solutions. Leaders take blame for failures and give credit for wins.
5. Keep an open mind If your team isn't coming up with great ideas despite excellent people and tools, ask why. Internal competitions like hackathons succeed because they temporarily remove hierarchy and permission friction — solving year-long legacy problems in days.
Ideas can come from anywhere at any time. A leader needs to let go of the need for absolute control and allow smart, engaged employees to take calculated risks as they seek to improve their work and their clients' experience.