How to Cultivate a Culture of Innovation

I’ve recently been asked this question many times, in different ways, “how do you cultivate a culture of innovation?” or “how do you nurture the spirit of innovation in your teams?” Simply asked, they’re wondering what do you do to get teams/organizations to have an innovation mindset?  This one isn’t easy, but let’s try to unpack it.

First, to talk about Culture, we must be on the same page.  In my believe, “culture is the behavior that senior leadership either display or tolerate.”  In summary, it is how we do things around here. 

Next let’s talk about Innovation.  A Google search on innovation defines it as “the process of bringing about new ideas, methods, products, services, or solutions that have a significant positive impact and value.”

In essence we’re talking about having an accepted way of doing things (culture) that promotes idea sharing, exploration of new methods of doing things, including new products, in order to make things better (positive outcome/value.)

When I think to answer this question, from my personal experience as well as observing others, a few things come to mind as the INGREDIENTS that are required for this culture to take root.  I’ll try to keep this really simple.

1)    Psychological Safety

 It all starts with having a safe environment where employees (or friends and family) can be authentically themselves, without fear of shame and/or blame.  This is where they are the truest version of themselves, they can be.  Without psychological safety, we have too many barriers to entry for creativity to be present and resident.

2)    Leadership Support

Leaders influence the charter that develops for teams, hence without a leader supporting innovation, teams, and individuals on them are left to do only what’s necessary and safe.  They look for the easy button instead of the explore button.

I’ll never forget the words used by an executive leader who said to me, by way of support, “let me know what pastures you need mowed over so you can do your best work.”  Something as simple as that made a huge difference to me, as a young manager.

3)    Resources to Leverage 

Many creative minds have worked miracles with shoestring and bubble gum, however it’s unreasonable to expect teams to truly innovate without the necessary resources, in both time, money, and other people needed to do the work.  Even with limited resources, teams can get extremely creative, but they do need some resources.  Sometimes the limitation, the constraint, brings out more ideas and ways that otherwise wouldn’t be explored.

4)    A Risk-Embracing Mindset

We’ve all heard the old saying, “no risk, no reward.”  This isn’t that we should take blind, reckless risk, and throw all caution to the wind, not at all.  Though evaluating the risk and being willing to take calculated risk when necessary is entirely different.  That also means being willing to fail, to be wrong, and ultimately to be disappointed or to disappoint others.  Michael Jordan was known to be an outstanding basketball player.  He didn’t make every shot nor every free throw.  He had a lot of misses, and many at critical moments.  Those weren’t seen as career-ending mistakes but temporary setbacks, and possibly lessons.  A favorite quote of mine is the reminder that “mistakes refine you, they don’t define you.”  I used to tell my teams there are some “really good ideas, and some really good bad ideas.  Only time will tell which ones these are.”

5)    Diversity

Few people can fully innovate on their own, most need other people and resources to work with to achieve their full potential.  Having a team (even if it’s 2 or 3 individuals) collaborating, working with different strengths makes a world of difference.  They lean on each other, complement each other, and challenge each other.  Diversity in skill and thinking is definitely an asset in the sphere of innovation, without a doubt.  The more diverse the team, the better, but that’s not to say they should be scatter-brained.  Once the goal is set and roles, responsibilities defined, it’s a Go! And the Diversity drives things forward, dislodging problems in unique ways.

6)    The BIG MO

Nothing propels a culture of innovation more than momentum.  A culture built on action, with quick wins celebrated often, has energy on its side.  Momentum builds excitement and sustains it.  It also bull-dozes issues as they arise.  Momentum is the “stone soup” of innovation (see my article on Stone Soup.) John C. Maxwell refers to the Law of the Big MO, Lesson 16 of the 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership as ““momentum is a leader’s best friend.”  Hence a leader that gets momentum going in a team focused on innovation finds that the torch has been ignited and it starts to lead the way, fueling the fire in all the right ways.

7)    Autonomy

Autonomy, or in other words, a “wide berth” for teams to work and engage in trial-and-error activities, is also a necessary ingredient.  No true innovation can occur with people feeling choked or that someone is breathing down their neck.  Autonomy creates empowerment and reinforces accountability.  It tells a team that they are trusted that they are capable, and it unleashes their energy.  One of the phrases I was often quoted saying to my team was “don’t tell me where the dead bodies are buried!”  By that I meant that I didn’t need to know every little detail, and that it’s ok for individuals to take some executive decisions when necessary.  That went a long way to building individual and teams’ confidence, and ultimately oiled the wheels of innovation, helping build moment (working in a more agile way.)

8)    Grit 

By grit I mean having a high degree of resilience, the ability to get past obstacles, regardless of how consistently they arise and how frustrating they get.  A big part of this is remaining positive, accepting that milestones may loom further ahead than originally anticipated, and, targets may change, a lot.  Going the whole way, staying the course, every day, isn’t easy.  But nothing good comes easy, not really.  Patience and a steady Eddie attitude is absolutely part of the culture, it must be.

9)    Creativity

Innovation, without a doubt, requires creativity.  It must!  Finding different and non-conventional ways to do things is absolutely a requirement.  In fact, I would contest you can’t truly innovate without creativity.  Having a “if everything was possible and you had all the resources in the world, what would you do?” mindset can tap into angles that otherwise wouldn’t be tapped.  The spirit of exploration, the child within us is dying to say, “what if we do this???”  Once creative ideas start to be shared, they catch like wildfire, and need to be safely tested and appropriately sponsored.

10) Recognition

Finally, to sustain a culture of innovation, it’s critical that the ideas, the actions, and the results of the work done to innovate get shared and in a very vast way.  Celebrating success comes in different flavors, including individual and team reward, communication, financial sponsorship for project playgrounds, and career-enhancing action for individuals and the teams.

Once you’ve got a culture of innovation going, and you sustain it, you start to see beautiful outcomes, not only for the companies that benefit from the innovative work delivered, but also by the individuals who learn and grow while in the innovative mode.  And remember, ““Innovation is the unrelenting drive to break the status quo and develop anew where few have dared to go. “  Steven Jeffes, Marketing & business expert.  Dare to innovate.