5 Actions to Boost Your Company’s Innovation
If you want to spur innovation within your company, first ask these 3 questions:
· Are we good at creating change?
· Are we customer focused?
· Are we a Learning organization?
Truly innovative companies can answer yes to all three of these questions. Companies that cannot may be too inwardly focused, lack responsiveness to customers, competitors, and employees with new ideas. They may over-invest in rigid processes. Or they may be too focused on short term performance, rather than planning and leading for the future. All these behaviors sap a company’s Adaptability – its cultural capacity for innovation.
If you want to improve your organization’s level of innovation, here are 5 actions you can take to boost your company’s Adaptability and Innovation:
1. Visit your customers. Listen to what they have to say about your products or services. Listen to what their priorities and needs are. Then share those customer insights throughout your organization – especially with people and functions that don’t have regular customer contact.
2. Reward risk-taking even if it means occasional failure. Build a culture that tries new things, learns what works and what doesn’t (quickly), and celebrates the learnings garnered from both successes and failures.
3. Set targets for the % of business that comes from new products/services. And reward teams and individuals that exceed the targets. Don’t worry about cannibalizing yourself. If you don’t do it, one of your competitors will.
4. Hire a few outsiders in key positions who can help drive these new behaviors and evolve the culture. These new people could be vulnerable to resistance by existing employees as they work to make change. So be sure to provide them with plenty or support and very intentional onboarding.
5. Create skunkworks or smaller business units that can operate with more agility. Especially if the company has a very “thick” culture and is resistant to change, creating smaller work units that can pursue innovative ideas or new products can help demonstrate the power of Innovation, and serve as a model for the rest of the organization.
Innovation is the life blood of every organization. There are few things more central to ensuring a strong and profitable future than investing in the development of an adaptable, innovative culture.