The current buzz words for most companies are “transformation” and “innovation.” The pervasiveness of those words correlate to the pressure companies are under to stay relevant. Many of their initiatives transform or innovate something related to methods, processes, technology, products, and services. However, some leading these initiatives do not realize that innovation is more far-reaching than the things that get transformed. Innovation impacts the entire company, including its people, and few companies fully understand this reach and its overall impact.
Companies miss opportunities and valuable insights by forgetting that employees are also consumers. What employees see and hear in their day-to-day related to the company’s consumer-facing technology and offerings is important. Few companies truly encourage their employees’ voices to be raised and, more importantly, to be heard. Most often, companies’ internal speak of ideation or feedback is an employee feel good gesture that ultimately proves superficial in follow-through and execution.
So, what can be done to change this? Companies should expand their thinking around innovation to include people. People innovation should be adopted within the company’s culture and operating ideology. It should be reflected in how people are treated and encouraged to grow. Leading individuals to be innovative requires the fostering of their mindset (another buzzword) and their behavior. No different to companies, people need to stay relevant and capable of contributing and adapting to the magnitude of changes occurring around them, internal and external to the company.
Now the how behind companies doing this is a key differentiator. Let’s face the truth. It’s not effective to have think tank meetings. Most meetings occurring in companies are ineffective. A company that aims to innovate its people must formulate an environment and a culture that nurtures attitudes, freedoms, outlook, and mentality prospecting. Giving employees the freedom to be triggered by things occurring around them, to explore, and to reflect is a key aspect of encouraging innovative thinking. This is in addition to training and competency validation to ensure innovation is understood. Bringing employees into the fold of innovative intent changes the dynamics of their conversations and actions. It redirects focus. For example, instead of focusing on organizational hierarchy, focus could go to team connections, team member accountabilities, and contributions.
A thriving innovation culture should base performance on making innovative objectives happen, as defined by the company. That means a company has mastered a repeatable process for how ideas, small or large, flow-through to become ROI initiatives to be implemented. Implementation is the results that lead to rewards and perpetuated organizational value. The core of that mastery is people; effectively leveraged based on their proven capabilities, acquired skills, positive behavior, and demonstrated potentials to help direct and grow the company to new and possibly disruptive levels.
