Welcome to the Momentum Business Coaching Newsletter for
January 2007

Creating a Climate for Innovation

"The business enterprise has two, and only two, basic functions: marketing and innovation. It is not necessary for a business to grow bigger; but it is necessary that it constantly grow better." Peter Drucker

An enterprise whose management does not foster creativity and innovation will not survive long. Businesses and organisations have to be designed to continually assure that their environments identify and explore new opportunities.

We define innovation as the effort to create purposeful, focused change in thought and organisational planning that opens up that enterprise's economic and social potential. Looked at another way, innovation is the means by which organisations and entrepreneurs create new wealth-producing resources. Sometimes it is coming up with new initiatives; more often than not, it involves taking developed ideas and applying them in new situations. As Max de Pree writes: "Everything in the world already exists; whatever seems new is only something old rearranged."

Unleashing creativity requires more than brainstorming sessions and problem solving exercises. People have ideas all the time. The real question is, "Which ideas are useful?" Successful innovation usually happens as a result of purposeful focus and diligence in creating alternatives from seemingly "dead end" outcomes. In business, it isn't enough for an idea to be original; it must also be applicable to improving a product or service-it must create greater economic growth.

What does it take for people to exhibit creativity in the workplace? Individuals need to possess three attributes in order to be creatively resourceful, according to Theresa Amabile (Sept.-Oct. 1998, Harvard Business Review). The first is strong internal motivation. People will be most creative when they feel motivated by their work, in and of itself. Whenever someone has a burst of creativity, it is because they've spent time thinking over some problem or situation that has meaning for them. They have become immersed and totally engaged.

When people are engaged out of their own natural interest and satisfaction in their work, their own intrinsic motivation will challenge them to look at things creatively rather than routinely. External pressures or rewards used to foster innovation are never as effective as internal motivation.

In addition to intrinsic motivation, individuals need to possess a basic technical proficiency appropriate to their jobs. A person without the technical, procedural and intellectual knowledge necessary to be effective in his or her job is missing a key building block to become effectively innovative in that setting.

The third important attribute is basic creative-thinking skills. Individuals need at least the capability to apply their thinking processes in flexible and imaginative ways. These kinds of skills can be trained, but this is time-consuming. Better by far to discover those who have both the motivation and an already existing proclivity to be taught creative thinking skills. Assessments can help leaders discover those who possess these attributes.

How can leaders encourage creativity positively, non-judgmentally and non-threateningly? From more than two decades of research on the managerial practices that provide the biggest boon to enhancing creativity, Amabile has identified six:

1. Intelligent Matching of the right persons with the right jobs in order to maximize their expertise and creative thinking skills. Making a good match requires the manager to have access to important information about employees and their preferences. This may mean using information available through assessments such as DISC, PIAV, Meyers-Briggs or other instruments that indicate values and preferences. Good listening and observation skills are also important. People express over time what interests and excites them. Are you listening?

2. Freedom to take different paths without censure. When creative people are free to approach their work the way they choose, innovation is more likely to result. This does NOT mean allowing total open-endedness or changing goals frequently or failing to define them clearly. That is a mismanagement of freedom.

3. Commitment of Resources: Time and money can either support or kill creativity. Some time pressures can heighten creativity. Organisations routinely kill creativity with fake deadlines or impossibly tight ones. This creates distrust, or burnout. Likewise, the lack of money to pursue alternative courses can quickly revert workplace processes to the status quo. Creativity takes time. Incubation periods are needed. And it takes some resources dedicated to the "starts and fits" process usually involved in evolving innovative ideas.

4. Diversity in the Work-Group: To maximise the potential of innovation, managers need to create teams with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. When people come together with diverse intellectual foundations and approaches to work, ideas often combine in exciting and useful ways. Managers often make the mistake of putting similar people together. Their very homogeneity, however, does little to enhance expertise and creative thinking.

5. Effective Incentives: To encourage ongoing creativity in thinking, managers need to praise creative ideas and to acknowledge the effort and energy put forth by all who contribute insights to innovation and change - EVEN those ideas that are not put into practice. To sustain passion, people need to feel their work matters and is important. Managers need to allow ideas and discussion to flow freely, and to support certain experiential work that may not culminate in a successful end result. In an environment where fear of consequences overrides exploring new and innovative ideas, creativity is thwarted.

6. Organisational Support: Creativity is truly enhanced when the entire organisation and those at the top support it. Leaders must ensure that information sharing and collaboration is the norm. Political problems and gossip take people's attention away from work. That sense of mutual purpose and excitement must be encouraged and supported. It can be killed by cliques and political factions, or the changeable whims of the leader. Usually the biggest hurdle to solving problems often isn't ignorance - it's access to the right information at the right time. Sometimes the sharing of information within organisations is not easy due to geographic distances, political squabbles, internal competition and bad incentive systems that hinder the spread of ideas

Business leaders can and must change how they think about innovation. If people are given opportunities and encouraged to use good ideas from all sources inside or outside the company, innovation can be significantly bolstered in any workplace. Innovation and creativity are far less mysterious than some may think. If the company has the right attitude, it works.

Foremost among life's teaching is the recognition that humans possess the capability to deal
with complexity and interconnection. Human creativity and commitment are our greatest resources." Margaret Wheatley

Innovation Resources

Drucker, Peter; Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Practice and Principles; HarperBusiness.

Hesselbein, Frances & Marshall Goldsmith; Leading for Innovation & Organizing for Results, 2001.

Kelley, Tom & Jonathan Littman; The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm; Doubleday, 2001.

Lawrence, Paul R. and Nitin Nohria, Driven: How Human Nature Shapes our Choices, Jossey-Bass, 2002.

Sutton, Robert I., Weird Ideas that Work: 1112 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation, 2002.

Tushman, Michael L.; Winning through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal.1997.

Harvard Business Review Articles:

Amabile, Theresa, How to Kill Creativity, Sept.-Oct. 1998.

Drucker, Peter F., The Discipline of Innovation, Nov.-Dec. 1998.

Hargadon, Andrew and Robert I. Sutton, Building an Innovation Factory, May June 2000.

Leonard, Dorothy and Jaffrey f. Rayport, Spark Innovation through Empathic Design, Nov.-Dec. 1997.

Thomke, Stefan, Enlightened Experimentation: the New Imperative for Innovation, Feb 2001.

von Hippel, Eric, Stafan Thomke and Mary Sonnack, Creating Breakthroughs at 3M, Sept.-Oct. 1999.

Wetlaufer, Suzy, What's Stifling the Creativity at CoolBurst? Sept.-Oct. 1997.