Innovation can feel like a trendy thing to talk about.  Spend five minutes on Linkedin and you’ll probably see the word a dozen times.

But innovation isn’t a trend.  The desire to improve, solve problems, and make progress is baked into the human psyche.  Contrary to the myth that “people hate change”, we quickly get restless with the status quo and to seek out new experiences and new ways of doing things.  Humans have been tinkering and testing and exploring for all of recorded history.

Just look at the last 200 years.  Prior to 1850, we didn’t have electricity, internal combustion engines, skyscrapers, or ball point pens.  We didn’t even have Coca-Cola. 

If you wanted to cross the ocean, you would’ve done it in a ship at 35 km/h.  Today, you’ll do it in a jet at over 800km/h.

The amount of food we produced in 10 minutes back then now takes us 2 seconds.

The average life span in 1850 was only 40 years, and now it’s more than double that.

Given the right conditions, human beings can have a remarkable capacity for change and innovation.

But there’s the problem, isn’t it?  We don’t always have the right conditions.

While we can point to extraordinary examples of innovation throughout history, we can also point to countless businesses that have shuttered their doors due to an inability to adapt to change.  We’ve all been on teams or had coworkers that seemed stuck and resistant to new ideas.

So, what’s the difference?  Why do some people in some places innovate and others don’t?

The conditions for success

Increasing the instances of innovation is not as simple as hiring the right people.  It’s tempting to believe that some people are creative and others are not, and that you just need to get more of those innovative, entrepreneurial types on your team.  If only you could find a group of true “intrapreneurs”, you’d be set.

This isn’t the answer.

While personality can certainly affect one’s openness to new ideas and levels of risk tolerance, everyone has the capacity for creativity and change.  We need the bold, try anything, approach of the pioneer at times, but we also need the more calculated and incremental approach as well. 

Everyone is an innovator if you put them in the right environment.

Innovation has a lot more to do with the culture of the team than it does with individual character.

We believe, from both research and practice, that there are at least three elements that need to be present in a team to truly tap into someone’s innovative potential

Engagement

An engaged employee is someone who is committed and enthusiastic about the work.  They have psychological “ownership” over both the team’s and the organization’s work, and they willingly invest emotional, physical, and intellectual energies into accomplishing the purpose.

Gallup, the leader in global engagement research, likens it to the experience of your best days at work.  On our best days, we’re more positive, energetic, relatable, open to new ideas – we’re solving problems, we’re collaborating, and we’re having fun as we overcome challenges. 

Now imagine if you and the members on your team had their best days 2x more often.  5x more often.  What difference would that make?  Imagine the innovation and performance that could be unlocked if we truly focused on helping more employees experience their best day more often.

Here’s the sobering reality:  In Canada, 79% of employees are disengaged at work.  That means, in the average organization, 4 out of 5 people are “quietly quitting” and settling for bare minimum levels of performance.  They’re putting in time but not much else.

You know what people don’t do when they’re checked out?  Innovate.

To create a sustainable culture of innovation, we need to learn to create environments that tap into our intrinsic motivators such as purpose, autonomy, relatedness, and mastery.  We need systems and processes that are designed for human beings (not robots).

Not sure where to start?  Look to your managers and team leaders.  70% of the factors leading to engagement are directly linked to managers.  This means that the selection, hiring, onboarding, and development of your people leaders is immensely important.

Teams that regularly and consistently innovate will have leaders that are masters of engagement.

Well-being.

Innovation is brain-based work.

It’s hard to imagine a team generating great ideas if their brains aren’t firing at 100%.

But unfortunately, most workforce research indicates that employees across all industries and all segments are in fact NOT performing at their best right now. Data from population level studies across Canada show that nearly all employees are at greater risk for mental health challenges including depression, anxiety, and burnout than they were three to five years ago.

Workers everywhere are struggling - putting in the bare minimum not because they want to, but because that’s all they have capacity for.

If we want people to embrace innovation, we need to ensure their brains are healthy at work. That means giving employees the supports and skills they need to be resilient and, more importantly, making sure the work itself isn’t harming their mental health.

Another sobering reality: according to Statistics Canada nearly 50% of Canadians say that work is the most stressful part of their day.

Not to say that life or work should be entirely stress-free, but finding ways to identify and remove stress from the system of work is the most effective way to support the brain-health of employees in any workplace. And healthy brains equates to a healthy potential for creativity and innovation.

Psychological safety.

Innovation is risky. It requires us to challenge the status quo, suggest new ideas or ways of working, and propose ideas that haven’t been tried or tested.

The ability to do this is the definition of psychological safety, a phrase coined in the 50’s and characterized further by Dr. Amy Edmondson in the late 90’s. In Dr. Edmondson’s original research in health care teams, she found that higher levels of psychological safety correlated with increased reporting of errors or mistakes in patient care, which then led to improved learning and better quality care down the line.

Further research by Edmondson and others substantiates the fact that employees need to feel safe to take interpersonal risks in order to innovate, learn, and solve the most pressing problems of our society today. What are interpersonal risks, you ask?

• Challenging an assumption

• Suggesting a new way of doing things

• Admitting to a mistake that you can learn from

• Disagreeing with a majority

As you think about this list, it’s easy to see how a team that feels safe for everyone can be a team that fosters innovation.

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Building cultures where these three elements are present is how we create the foundation for long-term, sustainable levels of innovation.

Leaders who want to succeed at this will learn to master the best practices in at least four key areas.

Best Practices

Grow and Develop

Long gone are the days where growth and development are synonymous with promotions and titles.

In fact, most of our youngest Gen-Z workforce don’t particularly care about titles, promotions, or stock-options. What they DO care about is the ability to grow and develop, both as a human and an employee.

The good news is that there are easy ways to provide this kind of opportunity that don’t involve expensive L&D programs or training budgets.

The lowest hanging fruit is having candid conversations with your team members about their own learning goals and offering opportunities for them to meet these goals. In many cases these goals can be achieved through no/low cost learning solutions (e.g. EdX, LinkedIn Learning) or shadowing other team members across your organization, sitting in on exective meetings, etc.

Beyond that, the most valuable opportunities for growth come from your own feedback as a leader. The natural tendency for all of us is to shy away from constructive or developmental feedback because it’s uncomfortable.

But this is one of the most valuable exercises you can facilitate as a leader.

Built on a human-to-human relationship and a mutual sense of trust, growth-oriented feedback can accelerate the potential for innovation. When you’re thinking through your own feedback tactics, consider the following:

• Am I providing feedback based on objective observations? It’s always best to provide feedback from what you’ve observed directly as a leader.

• Am I using concrete examples to illustrate behaviours that could be changed? Vague statements like “more consistent follow-through” or “be a better team player” aren’t helpful.

• Am I choosing the right timing and space to convey this feedback? High-pressure points in time or short windows for conversation aren’t ideal.

• How would I feel on the receiving end of this feedback? If the answer is “annoyed”, you need to do some more work to think it through.

Involve and Include

Here’s a familiar scenario:  Employees get frustrated with how something is working and they voice this complaint to their manager.  The manager then proceeds to go behind closed doors with other managers to come up with a solution.  After coming up with what they believe to be a good idea, they introduce it to employees, expecting fanfare and praise, but encounter nothing but resistance (“What’s their problem?  They asked for a solution and we gave them one!”).

Managers are generally well-intentioned people, but without consciously realizing it, we can perpetuate traditional ways of doing things that seriously hamper innovation.  In this scenario, managers are reinforcing the notion that “managers do the thinking, while workers do the doing.”  We can believe that it is our job to remove all the hurdles for our team so they can keep running.  A valiant belief, to be sure, but we never let the team develop the problem-solving muscle they need to become a force for innovation.

A team that continuously improves has made it a habit to openly discuss the problems and issues that they face, as well as possible solutions that they can try.  They then get the chance to test out that solution themselves. 

Everyone wants to be on a team where their ideas and opinions are heard and matter.  Ultimately, we want team members who feel like partners on a shared mission, rather than simply employees who are trading time for money.

Build a Team

Everyone likes to throw around the word “team” but surprisingly few managers have ever been trained on the basics of how to build and develop teams.  It becomes one of those “important but non-urgent” items on our to-do list that never gets prioritized.  But, if we are to have a culture of sustainable innovation where people are consistently working together to solve problems, team-building is a skill we need to hone and a task we need to prioritize.

This point deserves an entire book, but to build a team, start here:

• Co-create a shared purpose and regularly talk about and share stories of why your work matters.

• Clarify what success looks like.  Talk about what it means to win as a team and how you will know when it’s happening.

• Develop a series of shared values and working agreements together that help everyone understand what behaviours, attitudes, and practices are needed for your team to be successful.  Agree to hold each other accountable when these commitments are not being lived out.

• Take time to build healthy relationships defined by trust.  Get to know each other as human beings and resolve conflict quickly and directly.

• Continually monitor and develop the strength of the team.  Collaboration fuels innovation.

Reflect and Role Model

The classic adage of “do what I say, not what I do” simply doesn’t cut it for leaders anymore. With every action you are either explicitly or implicitly setting expectations for your team members. For most leaders, it’s uncommon to reflect on the kinds of expectations you’re conveying through your behaviour at work, but it often leads to great insights!

The most obvious example - after-hours communication. It doesn’t matter how many times you say you don’t have to respond, or add a line in your emails to say “my working hours may not be your working hours” - if employees see a message from the leader they will read it, pay attention to it, and think about it.

Some common behaviours that set unhelpful implicit expectations for your people:

• Checking, responding, or sending messages outside of regular work hours

• Jumping on calls while your kids are sick

• Talking about how you can “never find time to take vacation”

• Only ever talking about work - and not the other meaningful things that make up your life

If you want to truly foster innovation with your team, you need to give them the explicit permission to spend their time and energy on things that fuel their fire.

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While we can’t say that this is a definitive or exhaustive discourse on innovation, we hope that it gives you an opportunity to reflect on and consider how you and your organization are supporting your people to solve the pressing problems of our time.

And who knows, maybe they’ll come up with the best thing since sliced bread ;)