Assumption 1 – Older people are not creative

‘Many plants drop their seeds in autumn rather than in spring…’

A classic assumption is that younger people, i.e. 20–40 years old, are more likely to generate ideas and display the characteristics of IRB than those over 40. On the contrary, there is lots of anecdotal evidence to suggest that, regardless of inclination, younger people may play safe at the outset of their careers in order not to make the mistakes that they perceive could be career-damaging.

Good research tells us that there is no correlation between age and IRB. In a meta-study of 96 research papers, academics Thomas Ng and Daniel Feldman found that older workers are just as likely to display the characteristics of IRB, including idea generation, and play a critical role in innovation. In fact, the study also shows that length of service has no negative correlation with IRB either.

Assumption 2 – There are creative and uncreative people

We must have a clear and unambiguous starting point in our beliefs about people and their capacity to generate new ideas. The debate about who is the most creative is irrelevant because as humans we are all remarkably creative. So, affirm the following:

1. Universality. Idea generation separates us from nearly all other living things. This capacity for idea generation increases exponentially the more our surroundings and associated activities (organisation, team, hobby club, etc.) resonate with what is important to us personally.
2. Developmental. Learning – through coaching, training, feedback, experience, failure – increases our potential for new thoughts and ideas if we are able use these experiences positively. As a leader/manager you can help create this learning environment.
3. Environmental. The organisational climate in your team/department/organisation and its suitability to support innovation and IRB will determine how involved people will get. You have influence over this climate, even more so in your own team.

Assumption 3 – The ‘Great White Man’ theory of creativity

‘Look beneath the surface of almost anything produced by an organization that is new, useful, and even moderately complex, and you’ll almost certainly discover it came from multiple hands, not the genius of some solitary inventor.’

Brandeau, Hill and Truelove – Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation

For too long, organisations have held onto the idea that it is one person (and, historically, this person was seen as male) who has that shaft of insight that produces the genius idea. It is an easy assumption to make because we have been taught to believe it to be true (from Edison to Dyson). But great ideas that have value do not arrive like this – Edison, for example, had a big team around him.

It is extremely unlikely that any single person’s contribution will produce the genius answer that becomes the final solution. Great ideas tend to come from layer upon layer of concepts until the pearl emerges, as a result of many minds applying themselves. For you, this means that the interplay between people of diverse background is likely to produce the best ideas and this means that you manage the crucial interplay that generates the pearls. This interplay is best expressed as collaboration. Collaboration (think of the output of this as 1 + 1 = 3 or more, 1 + 1 +1 = 4 or more, and so on) is now seen as a core team skill around which great ideas are hatched, incubated, developed and matured.

Assumption 4 – We need to innovate quickly

Ok, but as the old adage says, it is perfectly possible to ‘make haste slowly’. That does not mean slow per se, but it does mean that jumping from an initial (perhaps only half-baked) idea to putting the idea into action is unlikely to create the best solutions. Do not go full-scale without prototyping. In project management this is often referred to as the iterative process. In some industries, such as software development, the language of prototyping is common as a product goes through an alpha and a subsequent beta development stage whilst all along the innovation is subject to feedback that tests the strength of the idea and improves it. There is no reason why this language cannot be used if the goal is better service delivery or making administrative improvements. What is so important is that openness to feedback as a means of improvement is essential in innovation.

Assumption 5 – Creativity is a personal thing

At its best, it is an inter-personal thing. Think of yourself using the behaviours required of you to inspire IRB, including idea generation in your team and throughout your organisation. One key behavioural trait sits at the top – your social intelligence. Your social intelligence is really your interpersonal intelligence. It is described as the way you navigate yourself through complex social systems (like organisations) and how you work at developing individual relationships within those social systems through understanding how and what people think, feel and believe. There are three components:

1. Situational sensing: this combines both your ability to understand a social situation and then to deliver an appropriate response.

2. Empathy: classically described as your ability to feel with someone – to be living, however momentarily, in someone else’s world.

3. Social skills: in reality these are your communication skills, including listening, questioning and the use of the three languages – words, voice tone and body. These social skills will determine how effective you are in response to the situations you sense (see 1 above) and your capacity for empathy (see 2 above). They will be critical in negotiating organisational hurdles as ideas are implemented.

Your organisation

‘Increasing amounts of research suggests that the culture and climate for innovation are amongst the most important drivers for successful innovation… nonetheless, the core concepts of innovation climate and culture are often not present in managers’ thinking. The concepts are often not even on management’s mental radar or “dashboard”.’

Pekka Rintala, innovation expert and researcher

In step 2 we look at the issue of climate from an organisational perspective, using some of the best research available.

Background

Just a few experts have committed a lifetime of work to understanding the climate factors around which IRB is more or less likely to happen in teams and organisations. In the organisational context we have much to thank academic Goran Ekvall for, as his extensive research revealed nine climate factors, e.g. trust/openness, freedom and idea-support, which, if encouraged, will create a culture that supports idea generation and accompanying IRB. Ekvall’s pioneering work has been developed by others, including Mark Brown and his research team at the former Innovation Centre Europe. Brown has incorporated/amended the original nine and added others through his team’s research. The 13 factors that now exist – known as dimensions – are presented in this step, combined with actions you can undertake to help nurture innovation.

Does 13 sound rather a lot? You might ask if you really have to do all of these things to secure more idea generation and IRB. The answer is no. There is considerable overlap in these 13 dimensions. For example, affirmative actions designed to create a more playful working environment (dimension 6) will, undoubtedly, have a positive impact in other dimensions, such as positive relationships (dimension 4), stress (dimension 8 – this emphasises stress as a bad thing!) and dynamism (dimension 5). You can target your efforts. You can also test your organisation or team to find out in which dimensions your vulnerabilities lie and concentrate your efforts here. You can also use gut feeling, 360-degree feedback, staff surveys and peers who are prepared to be honest with you to help you to assess your own team climate. The acknowledgement contains further advice on how to formally test in these 13 dimensions.

1. Commitment

How committed are your people to the values, goals and operations of your organisation, department or team and how committed are they to their jobs – is the work they do truly engaging?

Commitment is an outward behavioural expression of the engagement someone feels for the person or organisation they work for, the things it stands for, the goals it has and the job the person does. This engagement comes, in part, from five core elements best expressed in what I call the SPARC acronym.

S – self-determined. Does each person have the degree of autonomy in the job that is right for him or her? We all desire autonomy in differing amounts – some need more, possibly much more, than others.

P – purposeful. It means that your people know why they are doing what they are doing and willingly do it. One way that senior management expresses purpose is in terms of profit, shareholder return, and so on. Benefit to someone else – particularly someone unseen or unknown – may not be the best start point. Try to express what these things mean for people personally. How does profit benefit your team members – job security perhaps, end-of-year bonuses?

A – authentic. It means that what people do connects profoundly with what and who they are. But it is more than that. It also means that who and what people are, are connected with the values and goals of the organisation.

R – rewarding. This connects closely with two other dimensions: pay and work recognition. But rewards are deeply personal. For example, the pleasure of being able to help someone out who needs you might bring its own reward and resonate deeply for some (but not others).

C – challenging. What I am doing helps me to develop, grow and reveal new capabilities. I can feel myself moving towards mastery in some aspects of my job but also feel that I am being encouraged to improve in other aspects that I am yet to master. Learning is a central feature of working life.

2. Freedom

Do employees have opportunities to make their own decisions, seek information and show initiative? How tightly managed are they? Do you support independent thoughts and actions?

To start, people need to be clear where they have freedom to act on their own initiative and where they do not. Areas like safety, legality, morality and financial probity cannot be compromised. This encourages the intrapreneurs within boundaries – the employed version of entrapreneurs – who take ideas and have the skills that bring ideas into play. Intrapreneurs tend to be good influencers, persuaders and negotiators and are great at getting ideas taken up – and they do not have to be their own ideas.

Freedom also means more self-authorship, which leads to greater commitment to action so decision making should be taken down to the lowest possible level – people detect that they are not trusted if this is not the case and say, ‘Why bother? I will just keep things ticking over in my very small part of the organisation.’ You can develop your people’s own decision-making skills through coaching (from yourself in particular) and training.

3. Idea support

This dimension covers many of the areas of IRB that are so important in developing a new culture of innovation – how much encouragement and support are people’s ideas given by you, fellow team members and others in the organisation?

In the introduction to this e-book we saw how innovation is about more than idea generation. It is about developing ideas (think about what is good about individual ideas – do not be tempted to focus just on what is not quite right); deciding which ideas to progress (rigorous decision making to the fore), and making sure those chosen ideas get put into action with full support.

To do this you can consciously change the language you and others use. For example, ban the phrases ‘Yes… but’, ‘We tried that and it did not work’ and ‘Not done here’. If you are the facilitator in idea-generation sessions, make a very conscious effort both to neuter these statements and to encourage the idea generator to open up further. Better still, create ground rules that establish that statements like these are not part of the discourse. Even if you personally think an idea is not a goer, as a manager, always have the positive mantra in your mind – ‘I love the thinking, even if I do not like the thought.’

In short, acknowledge all ideas with appreciation for the idea rather than criticism. It encourages people to have more.

4. Positive relationships

Do your people trust each other? Do they get on well with one another at work? Is there an absence of conflict that is personal in nature?

Is there a more important social lubricant than the ability to listen well? Encourage committed listening in others by being a great listener yourself – this includes listening all the harder when ideas are presented that generate an instant knee-jerk anti-reaction within you. The next time you disagree with someone say, ‘That’s interesting. Tell me, what made you see it that way?’ (or similar), rather than just telling them your counter-view. Extend this approach across the whole team by encouraging constructive debate not destructive disagreement. In key research, Scott Isaksen and Goran Ekvall tell us that conflict (people disliking and working against each other) is not a means to great insight and idea generation – debate is. Debate should always be about ideas and issues and not about people and personalities. In fact, people positively ‘accept and appreciate difference’ in good debate. They also refer to the value of ‘constructive controversy’ and this works particularly well in environments that are intellectually stimulating.

A second way is to build trust. Do you get annoyed with people who use the words ‘trust me’ in conversation? The issue of trustworthiness in others is one over which you have little control because it only builds over time. Make yourself trustworthy by checking in with your own behaviour (thereby modelling the behaviour you expect in others), but also checking in with the behaviour of others. Trust builds through people:

• doing what they say they are going to do
• doing it professionally and competently
• being consistent in their beliefs and behaviour
• having a code of conduct that is transparent and appropriate
• being honest.

Encourage your team members to socialise and get to know each other in ways that are not just built around the confines and routines of the workplace. Take your team, if you have one, out to lunch next week. Team-build. Develop relationships formally and informally. Extend this, too, by encouraging your own team to see itself beyond itself – making sure team members network throughout the organisation so that all know and meet all.

5. Dynamism

A dynamic environment is one where positive change thrives, where the atmosphere is lively, perhaps even exciting, where things are rarely static and where there is a self-sustaining momentum about work that can be felt.

If you were to write down just a few thoughts that express the culture of your organisation, would dynamic be one of them? If you create a scale from 1–10 with dynamic at 10 and moribund at 1, where would you score your own team or department, or your organisation as a whole? You might not need to be a 10, but many teams can benefit from moving a point or two up the scale. So, what creates this dynamism?

The application of many of the tips for the other dimensions will provide the propulsion needed for a more dynamic workplace. You can refer to the shared view suggestions to help but be conscious, too, of modelling done by you and other managers. This modelling means being as you want others to be. For example, use an energetic pace-setting management style where you have a team of highly skilled, knowledgeable people who do not needs lots of knowledge and support but who need to move in a particular direction.

Also, you can celebrate successes continuously – meetings should not be just problem-solving discussions but also chances to evangelise about what is going well. Kick off the next one with a success story.

6. Playfulness

How much laughter do you hear in the office (and beyond it – see below)? Do people laugh and joke – positively – with each other? Is the use of humour both displayed and encouraged?

Maintaining your own sense of perspective about work is a good start – it is work, not life or death. Keep yourself open to the humour on offer in many situations, even crises. After all, the person who is likely to generate the best ideas in a crisis is not the red-faced person, with fists and buttocks clenched, saying ‘We’ve got to do something to solve this problem, now’. This also means allowing natural humourists the space to express themselves – often they provide strong emotional glue within the group and encourage others to express themselves, too. If a bit of fun delays the start of a meeting by five minutes… so what?

You can also encourage more socialising with your team – sharing pleasure outside work brings down the barriers within it. If it is done well (select your facilitator with care!), taking the team off-site can really help to bond and bind people together in an enjoyable way.

7. Idea proliferation

This dimension refers to the extent to which people are perceived as having creative ideas and varied perspectives towards their work. This also refers to the level of debates encouraged in the organisation.

This section acts, in part, as a summary for many of the points throughout this e-book pulled together. Although IRB is so important in taking ideas from thought to action, it is ideas we need to get things going. Here are some core recommendations to help you do this:

• Keep the workforce diverse. Research tells us that diversity of thinking is important in both the volume and breadth of idea generation – variations in age, gender, function. Do not employ mini versions of you – what we call the mini-me syndrome.
• Even if your own team is diverse, bring in outsiders to widen the perspective. Who can you bring in to the team the next time you debate a problem or an opportunity?
• Do not always facilitate idea generation sessions yourself. A fresh face with specialist skills of facilitation can make a big difference.
• Ask your training department to offer specialist workshops in creative thinking.
• Kick the box – the old way is the box. Encourage questions that stretch thinking beyond what we know/do.
• Go to a different place when you are together for freshness – new environment, new thinking. Go outside in the summer.
• Give notice of idea-generation sessions – giving time for the sub-conscious to play with a problem or opportunity
• The old classic rule that everyone knows and most ignore – at idea-generation stage all ideas have equal value. Therefore, do not, initially at least, overlap creation with criticism. The overlap becomes permissible once all ideas are out in the open and some have been selected and are being improved.
• Record all ideas – not after idea-generation sessions, during them.
• Use colour – avoid only black on the flip chart or whiteboard. Use different coloured sticky notes to record ideas – one idea per note.
• Do not miss the gems that come out of people’s mouths in off-guard moments, i.e. ‘Julie, you said something really interesting the other day, I don’t know if you remember it…’
• Almost no ideas arrive fully formed. They need to be developed – refine, shape, mould, add to, slice in half.
• All debate focusses on ideas, not the personalities associated with them.

8. Stress

Do your people feel overburdened and are they reaching the point where positive pressure (which brings out the best in us) is replaced by negative stress (where our performance – and health – is diminished)?

Note: this is the only dimension expressed as a negative – all the others are good things.

There is a thin dividing line between the state of positive pressure (which at its best engenders the flow state where we are absorbed by what we are doing and lose sense of space and time) and the state of negative stress. Look out for the signs of negative stress with your own people – mood changes, introversion, absenteeism or, conversely, presenteeism, aggression/passivity, loss of sense of humour, out of habit mistakes and extreme tiredness are all symptoms. I find the sudden changing of routine habits also instructive – someone who systematically goes to the gym three times a week and then stops is a good example. Lack of resources to cope with the demands at work will also be a considerable source of stress – grinding away over a period of time. Here are some suggestions that can you can adopt today to alleviate some of the stresses that live in many workplaces:

• Encourage proper breaks – it is fashionable to eat lunch at the desk or to have a meeting while taking a break at lunchtime. This is not good for anyone.
• Create variety – break the cycle of endless routine work by sharing routine tasks and also sharing the more interesting ones.
• Encourage whole-life balance – where there are counterweights in a person’s life that allow a team member to replenish their physical and mental resources.
• Do not get stressed yourself when someone stares out of the window for a while – we need thinking time. Ideas do not come to us best when we are doing, doing, doing.
• Above all – look after yourself! – fitness, diet, etc. Set the example.
• A primary stressor for people is the adoption, by managers, of inappropriate management styles for the circumstances, e.g. the directive, commanding approach, suitable for crises, in regular situations where collaborative, consensual approaches work best. Check your own styles (a sister e-book to this one – Motivating the Team – presents good advice on what styles work best in different situations).

9. Risk taking

Adopting a new idea has risk attached to it – though the greater risk may be to do nothing. How often are new ideas adopted and is it an unwillingness to take risks that stops people doing so?

Uncertainty should be seen as natural (anyone who is not a little confused is not thinking clearly!) and quick but thorough decision making promotes prompt action, so do come to terms yourself with the idea that risk is necessary – confront your demons if those demons make you entirely risk-averse. This means that you need to be prepared for mistakes and failure.

However, there are stupid mistakes/failures and those that are sensible. Gambling the business on, effectively, the toss of a coin (remember the financial crisis of 2007–8?) because one of your people feels empowered to do so means the empowered culture has not created action boundaries. Be clear on where the boundaries lie but also where your people can experiment with and without managerial approval – and share this with them.

So, how can you reduce risk? Work on the vulnerabilities in ideas so they can be strengthened and risk reduced. One classic way this is done is through what is known as the iterative process. Many ideas can be prototyped and nudged slowly into the real world whilst feedback is given along the way. This allows for the idea to be strengthened and for risk to be reduced. As the previously quoted Gary Hamel says: ‘Test like an engineer, think like an artist.’

An innovative culture is not a free-for-all culture – support free thinking, encourage people to think the unthinkable but balance this with a clear step between thinking and action. One way to do this is to tighten up your decision making by being clear on how your decisions are anchored. We have a bias to base our decisions on the following unreliable anchors:

• The first piece of information we get, e.g. statistics.
• Emotional contamination (‘Wow! What a great idea!’). This can blind you to the faults in a proposed idea.
• The loudest voice (while others are thinking).

You may miss acting on great ideas because your anchor was not the right one and you got side-tracked by faulty thinking. Unreliable decision making increases risk (see ‘Assess yourself’ below).

10. Idea time

How much time are you giving people to think (rather than do) – with the opportunity to generate new ideas?

The classic brainstorm meeting is the arena for most idea generation in organisations. These present good opportunities for the generation and discussion of ideas but often fail because they do not recognise the way in which people think most freely.

Most of us tend not to have our best ideas when pushed to do so – if asked when you have your best ideas, most people will say in the bath, on a bike, in the shower or even in the toilet. In other words, not at team meetings. So, to make meetings productive, give people good notice of group idea-generation sessions. The brain has a remarkable way of thinking when you are not particularly aware of it doing so – hence the reason that ideas pop into our heads when we are not expecting them. By giving notice you prime people’s minds for idea generation when the brainstorming takes place. The next time you need to generate ideas as a team – give one week’s notice!

11. Shared view

To what extent is there open and adequate communication – particularly between more and less senior employees? And do individuals feel that there is openness between people at work?

Communication is the lubricant that allows for openness between people in organisations – up and down the hierarchy and across internal networks (think of your own network as being like a spider’s web with you in the middle).

Openness starts with the comfort we have in sharing our thoughts, ideas, beliefs and feelings – in the appropriate way, of course. Be open yourself and encourage others to be open too with their own thoughts and ideas. As you move up the hierarchy (and less hierarchy is best) be aware of the increasing potential for disconnection between yourself and those lower down. Keep the thought in your mind that cynicism about management comes not so much from what managers tell people but from what people suspect they may be hiding.

As has been said elsewhere, this openness does not extend to the kind of behaviour that kills off ideas. Encourage rather than criticise. Adopt the language of, ‘That’s interesting. Tell me more’ tomorrow.

12. Pay recognition

Are your people satisfied with their pay and appropriately rewarded for the effort and work that they do?

Idea generation and innovation should be a core value – a must-have skill for all – so why not put it in the job description? Talk with human resources to get this done, if necessary. It could be, for example, a condition of employment that staff are expected to formally come up with X number of ideas per day/week. Rather like some Japanese companies where it is part of the job description that a person has to generate one potential improvement to a service or product per day.

13. Work recognition

How much do you praise achievement, encourage and support when it is needed? Are individuals’ efforts recognised by you and others?

Praise is a primary driver of work recognition and, consequently, motivation and it costs nothing. Always praise effort – even if the person did not succeed or the idea did not work. When you praise tomorrow, say, ‘Well done. You worked really hard on that.’ Use managing by wandering around (MBWA) as the means to praise, give feedback and acknowledge effort. It means getting away from the desk, flying the flag and talking to people. It keeps you tuned in to the climate and collective working health of your team or department.

The reason a lot of managers do not do this is that they over-rely on performance appraisals, so downgrade the importance of the annual appraisal in your own mind. Instead, give praise in the moment and actively try to catch people doing things right all the time. There is nothing like thanks or a few words of praise to keep spirits up – people want to know that what they do is noticed. Look to do it – with sincerity – three times tomorrow. You can also encourage others to acknowledge those who have helped them – peer-to-peer praise and thanks.

Step 1: Challenging assumptions

• Innovation is much, much more than the generation of ideas. Click here to review.
• Challenge any assumptions you may have about innovation and IRB. Affirm:
• Age is no barrier to innovation and IRB. Click here to review.
• We are all wonderfully creative. Click here to review.
• Innovation at its best is a group, collaborative process. Click here to review.
• Prototype ideas rather than looking for instant perfection. Click here to review.
• As an innovation leader, you need the best of your inter-personal skills to the fore – your social intelligence. Click here to review.

Step 2: The innovation climate

• Apply your greatest efforts and energy in the right places in order to secure the best workplace climate for enabling and supporting innovation. Assess what needs to be done across the 13 dimensions of innovation. Click here to review.