Innovating well - what to look for

The areas that should be looked at are outlined below. Some of the conditions for innovation may seem 'idealistic' and it is extremely unlikely that the perfect organisation exists. All of the key areas are important and it is useful to identify how effective organisations are and whether any aspects of the organisation are being neglected. This only gives a broad overview. To get a detailed picture it is necessry to look at how creativity and knowledge are used and manged.

Team Work

Within this area of focus we are interested in whether people work as individuals or in teams, how effective they are, and whether or not they are multi/single function. Another important factor is the degree of autonomy and whether bottom up communication is effective.

Hands-on Management

Here we look at how much interference there is by managers in every-day working and how prescriptive managers are. Also we are looking for what actions are taken when problems occur. Do managers take immediate control or do they trust the people working for them to resolve problems?

Desire To Win

Within this are of focus we look for evidence of a desire to win, to beat the competition. Even though there may be insufficient resources to carry out a project or implement a plan there should be a 'yes and ..' culture rather than 'yes but...'. Good ideas can be kept for future use, not dismissed out of hand for lack of finances, time etc. There should also be evidence of doing everything that can be done to secure even the smallest advantage such as protecting Intellectual Property and seeking external help. Ideas should be welcomed from all sources and winning organisations are likely to be less risk averse.

Knowing How To Win

Organisations that know how to win will have a thorough understanding of their marketplace and all of the factors that affect it such as the economy and relevant legislation. They are willing to exploit these factors and be first movers or early adopters.

Environmental Scanning

To be successful, organisations must be able to scan their environments and be aware of new competition, changes and spot trends and patterns. This information will then be used to determine key success factors within the marketplace and drive the building of strategic capabilities.

External Relationships

In order to maximise potential, it is necessary to nurture external relationships with both customers and suppliers. Is this being carried out regularly and effectively? Do organisations rely on single points of contact or do they interact at multiple levels, cementing ties? How well is information disseminated and vision, branding etc communicated to stakeholders?

Growing The Right Culture

A truly innovative culture relies heavily on intrinsic motivation. Employees must have a clear idea of what they are expected to achieve and of the amount of support that they have. Transparency on the part of senior management and 'leading by example' will build trust and encourage buy-in to strategic objectives. Motivation and morale should generally be high with little or no evidence of stress present.

Stretching To Achieve

When maximising potential it is often necessary to take employees out of their 'comfort zone'. To do this successfully there must be an effective framework for delivering the necessary training and development. Individuals should be encouraged to use their own initiative (subject to any safety or legal constraints), be responsible for their actions and learn from their mistakes.

Getting The Best From People

In order to get the best from employees it is necessary to involve everybody. Not only does this improve the culture but it maximises the resources that are available for generating ideas, capturing and storing knowledge. The greater the variety of sources, the greater the potential for innovation. It is also helpful if there is mutual support between employees, managers, colleagues and peers, especially where risk taking is encouraged. Another important factor is the reward systems that are in place. These need not necessarily be monetary rewards but should recognise team rather than individual contributions.

See how the above can be measured using the Innovation Toolkit.

Organisational Games that Block Creativity

Innovate or Perish?

The dynamics of modern business environment demand that we create and innovate faster and better than our competitors. Companies, and sometimes whole industries can be destroyed in record time due to their inability to innovate. Innovate or die!

Much has been researched, discovered and learned about how organisations can improve their ability to innovate. Many books have been written and whole new organisations have been created which now compete with each other to take their ideas about creative processes into other organisations. Which is very good news.

But what happens when the politics of self-interest come up against the creative process? What happens when ideas threaten egos? Much has been written about the obstacles to innovation. One blockage that gains little attention is the extent to which an organisation’s own internal politics can conspire against it and sabotage the creative process. Power, politics and innovation are uneasy bedfellows.

Anyone for Politics?
“Why is it that having great ideas isn’t the hard part of innovation? It’s the “making them happen” that hurts.”
(From: ?What If! by Dave Allan and others)

The team at Politics at Work Ltd are original thinkers, writers and trainers in this challenging area. Their catalogue of DirtyTricks at Work™ has identified over 50 political games, which inhibit organisational, team and individual performance, and many of these are worth learning and exploring in the creative context as they can directly undermine our attempts to be innovative.

If we are determined to nurture the creative spirit in our people and provide an organisational climate and environment where innovation and ideas flourish, then we must tackle these political games and negative thinking patterns directly.

Games of Resistance

So what does resistance to creativity and innovation look like and sound like? How will we know it when we experience it? The truth is that resistance in organisations takes many forms but much of it is quite subtle, it is indirect, and sadly much can even be deliberately covert or Machiavellian.

If we explore the myriad of interactions between people in organisations we discover a world of indirect transactions. People are frequently diverted away from clear and direct communication in the mistaken belief that others can’t or won’t be able to handle the truth. Also, many of us have concerns that voicing our doubts about an idea will be seen as rocking the boat or not being a team player.

Others are concerned that challenging the bosses great new idea (which might well be fundamentally flawed) might be a career decision. Because of this - mostly faulty - assumption, people interact obliquely, politically and indirectly.

There are many repetitive sequences of unhelpful interactions which take place and which we have defined as political games. What follows is a taster from the Politics at Work catalogue of DirtyTricks at Work™. More specifically these are some of the ways in which politics and innovation come into conflict with one another.

If we can learn how to recognise these inhibiting games, tactics and manoeuvres we have taken a big first step to increasing innovation. Further, if we are able to help people learn to counter them effectively, such a discovery would serve to protect the new, fresh, green shoots of ideas. These gems need to be nurtured through the first difficult stages of life if they are to make an impact to the competitive position of the business. These discoveries will start to transform the creative culture of the organisation.

Interesting Idea John…

As the great American business writer Peter Block observed, in its milder forms, resistance can be as simple as declaring that “I thought the ideas in your presentation were really interesting”. “Interesting” is the key word here, because it is the word people frequently use when they want to appear supportive and positive about an idea when really they are indirectly resisting. We say “interesting” when asked for feedback and we do not want to reveal our concerns and doubts. “Interesting” can even be code for “your work sucks and will spoil all my plans”.

Time Bandit

This is the tactic of resisting an idea or suggestion by pretending that the timing just isn’t right (and at the same time implying that at some future, unspecified date the timing will be more apposite) “Ben, the only thing wrong with your idea is the timing, come back in the spring and we’ll look at it again” Which is usually indirect code for “no way is this idea going any further!”

Of course there are times when an idea is a really good one, but the timing really is inappropriate and that to move it forward now would be a mistake. Under these circumstances this is not a game but a genuine interaction. However our research shows that playing Time Bandit is a highly popular tactic for resisting or sabotaging ideas that someone, usually out of political self-interest, does not want to see progressed.

The Creative Cuckoo

When Politics at Work first began research into organisational games, one of the first to be clarified was the Creative Cuckoo. Many of us will have had the misfortune to observe this game first hand. Many more will also have been taken in and exploited by this manoeuvre.

We have defined the Creative Cuckoo as “the tactic of stealing credit for the efforts or ideas of another”. The upside to this game is that at least the idea does get progressed. The huge downside is the betrayal of trust and damage to integrity, credibility, team working and morale that result. If our organisation has creative cuckoos nesting within it then creativity quickly becomes an endangered and protected species.

It is easy to see why people decide to protect their best ideas and compete to ensure that they get the credit for them. Sadly this is time and energy that could and should be directed back into the creative process, not into protectionism.

Tell Me More

This is the tactic of duplicitously resisting a valid suggestion or idea by demanding more research or data, in the hope that the other party will eventually be either distracted or exhausted and either drop the idea, or forget it. “Come back with a detailed proposal, with a clearly differentiated cost benefit matrix and we’ll look at it again.” And when they come back, more research is still required, and again, and again…

Of course it is appropriate that before new ideas are acted upon, that they should be researched and tested. It is prudent and appropriate for managers to place boundaries and reigns around the first flush of exhilaration that sweeps a new idea into awareness. Sadly though, this is also a convincing and apparently professional stance, which can often mask an inauthentic position and resistance.

Nit Picker

We were recently told the story of someone who once had a manager who so disliked their ideas that he would nit pick and find fault with everything they put forward. This resistance strategy hit new levels of absurdity one day when he had the temerity to ask if “the inverted commas are in the right font” for a new process idea they had put forward.

What lurked beneath his resistance was that he had a really clear vision of what he wanted and how he wanted to achieve it, and other people’s ideas frequently came into conflict with his. Unfortunately he chose to play a game of Nit Picker rather than communicate directly, fearing perhaps his people would not be able to handle his objections. Faced with this style of resistance perhaps unsurprisingly creativity was initially muffled and then disappeared.

Other political strategies for undermining creativity include…

Super Parent – They have seen it all and done it all before, and their experience is so vast and impressive that if they say it is a poor idea and won’t work, we are facing an uphill struggle. Their arrogance and ego demands complete acceptance and our capitulation, or else!

Techno-Babble – The idea is challenged on the scientific level and the resistance takes the form of long winded, confusing, jargon filled explanations which are presented as just being “helpful”. Again rather like the Super Parent, they have seen it all before (and have a legion of facts to prove it) and see no new reason to go down a road which has already proved fruitless.

Naysayer – It can’t be done, it’s impossible, and it won’t work. The Naysayer denies that the idea is achievable and they are so convincing that they have even hypnotised themselves into believing it. In 1899 Charles Duell the Director of the US Patents office suggested that the government close the office because everything that could be invented had been invented. Margaret Thatcher believed that a female Prime Minister was unlikely and certainly “not in my lifetime” The Naysayer is naturally resistant to new ideas and possibilities and wants to recruit us to their cause.

Get Naked - This game starts when the most powerful person present has an idea - which everyone immediately knows is terrible - but no one says so, indeed some might even go out of their way to congratulate the boss on their brilliant insight. It is the modern organisational equivalent of the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. The upshot of this is that other ideas resident in people’s minds are much less likely to then be articulated because to do so might be interpreted as a challenge to the “Emperor”.


What If…

By now you will have got the message about how these games undermine the creative spirit in the organisation and if you want to learn more about combatting power and politics in the workplace then contact Politics At Work via their website http://www.politicsatwork.com/ . Imagine what we could achieve if we could change the culture and environment of the organisation to cut through these inappropriate behaviours into a more productive state.

For further details of using creativity and innovation as business tools visit the Creative Business Solutions website.

Breaking Mindsets

Often we think of having to change the mindsets of others, but what about our own? Shouldn’t we be challenging our own ideas as well as the ways of having ideas? The following list applies to both solo and group working:

• Develop a wide range of experiences and interests. The richer the experience the wider the range of possibilities. Why not take a different route home or try a different bus?
• Become aware of your own blind spots i.e. things that you do not think
  about consciously or sub-consciously.
• Step into the shoes of all your stakeholders, even those with extreme
  views.
• Try different techniques, mix up your ways of holding meetings, generating ideas etc. Keep the same ones and you will build up systematic blind spots
  or gaps in your thinking.
• Try different modes of thinking. If you are naturally intuitive then try to be rational. If you are working in groups then change the balance of the group.
  If you are familiar with NLP representational systems then work with a
  different one.
• Challenge of all of the ‘givens’. Many organisations do things because they have always been done like that. There are not always as many regulatory constraints as there might at first appear!

For more creative ideas on training or setting up innovation projects visit the Creative Business Solutions website.

Build up, don't knock down

This is sometimes described as learning to say 'Yes, and .. .' rather than 'Yes, but ... '. Any new idea will include lots of problematic elements, and the newer the idea, the more problematic it is likely to be. It is therefore very easy to kill ideas by highlighting their weaknesses. However, this will often 'throw the baby out with the bath water'. Even the silliest, weirdest or most impracticable of ideas will contain one or two per cent of potentially viable material or can be used as what de Bono referred to as an 'intermediate impossible' - a stepping-stone to other, more directly usable ideas.

'Building' techniques are extremely powerful, often very portable and can have very positive secondary effects:

• They allow you to take virtually any input - a random piece of news, a nonexpert's misunderstanding, a tedious discussion with the office bore or an accidental meeting - and get useful ideas from it.
• They can help you to remain attentive and interested longer and more often.
• The other people involved will also tend to feel encouraged by having their tentative ideas valued and being helped to build them into realistic and acceptable plans.
• This is the kind of experience that people want to try again, from which they learn a lot and which leaves them valuing you and the organization.

Suggestions for techniques to 'build' on an existing idea (sometimes called 'hitchhiking') are listed below.

• Give priority to the useful aspects ('Yes, that idea would let us .. .').
• Express problematic aspects in a form that allows them to be tackled ('That idea raises an interesting problem. I wonder how we could .. .').
• Combine the idea with other ideas.
• Transform the idea in various ways (e.g. bigger, smaller, reversed, changed roles).
• Treat the idea as an exemplar for other possibilities (what different categories it could belong to, and what other ideas are suggested by these categories).
• Express the idea in more abstract or concrete terms ('What is this idea an example of?' 'What examples are there of this idea?').
• Represent it in a different medium (draw it, role-play it, sculpt it, etc.).
• Reframe the idea (i.e. see it from someone else's viewpoint, from a different hierarchical level, in different contexts or on different time-scales).
• Abstract the idea to a few key terms and then look up equivalents in a thesaurus (this method is the basis of some computer packages).
• Find analogies to the idea and use these as stimuli for other ideas.
• Use the idea to start a train of thought (in which case many of the other building mechanisms may be at work in a more or less automatic way - the more practised you are, the more automatic they become).

If you would like to learn more about using creative techniques then you might be interested in the new 'YES you can' ebook series which has 48 techniques for you to try.

Living with looseness

Neither creativity itself nor the issues that demand creativity are tidy or controlled. To handle this, you need a mental framework that is 'forgiving' of a necessary degree of confusion, ambiguity, uncertainty or contradiction, providing, of course, that a sufficient core of structure can be extracted from it to allow your activities to proceed. This article looks at the areas that managers seem to find most troublesome and suggests some skills and abilities that may require development.

There are five areas of ambiguity that managers find particularly troublesome:

• Where the significance and reliability of information is problematical.
• Where it is unclear at what level the problem needs to be tackled.
• Where different value orientations lead to political and emotional clashes among key players, inside and outside the organization.
• Where contradictions and paradoxes appear.
• Where symbols and metaphors, rather than logical arguments, are used to advance a position.

If several of the above characteristics combine, the problems begin to disrupt a manager's normal routines, and stress levels climb. Situations like these test the limits of analysis, so strictly analytical skills tend to be less relevant. Skills and procedures such as those listed below often help to provide the 'looseness' needed to manage these difficult circumstances.

• Problem-finding ability. A combination of judgement, intuition and logic that enables a manager to identify the right problem and to recognize opportunities.
• Map-building ability. The skill of generating one or more ways of conceptualizing a problematic situation, including the ability to relate the demands of the situation to organizational and personal values and identity.
• Janusian thinking. This refers to thinking that joins seemingly contradictory beliefs in a constructive way (the Roman god Janus faced in both directions at once).
• Controlling and not controlling. Knowing when to let events follow their own course versus knowing when to intervene.
• Humour that oils. This is humour that helps regulate stress and encourages creative juxtapositions, rather than biting, sarcastic, denigrating humour. Laughter is restorative - releasing tension and rejoining people.
• Charisma. The ability to stir enthusiasm, commitment and confidence. It transforms everyday activities into purposeful pursuit of super-ordinate goals and heightens people's sense of their own power and their willingness to take risks.
• The use of a core group embedded in a network of contacts and information. At the centre of any exercise in 'turbulence management' you usually find a core group - a few people meeting frequently face to face, working at least half-time in this role so that they can become really immersed in it.
• The use of domain and direction planning rather than goal-directed planning. Knowing who you are and where you want to go is inherently more flexible and better adapted to the realities of acting under stress than thinking in terms of specific, objective, measurable goals.
• Use ad hoc structures such as task forces and project teams. These temporary structures allow the organization to depart from old practices and to learn new behaviours - e.g. to examine the fundamentals of the business, or to experiment with the organization's traditional ways, or to educate key players in the new rules of the game.

Have a look at recent ebook excerpts for some more ideas or invest in the new YES you can ebook series.

Playing in Business - lets do more!

Does this mean that we can all regress into childhood and that making mistakes or behaving foolishly does not matter? Of course not. What we mean in this context is that a certain degree of chaos, learning from mistakes and not playing by the rules is acceptable. But why ‘play’ and not ‘explore’? Adult creativity is closer to childhood play than you might think and also ‘exploration’ still uses our adult rules with built in mindsets.

Play has several important characteristics which I will explore further.

We learn when we play as children, in fact this accounts for most of our early learning. Can you remember some of those early lessons before you went to primary school? Play acts as a learning laboratory for trying out different internal models on an external world. This is not dissimilar to our traditional brainstorming sessions.

Is play a practical task or imagination? A child that pretends his piece of cardboard is a knight’s sword is giving a simple piece of cardboard a set of magical qualities that are potentially limitless. As adults we use metaphor in much the same way.

Play also helps our sense of independence, and shows that we do not have to be compliant. This is an essential part of basic mental health. We need to have our own world and not be simply a part of someone else’s.

Play provides a protected area for our dreams. Once in the play state we do not say ‘you can’t do that’ or ‘don’t be silly’. Does this not remind you of brainstorming and other techniques? When you are free of the rules you are playing!!

Play provides a way of managing tensions between what is and what can be. Such tension can be temporarily reduced by imagining ways of closing the gap. A classical case of this is the technique of Visualisation.

Play is often accompanied by a particular state of mind. Just as a child can become lost in a game, so adults can become lost in a problem solving state once they have left their preconceptions behind.

There are emotional boundaries for children when play. The feelings conjured up by making imagination real must be containable. The same feelings exist when undertaking adult creative workshops and thus we can not play if we feel threatened.

As children, play is our main method of making both friends and enemies. Many suggest that it is only during play that true communication is possible because that is the only time that we share our innermost feelings. Those who have taken part in worthwhile group sessions will relate to the feelings of closeness that exist.

Given that shared culture, values, myths, metaphors, visions and more are the basis of many of our social groupings both inside and outside the workplace, why do we not play more often?

Creative Business Solutions are experts in applying creative techniques such as play to business situations. To find out more about training solutions, innovation projects or our self help ebook series YES you can, just click on the relevant link.