Kathy Harris

People don’t commit to innovation just because it’s there. Sure, innovation is important to the organization and it is someone’s job, but is that really enough to cause employees to freely offer up their most creative thoughts and ideas? Probably not. Innovation succeeds best when supported by cultural actions that do, in fact, speak louder than words to the people you’re hoping to engage. Here are a few actions to consider:

• Involve leaders in innovation. People want to be involved in important work, and the inclusion of visible, influential people in your innovation program will send a message of importance. Employees will follow the lead of people they consider successful, influential or insightful because they see the opportunity to learn from them and to be associated with them.
• Assess current rewards or incentives before adding new ones. Organizational culture develops over the life of an enterprise. There may be established attitudes and behaviors (and related incentives) that are counter to innovation. Analyze the current behaviors to determine any that are counter to innovation – undo these where possible and redesign rewards and incentives.
• Customize expectations to jobs. Expectations and incentives for participation should match the level of employee’s job responsibilities. Innovation participants may include trainees, midlevel and expert employees. For trainees, recognize and reward the quantity of ideas and contributions and de-emphasize quality (at the outset). For expert employees, require ideas and contributions to meet quantity and quality expectations.
• Reward tenure. The ideas of long-term employees are high-value and often irreplaceable. To encourage their participation and willingness to supplant established processes, build incentives that acknowledge cumulative contributions of high-quality ideas.
• Encourage working outside the bounds. Innovation is enhanced when people offer ideas that are cross-organization or outside the bounds of their own work. Innovation incentives and focus should be aligned with enterprise level business goals to encourage inside- and outside-the-bounds participation.