Share, invite and coach: Three proven steps to build your business

Does your business encourage people to bring big, bold and impactful ideas to life? Or are you treading water in a culture of rule-following and hierarchy? 

I recently surveyed 197 leaders from 24 countries, and the overwhelming consensus was that leaders want to create positive work environments that welcome ideas from anyone. The kind of workplace where people feel safe to dream big, voice their opinions, challenge the status quo, and innovate.

But according to Deloitte’s 2021 Innovation Study, on average only half of all corporate innovation efforts are achieving their desired value targets. If leaders have the right intentions, why are so many companies struggling to innovate well?  

Often, it’s a case of innovation theatre. Leaders might say all the right things and invest in sending their people on innovation courses, but their corporate immune systems in place to manage risk may unintentionally be crushing innovation rather than fostering it. 

I’ve seen many innovative projects fizzle out when perceived risks outweigh potential opportunities. As a result, true ‘out of the box’ thinking becomes stifled. 

This is not to say innovation is about the chaos of unchecked creativity. Think of it as a corporate creativity spectrum. At one end, we have rigid systems that struggle to accept anything new and different, at the other, we have creativity and innovation without any kind of purpose or direction. We’re aiming for a happy middle — creativity and innovation, driven by an organisation’s purpose and vision, supported by a balanced appetite for risk-taking. 

The good news is, building a culture of creativity and innovation doesn’t have to come at a great cost. It’s not about expensive programs, it’s about encouraging people to show initiative, supporting this kind of thinking at every level of the company and leveraging contemporary methods to inspire big thinking. 

So how do we create cultures that foster creativity and innovation, so that companies can solve the big problems of today (and tomorrow)? In my experience, a ‘learning by doing’ approach yields a far greater return on investment than formal training programs.

Here are three proven steps to get you started. 

Share your strategy and encourage input

Start by sharing your compelling vision and goals, along with the key problems that need solving, or the opportunities to be explored. 

Rather than developing strategies in the corner office and then cascading them down across the company, a more progressive approach is to share your vision with the wider team and create forums for people to contribute on an opt-in basis. This brings diversity of thought and creates space for bouncing around fresh ideas.

At the end of the day, the executive team signs off on the strategy, but a participative approach recognises that great ideas could be hiding anywhere. By establishing a golden thread connecting strategic initiatives to your vision, creativity becomes aligned and intentional, rather than random and distracting.

Invite participation

Building a culture of innovation means inviting people to take part, and creating space for them to bring ideas to life. Each quarter, you might publish a list of problems and opportunities aligned with your wider strategy, and open these up to your organisation or department. Invite people to select a specific theme, form a team to work on it, and pitch their solutions at the end of the quarter.

It’s important to build time into people’s schedules where ideas can flourish. The 20% rule is a good one to apply here — giving people 20% of their time to work on creative projects, outside of their usual day job. That’s one day per week to work on ideas that could be truly game-changing for your business. 

The 20% rule was famously employed by Google when it announced its people could spend 20% of their time working on any ideas or projects that might interest them, but it only works if these ideas are given strong foundations on which to be built. This means having leaders who encourage innovation, provide regular feedback and check-ins on progress, and accept that not all ideas will come to fruition. 

I’ve seen it done well by Aboitiz in The Philippines. This is a 100-year-old company that’s grown into a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate spanning food, power, banking, data and infrastructure. As part of their Great Transformation, they’re building an internal culture of innovation. People are encouraged to join internal innovation boot camps, where each team is given a problem or opportunity to tackle over three months, and at the end, they pitch solutions to the executive. The reason it works? The executive team is willing to relax many rules and hierarchy constraints within the ‘bootcamp bubble’.

Coach on contemporary mindsets and methods

The final step is to provide coaching for people working on creative initiatives, to shift habitual thought patterns and apply contemporary methods that dramatically increase the likelihood of success.  

This includes coaching for your executive team because we want to avoid any kind of ‘us and them’ mentality if ideas are going to thrive. Picture a dance floor full of your people moving to new and exciting beats, and your executive team watching from a balcony above. We need the leadership team on the dancefloor too, to create synergy across all levels of the business, and to flex any rigid frameworks that might be stifling the growth of good ideas. 

This includes regular leadership check-ins so that the people developing initiatives have opportunities to ask questions, get feedback, and course correct, rather than a lack of support for the solution at the end due to low visibility along the way. 

You need ideas to be viable, feasible and desirable, so using proven contemporary frameworks will make the investment of their time worthwhile. 

The innovation culture

An innovation culture is one where people are encouraged to learn by doing, to test ideas, and to accept feedback and failure. 

As one of my survey participants noted: “Give people the freedom to do their best work with support and to be themselves – so that they feel like they are contributing. Give them the opportunity to continue to shape and reshape themselves through education and experiences that enable them to grow.”

Innovative and creative cultures are ones where change is constant, and opportunities are boundless. Are you ready to permit your people to bring their best ideas to life? 

Cherie Mylordis is the founder of nextgenify, and a Sydney-based work futurist, speaker, and transformation and innovation coach.