Does leadership have an impact on how innovative people are in a company?
Can people change their behavior to become more innovative or less innovative?
In start-up ventures, the leader is often the innovator-in-chief. In more established companies, leaders no longer have the time to innovate their way through every problem—they depend on employees to come up with new solutions. As a business grows, the leader must shift focus from individual innovation to creating a culture of innovation.
The good news is that creativity is a basic and common trait in human beings. If given the chance and a conducive environment, employees will innovate on their own.
The bad news is that even leaders who started out as innovators can kill innovation in their companies by allowing three poisons to penetrate their culture.
Let’s examine three innovation toxins, learn how leaders allow them in, and discover the antidotes.Leaders who started out as innovators can kill innovation in their companies by allowing three poisons to penetrate their culture.
#1: Failure does not kill innovation, but Fear will
We know the story of Edison and how many times he failed before he invented a working lightbulb. Failure is not toxic to innovation. But fear is.
The toxin of fear begins flowing when people experience negative fallout after a failure. Negative fallout can show up in the form of being shamed for the failure or called out in public, being reminded of the financial cost of the failure, or being removed from a project or leadership role shortly after a failure. This fallout will create a climate of fear among employees that will inhibit their willingness to step out and try something new or different.
Leaders allow the poison of fear to fester when they visibly show or voice frustration after a project or initiative fails. Sometimes it’s the little comments that begin to brew up a dose of fear, such as:
- I don’t know how much longer we can … (spend money, waste time, etc)
- If we don’t start getting results, we’re going to have to make big changes …
- I know we’ve had a rough start, but next time, we absolutely have to get this right…
Leaders do this NOT by saying, “You all have my permission to fail,” but instead by praising innovative efforts that did not succeed and by creating a clear separation between the failure and any necessary adjustments that need to be made.The antidote to fear is to give people permission to fail.
#2: Direction does not kill innovation, but Control will
Human beings are naturally creative. Legos, Play-doh, and blanket-forts in the living room are indicators of our near-universal ability to innovate. Leaders are free to give direction (or re-direction) to this creative energy. In fact, most employees want to be in the loop on what direction the company is going and would rather use their extra energy in ways that will be appreciated.
Direction does not kill innovation, but control will.
The poison of control makes employees second-guess their actions and decisions in an effort to “do what the boss wants.” Innovation dies, because employees spend their mental energy trying to figure out what the leader wants and do it that way.
Again, this permission cannot be communicated verbally by just telling people they have permission to try a new way. It is communicated by giving them responsibility for an outcome and then not looking over their shoulders to see how they are doing it.The antidote to control is giving people permission to succeed differently.
Leaders are free to create clear and specific expectations around “what” they want. Within a limited scope, leaders can even establish or reinforce company-wide processes that connect the “how” to the culture of the company. But when a leader starts telling employees how to do tasks that have been delegated, innovation stops dead in its tracks.
#3: Pressure does not kill innovation, but Fatigue will
There’s been a lot of discussion lately around pressure, stress, and work-life balance. It’s important for leaders to understand that stress and pressure (on their own) do not hinder innovation. In fact, companies are learning from the technology world about the benefits of intense but highly innovative environments like hackathons. Hackathons can create a positive climate of direction and pressure to perform in a short time period that actually increases innovation.
Pressure is not the poison, but fatigue is. Over long periods of time, sustained stress and unrelenting pressure produce fatigue. And fatigue is a proven killer of innovation. When we get tired, our brains get sluggish, clunky, and less innovative. Under fatigue, our creative efforts are more risky, less thoughtful, and less likely to work.
Again, this permission cannot be given verbally—it must be demonstrated. If the leader never stops, then he or she sets up an expectation that no one else should stop, either. The leader must demonstrate the practice of taking periodic breaks, slowing down, and allowing time for physical, mental, and emotional recovery.The antidote to fatigue is permission to stop.
Software teams do this by setting up their work in “sprints” of limited duration, after which there is a non-productive or less-productive interim to recover. In the biblical story of Genesis, even God took a day off after a week of intense creative activity. CEOs need to model this behavior and reinforce it through verbal prompts.
Culture of Innovation
A company does not automatically develop a culture of innovation just because the leader is innovative. And the CEO does not have to be the top innovator. Instead, leaders can encourage a culture of innovation by watching out for three toxins: fear, control, and fatigue.
When those poisons appear, leaders can aggressively counteract them with the antidotes of permission to fail, permission to succeed differently, and permission to stop.
It may be hard to believe, but your people are already capable of creativity and innovation. Your job is to remove the poisons that would kill off that behavior by providing the right antidotes to release their creative potential.
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