Making Innovation Part of Every Day

by Ciara Conlon Head of Operations at EQuita Consulting

Innovation is one of those concepts that a lot of people aren’t too sure what it involves. The word innovation could conjure up images of the iPhone, the digital camera or maybe streaming movies online, the big disrupters to the way we are accustomed to do things. But there are millions of examples of innovation that happen every day, all around us, big and small.

When we think of the definition of innovation we think of new ways of doing things but the roots of the word innovation come from the latin innovare which can also mean to renew or to change. So innovation doesn’t always have to be the big bang, it can also include small changes to the way we are currently doing things, small changes that benefit us in some shape or form.

Changing the Mindset

The one thing that is a constant when it comes to innovation is that change is required and unfortunately the human animal generally doesn’t like change. We are creatures of habit who have accustomed ourselves to doing things in a certain way. Innovation requires change, it requires us to change the way we think about things or to change the way we currently do things. We need to adapt to the change happening around us and accept the fact that change can be good. A mind set for innovation may require an injection of new talent into the team.

 
Changing the way we see our environment

In order to change the way we do things we must change the way we look at things, the lean concept of continuous improvement is a great philosophy to adopt. A way of working where we don’t accept the status quo and regularly question our way of doing things. Start paying more attention to your surroundings and ask yourself, is there a better way of doing this?

Changing our Approach to Problems

A great way to encourage innovation daily is to use it as an approach to problem solving, each time a problem occurs, take some time to identify the root of the problem, we often think we know why a problem occurs but there are times where the root is much deeper. If we can get to the real root of the problem we may find a novel solution, as goes the disputable line from Henry Ford “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Creating an Environment for Change

You cannot expect people to become more innovative and to think about change positivity if they work in an environment where mistakes are not accepted and time is never allocated to try out new ideas. In a lot of workplaces, the leadership are more concerned with people sticking to their job description and focussing on the bottom line. In order to counteract this mindset it needs to be made clear that there is a difference between creativity and innovation. Innovation is the commercialisation of creativity, so ideas must make commercial sense.

Here are a couple of tips for embedding a Culture for Innovation in your organisation

1. Create space and time for thinking, whether it’s a day or an hour, protect this time with your life.
2. Encourage collaboration and have collaborative spaces in your office for those who like to talk to think, while also acknowledging that not everyone likes a huddle.
3. Talk openly about how change is good and failure is permitted. For innovation to take place there can be no negative repercussions from making mistakes because you tried.
4. Organise a team day to try out some Design Thinking concepts. Doing a Journey map for your customer journey is a great place to start.
5. Encourage people to get out of the office and visit inspiring place, go to seminars unrelated to your industry, meet with people from different walks of life. Sometimes ideas come from the strangest places.
6. Try out a Sprint, Choose a challenge, get a team together and block five days on the calendar. You can refer to the book Sprint, How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days.
7. Clear the clutter in the workspace to create a healthy environment with minimal distractions.

“There are no rules here we are trying to accomplish something”

Thomas Edison

About the author
Ciara Conlon is a Leadership expert and the author of Productivity for Dummies and Chaos to Control.
She is an international keynote speaker and coach.

Ciara is Head of Operations at EQuita Consulting, a leading consultancy in the areas of Executive Development, Negotiation, Mediation and Personal Productivity. EQuita provide popular Leadership and Management development programmes for many organisations in Ireland and Europe. Speak to us if you would like us to customize a programme for your organisation. equita.ie

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