Innovative Teams Do These 3 Things Well

The learning objective that is most in vogue at the moment, is to become more ‘innovative’ – be it in terms of team, individual or organisational performance.

But what is it that enables some teams and businesses to be more innovative? Are some people just inherently more creative than others? More able to develop something ‘new and useful’ and bring it to market?  Is it possible for anyone, any team to learn how to be more innovative?

 Well, yes, it is possible to develop the skills, behaviours, mindsets and rituals that underpin innovation. But it is not easy.

As leaders, we cannot simply instruct our people to “be more innovative”. We must learn how to shape the organisational and team environment to create the necessary conditions for innovation.

Innovation requires whole of organisation commitment.

1. Be willing to pay attention to what is not working

Commitment to being innovative begins with a willingness to pay attention – not shut down - the subtle signals of our own and our clients’ frustrations when previous ways of doing things are are no longer fitting the bill.

If leaders can make room and allow for feelings of discomfort or frustration to be surfaced, from a variety of sources, then they make room for the realisation that we may need to do something differently.

Awareness that something is not working always comes before the development of a new and original response.

 2. Recalibrate our relationship with ambiguity and uncertainty

Another pre-requisite for creating the conditions for new solutions to problems to emerge is recalibrating our relationship with ambiguity and uncertainty.

Organisations and people eager to be more innovative must find ways to get excited about ambiguity and not knowing the answer, leaning into it, and loosening our grip on having to be – and seen to be - the expert. The person/team/business with all the answers.

We must instead learn how to cultivate a beginner’s mindset, so we can notice new and emerging opportunities and we willing to experiment with possible solutions, that may not always hit the mark.

This is no easy feat for many of today’s leaders, schooled in old paradigms of leadership whereby the leader is both inspiring and visionary, achieving their position by virtue of their expertise and knowledge.  

And yet paradoxically, the more they can drop the need to be ‘performers on a stage’ and focus on ‘setting the stage’ for diverse, talented people to collaborate and test out how they might create new and unique value through robust yet respectful discourse and debate, the more that the best ideas are able to rise to the top.

3. Create psychological safety

 The critical factor in fostering this kind of collaborative, discursive work environment is to establish psychological safety.

Research suggests that leaders of truly innovative workplaces focus their efforts on ensuring their people feel safe to give new ideas and ways of doing things a shot, feel safe to stuff things up – sometimes monumentally – and be willing start all over again to get things right.

They also help their people learn how to skilfully respond – in real time – to the inevitable conflicts, debates, and polarities that emerge when our capacity to use previously successful approaches and frameworks is no longer viable and new ideas and ways of operating are being tested.

These leaders of innovative teams establish upfront rules of engagement around how they will deal with debate and advocate their ideas so that different perspectives and suggestions can be celebrated and explored, not avoided or shut down.

For leaders and businesses that want to lead for innovation, the road map is clear.  So, what is getting in the way?  Why aren’t we seeing more businesses and organisations innovate, and quickly?

“The number one reason many organisations’ and teams fail to innovate effectively: - We are too caught up in being right all the time!”

If we really dig into what is going on, we see that the core stumbling block is our collective reluctance to shift our cognitive and emotional relationship to uncertainty and discomfort and sit with opposing ideas until clarity emerges.

The path to finding new and improved ways of doing things paradoxically requires us to be willing to get things wrong.

This kind of shift requires moving beyond what we know (our expert mind) to how we are (our ways of being).  

It demands us to individually and collectively question long held mental models (and courageously push back on organisational pressures) about the need to be right and what failure means.  

It requires us to make room for the - at times - deeply challenging at times work of creative abrasion, agility and integrative decision-making, and cultivate a willingness to learn as beginners again, and to tolerate the discomfort of learning.

At Holly Parry & Co we work with organisations who are serious about creating the conditions for innovation, helping their teams learn how to:

• to embrace the awkwardness of being a beginner again and cultivate a learner mindset;
• reward and encourage curiosity through skilful questioning and inquiry,
• set the rules of engagement for robust debate and honest feedback; and
• create habits and practices that make room for experimentation and learning.

 Once we learn how to drop the ego that often gets us caught up with looking good and being right, fresh ideas and new ways of thinking and responding to old, intractable problems start to flow. Try it for yourself!  

To find out more about creating the conditions for innovation, I would encourage you to watch this excellent TED talk by Dr Linda Hill.