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ATD Blog

Are CLOs Fostering Innovation—or Just Talking About It?

Wednesday, May 6, 2015
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One of the hottest topics in industry today is innovation. If there is one buzzword that employees and managers both use on a daily basis, it’s innovation. Being innovative is widely accepted to be the enabler of new products, markets, and approaches. It is the feature new employees seek when comparing employment options. It is management’s source of hope for higher profits, more revenue, better sustainability, and higher employee engagement. 

Chief learning officers (CLOs) are no exception. CLOs are looking for innovative ways to increase training effectiveness, improve learning retention, and embed innovation itself into the fabric of their organizations’ culture. Few would argue that an organization’s long-term success doesn’t depend on the ability to create their industry’s next better mousetrap. 

So with all the talk about innovation, we should expect it to be clearly understood and successfully implemented in most organizations, right? Or is the talk more of a manifestation of how poorly innovation is understood and implemented? Or is the talk just talk—with little genuine commitment to innovation at all? 

Obstacles to Innovation 

There are certainly real intentions and progress being made by many organizations to foster innovation, but behaviors often suggest otherwise. For example, few organizations allow sufficient time for innovation. Innovation requires creative thinking which requires the use of people’s mental resources. If people’s mental resources are always preoccupied with other tasks, their resources are unavailable. When people are under fire to perform their normal day jobs, they have no capacity left to think …. much less conduct research, brainstorm new ideas, package their ideas, and present their ideas.  

Other hindrances to innovation are managers who talk about innovation, but don’t allocate resources. They sit on approval requests. They don’t authorize budgets to try new methods, experiment with new technologies, or test out new ideas. For an idea to be given a chance, it requires resource. It might need facilities, equipment, systems support, outside research, prototyping, testing, or evaluation. Managers are being unrealistic if not deceitful when they make innovation one their organizational values, yet withhold budget and resources. Their stated value is nothing more than a general platitude hanging on the lobby wall to impress their visitors. 

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Perhaps the main culprits preventing innovation are managers who punish risk-taking, non-conformity, and mistakes. Innovation doesn’t happen without risk. Innovation doesn’t happen in the ruts of the status quo. Mistakes will be made in the process of experimentation. If prudent risks, periodic non-conformance, and mistakes aren’t tolerated and encouraged in the right context, there will be little innovation. There will be little experimentation.  If you are a manager who berates people for taking risks, not conforming to the status quo, trying new ideas, and making mistakes in the process of experimentation, know that you will have few risk takers and little innovation. 

7 Principles to Foster Innovation 

If you truly expect to foster innovation, here are seven principles to follow: 

  1. Develop your innovative mindset. Stimulate your own curiosity. Truly understand and appreciate the potential that innovation represents. Don’t merely accept innovation as a hot topic. Embrace it as an organizational imperative. Be willing to take on the risks and costs of being innovative. Commit to investing time, resources, money, and energy into unproven pursuits.

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  2. Make people uncomfortable with the status quo. Create concern and doubt with maintaining the status quo. Ask “what if” questions that cast doubt on current methods and offerings. Paint a vision of a future that is much different than today. Emphasize the role that innovation plays in creating a better future. Bring the vision to life with stories and examples. Describe how innovation solves future problems as well as leverages future opportunities.

  3. Promote innovation. Add innovation topics to your recurring messaging. Add them to your 1-on-1 meetings, staff meetings, and strategic planning exercises. Ask people what innovation means to them. Ask how they are applying innovation. Help people put innovation into the context of their roles and responsibilities. 

  4. Establish the need. Identify and communicate specific problems and opportunities that need to be addressed. Give people clear direction into the organization’s top priorities. Set 3-5 year goals that require new ways of thinking and doing. Identify the systems, processes, products, and markets that need to change. Ask people to identify the changes required to accomplish the organization’s future goals.

  5. Allocate resources. Give people time away from the tyranny of the urgent to be curious and creative. Allocate time for innovation training, brainstorming, reflection, and experimentation. Make facilities, resources, and money available for research, testing, and prototyping. Show your commitment to innovation by investing in it.

  6. Encourage prudent risk taking. Allow people the opportunity to work outside of existing processes and procedures. Within reasonable constraints, allow them to try different systems and tools. Encourage them to take new ideas to the next step. Exhort them to be courageous, put themselves at risk of looking foolish, and take a small gamble on something.   

  7. Measure and recognize innovation. Create metrics and incentives that emphasize innovation. Give equal attention to metrics that achieve tactical results as well as those that achieve strategic results. Track and report progress. Make positive public examples out of people who put effort into and make progress in innovation. 

Follow these principles to foster innovation and make it embedded in the fabric of your organization.
Editor’s Note: This post is adapted from Execution: Delivering Excellence, book 6 of Mike Hawkins' SCOPE of Leadership book series.  

About the Author

Mike Hawkins is award-winning author of Activating Your Ambition: A Guide to Coaching the Best Out of Yourself and Others, author of the SCOPE of Leadership six-book series on coaching leaders to lead as coaches, and president of Alpine Link Corporation. Mike coaches, consults, and trains organizations and individuals to higher levels of performance. He is a seasoned executive coach, management consultant, author, speaker, and college lecturer. He is considered an industry thought leader on leadership, consultative selling, self-improvement, and business management.  

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