Innovation is one of the hottest topics in organizations today, yet surprisingly few provide the training required to make it happen, according to the results of a recent ASTD survey. Why aren’t more companies getting the innovation they want when innovation tops their priority lists? The answer is very simple: They don’t know how.
Most leaders haven’t learned how innovation really happens or what they need to do to create the right conditions. Managers, regardless of level, generally don’t know what to do to make their teams more innovative. Few employees have learned the process of innovative thinking and managing innovation projects. Even if an organization has had some innovation success, it may not know how to make innovating sustainable.
This represents a big opportunity for training and development (TD) professionals because innovation skills can be taught. You don’t have to hire super creative types, and you don’t need to engineer off-beat events to make innovating a sustainable part of your organization’s competencies. Innovation shouldn’t be like a one-in-a-trillion lottery win. It doesn’t always have to come in the form of a massive industry-disrupting product. Sustainable innovation is about implementing new ideas that create value in every part of your organization—from senior leadership to the end user of your organization’s products or services.
So what can you do to help your organization become systematically more innovative in every area?
- First, TD must clarify the role leaders play in creating the conditions where everyone else can innovate. Leaders need to understand that innovating and managing innovating teams is a skill that can be learned, and that they have to be role models. This includes working as a team with other leaders, correcting elements of the culture—such as risk tolerance—that can get in the way, and ensuring that processes within IT, Finance, and HR genuinely support innovative behaviors.
- Second, help managers develop the skills and behaviors critical to creating an innovating team.
- Third, train leaders, managers, and employees—in that order—in innovative thinking. While innovative thinking involves a creativity phase, it is very different from creativity alone. Innovative thinking teaches people how to successfully solve today’s increasingly complex problems and create necessary change.
To give these steps the right foundation, TD leaders themselves need to learn the principles of innovating and innovative thinking. You don’t need to be the best experts, but you do need to understand the logic of innovation and know the tools that can be used. You will probably need to hire short-term help to get started if you don’t have expertise on staff, but the goal should be to ultimately create the competencies in-house.
Learn more about this topic by attending the free March 25 webcast, “ASTD Research: Learning and the Innovating Organization,” during which we will present the results of the ASTD survey and recommend possible actions. For more detailed information, join me at ASTD 2014 in Washington, D.C., and attend the Community Theater session on Sunday, May 4 at 11 a.m.
