By now, you’ve probably seen Microsoft’s commercial entitled, Empowering Innovation. At the end of the 60-second ad, you’re asked the question, “What will you do with it?”
Leading up to this question, the actor in the commercial makes a series of statements about the power of technology to help us create our future. He describes this power as a tool to create possibility, adaptability, and capability. For example, what’s a hammer without a person swinging it? What’s a microphone without your voice? What’s a paint brush without you as the artist? “We have more power at our fingertips today than all the generations before us,” he goes on to say.
I love the commercial. I think the closing question is great for those of us who are searching for answers to innovation’s challenges—especially in today’s highly competitive global world.
In my mind, innovation has always been about people controlling their own destiny. History tells us that innovation is almost always a product of collaboration. Yet, people and organizations continue to treat collaboration as simply group work where
people cooperate and coordinate with others. They rarely see it as an enabler to innovation and productivity.
Why? I believe it’s because most of us grew up in a culture that values individual performance over team performance. What’s more, the idea that people can flip mindsets on-demand to collaborate on teams is not realistic. This may be why developing teams that effectively collaborate is an ongoing challenge in organizations.
You’re probably familiar with the phrase, “Culture eats strategy for lunch!” Clearly, we can’t ignore the importance of culture when it comes to collaboration. Management thought leader and author Edgar Schein made this abundantly clear when he described culture as a “pattern of basic assumptions invented, discovered, or developed by a group as it learns to cope with its problems.”
Bottom line: culture is critical to collaboration—and collaboration would never happen if we relied solely on technology. That’s why it’s important for organizations to create a culture of collaboration to support people who are collaborating to innovate.
So, we’re back to the question in the commercial: What will you do with it—to empower innovation? Hopefully, your answer calls for acknowledging that there is a mindset gap, and you will commit to training your people to practice genuine team collaboration on the job. Here’s the good news: developing a collaborative mindset (and skillset) for practicing genuine team collaboration can be learned! It starts with training, followed by coaching.
