Building "Innovative" teams

The term "Innovation" is over-discussed in every corporate literature you put your eyes on. It has been sliced, diced, analyzed by many, coming from diverse back grounds.
I have personally delivered many key note speeches, in verity of  employee forums, manager excellence forums, conferences etc.

So, when my company's Director of Work Place Resources, asked me to come in to his APJC WPR leaders meeting to talk through some of my personal journey through this, my first thought was, "One more innovation talk ??" !

However, that thought changed very quickly - I started realizing the the work place resources team is not same as the computer engineering teams and students I have been talking to.
They are architects, Operation Managers, Supply Chain managers, Hotel management and hospitality personals etc.

So the subject has to go deeper in to fundamental building blocks of "Innovation" or more importantly an "Innovating team  culture".

So, putting together all my successful personal experiments with building "innovative Work Culture" so far.

A lot of experts over-analyze and be very granular in defining "Innovation", and separating it out from "Creativity". While the fact is, one needs creativity to innovate.
And to most human beings, when they "create" something, that gets accepted / appreciated / utilized or implemented, it gives them a "high" !!

And that high can drive them to create the next thing.

So, many years ago, when I was searching for the right way to create the "HIGH" for a "TEAM", not an individual, I set myself through a long journey of experiments with the organization I have access to. After all, individuals can be creative / innovative, but not necessarily every one in a team can be so. And in that case, how do you create a culture of innovation that rises above individual creativity and becomes more of a team property ? Its definitely not any kind of a complete list. But the ones that work for my situations !!!

• Connect the team to the higher purpose
  • Three stone cutters were cutting stone under the blazing sun ! A passerby inquired the first one, "What are you doing ?". The person replied "Can't you see ? I am cutting stone ??". The passerby moved on and asked the second stone cutter the same question, and he got a different answer - "I am doing a Job, that end of the day feeds me and my family. I do not care what job as long as it continues to sustain me". The passer by moved on to the third person and asked the same question and he responded with a big smile "I am building the most beautiful stone monument that will make my city proud".
  • All of them did the same job, under same excruciating working conditions. But only one of them was connected to the "purpose".
• Size does NOT matter
  • Toyota records a million innovations in a year. Yes.. you heard it ! Million. These are ideas, implemented ! 2500 a day !! Well, it comes from every one making some change, any amount of change, small of big, within their scope. All valid ideas that moves the needle in the right direction even by an inch is implemented and credited as "innovation". This keeps the team in that perpetual "High". Ideas, small or big, if solving a problem of today (or tomorrow), cherish it.
• "Happy Whining Sessions" instead of "Innovation Camps"
  • An engineer who is very frustrated by the build time of a component, can look at the engineer in the next cube and see that he or she is also dealing with the same pain. Then accepts it as way of life and lives with the long build time !! He is bothered by it. But tolerating because every one else is tolerating it ! How do your get that "frustration" as positive energy and farm it across the team ?
  • I could be the first one to  suggest "whining" session as tool to innovate   However, be mindful about the adverb. Happy whining !!! In a team forum just complaining about the things that are not working and often leads to ideas to solve today's problems very effectively. Just take the resolve of NOT living with something that is bothering us, just because others are living with it. What this exercise does is brings the team awareness to the top of the mind problems, and practical innovations happen as ideas get crowd sourced in that forum. Be civil though BTW, this is going to be much cheaper way to building an innovative culture than going to those expensive "Innovation Camps"
• Celebrate "failures" (just like we celebrate success)
  • Some ideas die ! Period. But the spirit of idea originator does not have to. If the team subscribes the idea, puts energy in implementing towards it, and it still fails - get together, cut a cake and congratulate all who contributed to it, learn a lesson or two and move on to the next idea !
• Diversity of thoughts
  • I once met one of top choreographers of the our time. As we know, each choreographer has a signature style that they excel in. Contemporary, Hip Hop, Spanish etc. And most of them as very very good at what they do. However, a few of them remain fresh in what they produce for a long long time. When I asked this honorable choreographer, her secrets of staying fresh in her dance, she said "I get my work reviewed by a team of younger experts and take their opinion to shape it. The result is a fusion. And Fusion is an easy way to innovate". When I started thinking about it, I related this to last key 100 patents generated in Packet networking world, and most of them turned out to be some uniqueness that pre-packet era TDM communication system had.
  • Don't hire your clones. Make a Gen Y the reviewer of your ideas. Get a woman's prospective on your design. On and on ways of bringing in diversity of thought in to the teams work and innovation.
• Lastly, Share the idea to convert it in to an Innovation :
  • The core of any great idea comes from ONE Person. Its nature - the source is atomic ! There are NO TWO fathers of an idea. But the moment its out, it can morph in to an even better one. It can be improvised by others. The final shape of the idea can be way different than what was conceived by a person.
  • However, the originator's pride can be a huge hindrance for a great idea to see the light of the day ! Make others believe that they own a part of the idea. Its not YOUR idea that others are executing to. That's the quickest way to move from idea to an implemented innovation.

Stay Calm and Innovate !!