Why does Your Organization Need a Culture of Innovation?

Summary: A Culture of Innovation is necessary for businesses to thrive and grow in a digital age. Innovation cannot be restricted to a project, a resource or a team. It should be observed as a company-wide practice to enable true transformation.

Innovation leaders and owners of fast-moving software development businesses like us have realized that innovation is at the heart of business success. However, though importance of innovation for businesses has been recognized as an unmissable clause, IT leaders are often confused what to do with culture.

If you look at the progression of the IT industry, businesses that held on to their culture have always been pulled backward. Yes, I said that. Culture alone, does nothing – rather it has time and again proven to be the biggest barrier for innovation performance.

What most tech leaders do not realize is that innovation is a catalyst for change in dedicated development teams. And that the leadership team can actually propel the existing company culture towards a culture of innovation – albeit with a few tweaks.

What is Innovation Culture?

If you are wondering, What is meant by Innovation Culture? Let me break it down for you-

Let’s talk about organizational culture first, the best way to define it is – a set of distinct behavioural patterns within an organization. This includes organizational mission and vision, collective and individual values, practices, processes and the way people react to anything.

Now, a culture of innovation is a belief and an organizational set up that enables people to look out of the box, supports their lateral moves and supports the resources with every required facility to bring in innovation.

Why do You Need a Culture of Innovation?

Now, you could ask me Why is a Culture of Innovation important?

Let me cite some brilliant insights on this –

MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte: Eighty-one percent of respondents at digitally mature companies cite innovation as a strength of their organizations

Gartner: Top drivers for innovation today include enhancing customer experience (53%), driving revenue growth (53%), and developing new products and services (45%)

Accenture: Sixty-two percent of high-growth companies plan to invest in technologies that lead to higher rates of innovation, compared to 54% of other companies.

Still sceptical about integrating a culture of innovation?

Then you mustn’t read further because I am about to spill some beans on how businesses can beat the curve with an innovation-first culture.

How do you Build a Culture of Innovation?

Until a few years back, business leaders were pacing up for innovation-based culture. However, the pace at which the IT industry is moving, growing and expanding, the need of the hour is an innovation-first culture. Remember, if you want sustainability in your business then innovation is must.

There are essentially two crucial characteristics of advanced digital innovation – collaboration and cross-functional teams. These are two edifices that actually take an organization towards larger agility and scalability through thorough legacy modernization.

However, the pace of the agility brought by these two factors are often seen to outpace an organization’s governance policies. Thus, as a tech leader, you must be ready with a strong ‘checks and balance’ measure and stronger digital ethics to minimize the flipside of innovation.

Be Prepared to Learn and Unlearn

As a tech leader, you must be adopt a ‘learner’s mindset’ throughout. And I am speaking from experience, there will be so many situations wherein you’ll need to learn and most importantly unlearn so many of your entrepreneurial lessons. As creatures of habit, it is difficult for us to strip our established thinking and embrace new ideas. But more than anyone in your organization, it is on the leadership – you, to walk out on irrelevant and dated belief systems. The acceptance of innovation thinking must begin with the leadership team, if they want to make it a company-wide reality.

Lead; Build the Vision and Step Back

For any organization moving towards an innovation-first culture, it is crucial to have a distinct vision. As a senior member of the leadership team, it is on you to build and set that vision for your organization and employees. However, what the leadership must practice is the act of ‘stepping back’. Your superlative aim is to build a sense of ownership within your team and that kicks in only when you allow them the power of decision making. Yes, there could be failures but there would be learnings too!

Empower Your Team With Engagement

When you hire high-performing experts and build a cross-functional team, you have to build a synergy in your business ecosystem for them to thrive. Innovative minds seek to execute alternative ideas and challenges. So, rack your brains and put in people with diverse skill sets on singular projects. The way these different personalities engage and strive to outshine each other, will take your technical advancement to a new height.

Lead with Examples and Not Words

Leadership mind-set is like an echo that rings throughout all the levels of an organization. When your people see you actively engaged, willing to learn and participating in their efforts – they feel recharged. Actions are the loudest echoes in a business ecosystem. And specially in a niche like IT where the market is evolving and morphing every single day, your people need to see by example how involved they need to be in their work.

Bring in a Start-up Spirit

Even the most seasoned professionals in technology secretly urge to be a part of start-ups where they can experiment at scale. However, with larger businesses, the management is guarded enough to take risks and that’s where most tech professionals feel chained. When a digitally matured organization brings in a more involved leader and a larger scope to experiment, tech minds feel fulfilled. However, you, as the management need to communicate that you are willing to take calculated risks and will be okay with occasional failures. If you want to have that explosive energy in your team, you have to be a risk-taker!

An Innovation-minded culture is led from the forefront.

A Culture of Innovation Really Begins with the Top!

Innovation culture pans out with the bottom-up but the trigger in the system is always the leadership. When you are leading a team of system thinkers, you will at times need to encourage and pass the seemingly unreasonable. Your conventional wisdom sure takes you on the road to stability but opening up to the new will take you towards market relevance.

Also, organizational hierarchies are often a barrier to true innovation. So, as a leader who wants to foster the culture of innovation – you must hold space for your innovators to break a few rules. You have already hired the best of the lot in the market, now all you need is to give them your entrepreneurial nudge – a push towards collaborating, sharing ideas and knowledge, taking alternative routes to success and even run behind unrealistic goals at times.

So, swallow your traditional beliefs at times, take yourself and your team on a run to learn and practice the new, and build a legacy of trust – a culture of innovation will follow.