Challenge 5: Do you empower your team to innovate?

Diagnosis

Clearly stating that employees are expected and invited to contribute to innovation is just one step. But to really buy into the message, employees need to feel safe to open up and break the fear of speaking up regarding issues, possibly non well received ideas or just stand out of usually passive group of employees. Hence, before they act they will observe the general environment and look for signs that management is seriously interested in collecting their inputs to innovation. If you don’t encourage your employees to speak up and take innovation initiatives through your actions, your most direct statement will not break socio-psychological barriers to breaking the current status quo and especially collecting inputs from employees performing simple routine functions.

Positive aspects	Negative aspects
Me and my management team engages with employees at various levels and departments to discuss innovation ideas.	Managers do not ask for opinions/ideas of people from other function/hierarchical levels.
Do you and your management team collect often feedback from employees?	Managers consistently dismiss or belittle ideas from team members.
Do you/your management team allocate time to employees to engage in innovation?	Managers do not provide feedback to suggestions and ideas submitted by employees.
Does your strategy/vision clearly underline the importance of innovation?	Managers micromanage work in their departments, leaving little autonomy and space for employees creativity.
Are ideas for initiatives related with innovation that are aligned with the company vision prioritised?	Managers are resistant to listen to ideas of alternative methods of doing things the company does.
Do you/your managers reach out for help to other teams/functions/hierarchical levels to solve challenges/issues or seek new approaches/ideas?	Managers main focus is on main production performance indicators, prioritizing operational efficiency and effectively discouraging risk-taking.
Are you/other managers receptive to feedback/knowledge from colleagues from other departments/functions/hierarchical levels?	Employees are criticized and panalized for failing.
Does your company offers training/mentoring related to innovation activities?	Managers are resistant to changes in processes and strategy.
Is your management team tracking and reporting innovation activities and their performance?	Teams don’t engage in brainstorming, idea generation, experimentation.
Is your management team open to new ideas/solutions and ready to experiment and take calculated risk or rather prefer conventional strategies/solutions?	Managers don’t seek advise/expertise of other teams/functions when challenges/opportunities/problems arise
Do your managers allocate and/or have the authority to allocate resources for innovation activities and experimentation?	Managers withhold information or don’t share relevant updates with their teams.
	Managers do not collect information regarding external trends, competitors activities, industry trends or current innovations.

Actions for implementation

If your company lacks good practices for empowering your employees to innovate, probably not much is happening regarding innovation. While there is a number of aspects you should work on, innovation is all about experimentation. Hence, this activity aims to help your team jump into innovation activities right away and engage your team.

1. Design innovation challenge for your company. It can be specified, as for example define new products for our customers, solve current issues, or be broadly defined as propose an improvement or a solution that would contribute to achieving company vision.
2. Dedicate days/periodical time of the day when employees can work on the project outside of their usual activities.
3. Designate your and other managers time for supporting your employees in the process. Focus on listening to their ideas and difficulties, hold back criticism and focus on providing them resources, knowledge and support they could need. Help the teams to identify people in other teams that could be useful for their project and foster their connection and collaboration.
4. Establish regular feedback circles where employees provide input on each other's projects to encourage improvement.
5. Set a final session where employees will present selected challenges and solutions. Make sure that all projects will receive feedback and that some of the initiatives will be implemented or processed in a way that could be a base for new solutions to make sure that the effort was not a time wasted.