Do your employees have the right mindset to embrace innovation?

Challenge 5: Do your employees have the right mindset to embrace innovation?

Diagnosis

An innovation strategy is essential for companies that want to gain a competitive advantage. As a leader, you may struggle to offer unique products, services, processes on the market. But the innovation strategy itself cannot be implemented without human resources. And this is the reason a lot of very good strategies are not successful. The people responsible for implementing the new business model do not have the right mindset.

The less your employees have an innovative mindset, the less they have creative thinking, are open to new challenges, to make mistakes and start all over again without getting frustrated. They are afraid of changes, resistant to new beginnings and reluctant to possible risks. A company with this type of employees can not develop, evolve and be in line with new trends and market requirements, being forced to proceed according to traditional safer values.

To try to understand the importance of innovation mindset, please analyse the aspects presented in the table below.

Positive aspects

Negative aspects

Curiosity leads to innovation. Are your employees curious enough to ask questions, explore possibilities, and think about the wildest ideas? Do they wonder how can they make a product or a process better? How can they constantly improve their jobs and contribute to the company increase?

The employees only follow the standard procedures, do not look for creative alternatives, do not wonder or show any interest to develop themselves and the company

Are your employees constantly asking “Why?” so that they understand the situation as well as possible? Are they interested in knowing the latest market developments and try to present and implement them in their jobs?

The employees are not interested by the motif behind different decisions taken by the company management. They have minimum data about the market they are working in and do not consider their responsibility to get more acquainted with future trends.

Are your employees interested in what their clients are looking for and what needs they can cover by proposing them new innovative products and services? Are they paying attention and try to react accordingly?

The employees do not have the ability to being empathetic with colleagues and customers and do not understand the need to develop it. They do noy really pay attention to the stakeholders’ needs.

Are the right employees invited to attend meetings where innovative ideas are discussed? Are there employees with different, uncomfortable opinions, and valuable perspectives, also present? Everyone has different strengths, perspectives, and experiences which are worth listening to

The employees working in the front line with clients and other stakeholders are not invited to meetings where their genuine feedback can be valuable for adjusting innovation approach

Are your departments collaborating with each other? Do they share their projects and know-how with others so that they reach company goals?

The employees are not collaborating with one another either in their own department or with colleagues from different departments. They do not share information about their work and do not consider collaboration essential to company development and their own.

Do your employees share a common vision with the company about innovation? Are they clearly informed of company’ changes and future plans? Do they know which the priorities are and how they can align with the companies’ strategic goals?

The employees do not have a clear image of the company goals, strategies, and plans regarding innovative process. They do not feel that they share the same values with the company

Can you say about your employees that they have courage as a personality trait? Do they think beyond conventional norms? Do the ask uncomfortable questions? Are they accepting change? Do they have a big tolerance to risk to make steps to further improvements?

The employees are playing safe all the time, they like conventional norms, are not willing to risk for possible future better outcomes both for them and their company

Are your employees committed to innovation on a long-term? Are they aware that innovation is taking a long time to included in the company culture and they must change their perspective from now on?

The employees are not willing to commit to changes on a long term. They do not understand the process of innovation and why it takes so long to be implemented

1. Fill in the table with your initial assessment regarding each aspect and the way it is reflected in your company.

2. Take between 2 and 4 weeks to intentionally observe your team members and the way they behave towards innovation in every area stated in the table.

3. Go around the departments and try to observe the way they interact, collaborate, think about changes and new challenges.

4. At the end of the selected period, organize a meeting with all employees and ask them to fill in a form with the questions in the table above and score them from 1 to 5 (1 is Totally disagree and 5 is Totally agree). You can get an idea of the level of the innovation commitment your employees are willing to take.

Actions for implementation

If you observe that negative aspects are common in your company, while positive aspects are barely present, you must take seriously working on developing the innovation mindset within your organization.

Your objective should be to implement a mindset of innovation that will help you overcome challenges and develop innovative thinking into your organizational culture.

Actions to be implemented to reach your goal can include:

1. Develop your own innovation strategy. Implementing an innovative mindset takes time and involves taking small steps on the way for continuous improvement and growth. You should put on paper a strategic plan focused on innovation with clear objectives, methods, and tools to be used, action plans, responsibilities of all parties involved in the process, performance indicators to be measured. This planning should help you gain efficiency over time.

2. Organize an innovation committee. Select a group of employees on multidisciplinary basis and give them the task to communicate and improve innovative approach within your organization. The chosen individuals should have different skills, experience, roles, and responsibilities.

3. Encourage internal and external collaboration. For you as a leader fostering innovation, it is crucial to create a climate of collaboration and exchange of ideas. Extremely important is the collaboration between different departments within your own company that could facilitate the exchange of information and know-how. And this can be encouraged through investing in internal communication and promoting integration events. Collaboration with clients, suppliers and other stakeholders is equally important as it helps employees acknowledge bottlenecks, unhealthy processes, lack of creativity, lack of attention to market trends.

4. Invest in qualified employees and technology. Good software and IT services can make a difference when trying to become present on the market and find your clients either online or offline. New technological production lines can also improve your efficiency and help you offer better quality products at better prices. Equally important is the human resource. You can either hire people outside the company with better qualifications that could help you reach your goal toward innovation invest in the qualification of your existing employees who want to develop new skills, learn more, and make a difference in their professional life.

5. Appreciate all innovative ideas. If you want to be a leader having the core value, innovation, appreciate innovative people in your organization, support initiatives and invest resources to support them.