Early in my career, I had a chance to meet and talk with the late W. Edwards Demin, the world's preeminent quality guru and author of the bellwether book Out of the Crisis. I was young and eager to learn. I asked Dr. Deming, "What's one thing above all you'd change in any organization?"
"Drive out the fear, Brad." This was point eight of his famous 14 points.
I nodded in agreement. "Thank you." But I will admit, I didn't get it. In fact, it seemed a bit dramatic. Fear of what?
I'm not proud that it took me three decades to fully grasp what he was saying. I have, in that time, sat next to thousands of employees, both my own and in consulting and training assignments over the years. They'll be showing me their work.
"You know if we could take the data from this screen and automatically populate these fields, I wouldn't have to toggle back and forth, and it would be easier."
I'll ask, "That sounds great to me. Have you brought that up?"
"Ah, no, it's not that big of a deal." Or, "I think we have people who work on that sort of thing."
Why the hesitancy? As leaders, we can't let these opportunities to innovate from the ground up, however small, slip through our fingers.
Today, innovation is more important than ever. New technologies, especially generative artificial intelligence, are reshaping entire industries at breakneck speed. What was cutting-edge yesterday is table stakes today. Organizations that don't continuously adapt risk falling behind. Innovation isn't optional; it's the engine that enables you to stay relevant, efficient, and competitive in a world of constant transformation.
In some cases, innovation is shot down subtly. Mention a new idea and a manager might respond with a question: "Isn't billing due in three days?" Or an unconvincing, "Sounds good; we'll have to take a look." A colleague might chuckle, "We've never done it THAT way." In many cases, the organization's top leadership is 100 percent behind innovation but unaware of how it plays out with managers, supervisors, and employees in the ranks.
Innovation, the late Peter Drucker points out in his landmark book The Discipline of Innovation, is "the effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise's economic or social potential." He adds that it's different than other disciplines. You hire accountants for accounting, marketers for marketing, and lawyers for your legal department. But where are your innovators? Your employees! Innovation comes not from genius or exceptional talent, Drucker says, but from "a conscious, purposeful search for innovative opportunities."
So, we must build cultures that welcome and further innovation. Here are five key recommendations that are proven to help you do just that:
- Identify and remove barriers. This first recommendation is overarching and ongoing. Common barriers include no time, not knowing what to do with an idea, nothing happening with past ideas, and the sense that spending time and focus in this way could jeopardize other performance objectives. You might hear things that are appalling, but the bigger the barriers, the larger the opportunity.
- Ensure managers see it and track it. You need an environment where new ideas are shared during team meetings, coaching sessions, and informal discussions (as well as through formal channels). You'll need managers to advocate for employees' great ideas and coach them through the process rather than passing the idea up the chain with a perfunctory "thanks." The goal is to see innovation become an inherent part of the employee journey.
- Establish an effective process for capturing, analyzing, and implementing ideas. You'll need a process and supporting tools for gathering, consolidating, evaluating, and tracking ideas. Without a thoughtful approach, ideas will get lost, become separated from the contributor, or blocked from going further. Should that happen, employees will for a time ask, "What happened to my idea?" They'll then quickly give up: "Why bother?" On the other hand, where employees see ideas firing everywhere, they understand innovation isn't just a program but a critical and expected part of the culture.
- Tie recognition to strategic opportunities. If new product innovation is the key to revising an aging product line, be sure to make that connection when acknowledging those contributions. If customer service innovation is a strategic focus, recognize employees who contribute ideas that impact the service channels. Of course, don't limit the generation of ideas across any area. But concentrate brainpower in critical areas and communicate priorities through recognition.
- Tie innovation contributions to the impact they have on customers. As you capture and tell stories, include the germination of ideas, details about the employees who developed them, and (as possible) examples of customers impacted by the idea. An insurance organization created life-size cut-outs of their quarterly innovation prize winners, along with a summary of the employees' innovative idea or project. After being displayed in the lobby each quarter, they were moved to the main hallways, where they lined the walkways of the organization. This created a visual reminder of the company's priorities.
Innovative organizations work at it. They make innovation a priority. They make removing fear and barriers a priority.
Brad Cleveland is a customer service consultant and senior advisor to the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI).