Innovation: Meet the New Boss

Innovation was this company’s global mandate. But high level incentives, demands, threats, and power-filled talks from high management didn’t make even a small dent. So-called “team building” events had little more effect than giving selected employees a holiday with games out of the office.

Since I had led many similar workshops in more Western cultures, I knew we could count on a solid measure of success, enough to keep the company requesting training for more of its employees. But I also knew that there were submerged obstacles in the Romanian culture that I might not know about. So, to underscore the seriousness of our two-day efforts, I asked the ex-pat GM to open the group. And, boy, did he. It took him fifteen minutes to tell them that their own jobs depended on new thinking. He laid out for them that the company’s decision to stay in the country was at stake. “We’re here because, not only do you have smart people, but because it is economically feasible.” (That’s corp-speak for “cheaper.”) “But,” he continued, “When it proves to be more expensive, we’ll move to a place where it’s simply more profitable. What will keep us in Romania is innovation. The ability to provide a positive bottom-line is our only goal. Profitable new ideas. Money saving new processes. What you learn here and apply will save jobs.”

Pretty strong words, I thought. But the odd thing was not the criticality of the GM’s demand to shape up and ship in new ideas, but rather the almost complete non-reaction of the participants. Now usually what I can expect in nearly any other part of the world except the emerging east is a gut-level impact, and a higher commitment. In this room there were barely suppressed yawns. Interesting way to start a life-or-job work seminar.

We started with a benchmark exercise designed to determine what the native ability to think creatively was. The results weren’t particularly impressive. A little low, but not in the basement.

We spent the first part of the day doing some fun and interactive behavior modification exercises designed to overcome some of the cultural distrust four decades of collective society had implanted. In order to get people to believe that they don’t have to be Einsteins to create practical, functional, profitable new ideas, you have to take down the fences and the internal recordings that tell people what they can’t do.

So here’s the 1.st lesson you need to understand if you want your staff to be more innovative: People here are afraid to be the first with a new idea. So you can’t ask them to innovate. You can’t just tell them to. You can’t demand it. First you have to make them feel safe.

Lesson 2: Nobody knows how! In order to bring new and profitable and/or money saving ideas to your company, people need a structured system to show them what to do.

Nothing in the Romanian school system, pre-school through faculty, teaches how to think outside the learning curriculum. Sorry. Wish I could be more laudatory. But it’s true: Memorize. Regurgitate. That’s been the formula. So, if you don’t teach them a method, don’t expect success.

I once had a rather immature thirty year old friend to whom people always said, "Grow up!" You know what? If she could have, she would have. Same thing is true here. If your staff could innovate, they would have. You have to show them how!

The next thing we learned was, given tools, everyone in the room was good at it. New ideas flowed. In small groups. In the whole group. In individuals. All we had to do was give them a process and get out of the way. The same will work for you.

Easy for me to say, right? But where do you find such methods? Well, of course, I’m partial to our "Jump-Think" process because it’s proven here. But there are also good books on the subject. Edward DeBono’s "Lateral Thinking" is a place to start. There are also lessons and exercises on creative thinking all over the internet. Google it. Design your own exercises. If you are a senior manager, assign your assistant managers and department heads to research and institute thinking projects. Or find your smartest, youngest assistant to wow you. You can’t teach what you don’t know. And you don’t know how because nobody here taught anybody how.

Lesson 3: There are no bad ideas. This is a huge mindset shift for most people. “Of course there are bad ideas!” you are probably saying. So here’s the reset button: in brainstorming, even the most ludicrous idea can be developed into something so forehead-slapping smart you’ll wonder why nobody ever thought of it. You just have to keep saying “Interesting idea. What can we make of it?”

This leads directly to the next thing we learned about why Romanian employees will often work up to the edge of their job descriptions, but rarely beyond. And, surprisingly, it isn’t because they aren’t being paid for doing anything extra.

After successfully demonstrating to a room full of doubting engineers that they could indeed create new ideas as they had never believed possible, a question occurred to me before I dismissed them. Here’s what I asked them: “What’s in the way of your using your new ability to create new ideas here?”

The answer was stunning, at least to this Westerner. They said, almost as a group, that they would be afraid to present their new ideas because they worried that their supervisors would think negatively of them.

Lesson 4: Middle Management is the most likely to put you out of business. Nearly everyone knows the adage “Don’t make your supervisor uncomfortable or have to take a risk.”

There is very, very often a huge wall between brilliant ideas that could keep companies in business, and their ever getting considered by senior management. Recognize this obstacle, and make plans to train your mid-level for encouragement. By creating an encouraging environment, you can easily find implementable ideas to speed your operations, create in-demand products, and find faster solutions to roadblock problems.

Lesson 5: Reward good thinking at the lowest possible level! If you only reward Nobel Prize level ideas, it’s likely that you will cause nearly everyone to give up trying at all. Buy them a cup of coffee for three good new ideas. Give the best idea of the week a favored parking space for a day. Don’t take away the impressive Nobel prize. Just make the steps to it easier.

Oh yes, about that benchmarking. After showing participants the how-to steps to create ideas, and retesting, the results were spectacular. The best of the group improved by five hundred and thirty percent. 530% improvement! Everyone in the group, at least, DOUBLED or TRIPLED his ability to think out of the box.

Teaching HOW to innovate could be the best new idea you ever have.

Shelly Roberts is the American Managing Partner of FireBrand, a Romanian company offering strategic branding and marketing assistance to companies, and now the exclusive, Jump Think© innovation training. FireBrand is on Facebook.