How To Drive Innovation In Five Steps

1 May, 2014 / Articles

Leaders want more innovation in their cultures. To compete, they know they can’t play it safe – which needs employees to take chances and not be afraid to fail. Nevertheless, most organizations subtly (or overtly) encourage safe behavior, by rewarding straightforward successes and punishing failures. Employees get the signal quickly that taking work risks is just too high a personal risk for their careers.

It’s no wonder that Gallup’s research shows that only 13% of employees are engaged at work. If we’re continuously told we need to be innovative and creative, yet we’re limited in our ability to do so, dissatisfaction and stagnation set in.

Time and workload play into this as well. In a recent survey by Accenture , more than 50% of respondents reported feeling too busy or too blocked at work to think up and propose new, innovative ideas. I see this frequently, where executives are so overwhelmed with trying to get though the work of the day – and evening – that there’s simply not any reserved energy left for strategic ideation.

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