The Barriers to Innovation

Here is a stunning statistic for you. According to McKinsey’s research on innovative companies, “80 or 90 percent of executives tell us that innovation is a top priority, but only 6 percent are satisfied with their performance.”

Our goal at the Center for Innovative Leadership is to increase that number here in the Upstate. It is that simple.

Many people equate innovation and creativity, but they are two different things. Creativity is the good idea. Innovation is when creativity adds value. Value to the organization, value to the team or value to the process.

At the CIL, innovation is shorthand for the entire innovative process and the culture rewarding its success.

The most innovative companies, according to McKinsey and others, are the ones with the most open and authentic communication cultures. Openness is the result of the humility, courage and empathy needed to create psychological safety. Harvard believes innovative cultures also benefit from high standards of performance, meeting deadlines, and being customer (and revenue) centric.

Understanding what creates innovative cultures is important today when we talk about three effective barriers to innovation:

Leadership: If the good ideas and innovation only come from the top, start preparing your resumes. If the senior leadership believes they have the lock on good ideas and how things go forward, you are probably a few years behind. Instead, the senior leadership should build a culture where new ideas are discussed and learning from trying something new is rewarded. Some people call this being comfortable failing fast and early. But failure is not as important as the learning that happens when you try something new. How is your company learning from your mistakes?

Culture: We got a call from a health organization that sought to span boundaries inside its hospitals. It seemed the administrators would not talk with the nurses, who would not talk to the doctors, who would not talk to the administrators. During our discovery to develop the program, we found these attitudes about the other technical specialties began before employment. The technical certification each employee completed emphasized the primacy of their technical specialty and how the specialty was the key to patient care. And each specialty demonized the other. To address this, we worked with the organization, building diverse teams including each of the three specialties. We provided a chance for the team to learn and the foundation for them to innovate together. The results were amazing—so were the statistics for engagement and retention.

Fear: You name it. Fear of the boss. Fear of standing out. Fear of pushing something new. Fear of upsetting the culture. The favorite one we heard: fear of success. If there is a new idea, and it catches on and upsets the mainline process of the organization, what will happen (for a cue about what this looks like, check out Kodak)? Fear of the unknown. Successful innovation companies tap into this fear and reward it. Alphabet (parent of Google) has had a 20% rule since 2004. This allows employees to spend 20% of their time on projects that may or may not generate revenue to benefit Alphabet. These projects may be outside their job description and are not assigned by executives. Does it work? Google Maps, Gmail and AdSense are just some of the outcomes of the 20% rule.

Thinking about your organization, where might it score on an innovation scale? Where might your organization be regarding leadership accepting new ideas, culture embracing change, and leveraging fear into productivity? If your organization scores low in these areas, you are not alone. Executives might say that 94% of organizations are just like yours. And worse yet, that number has not changed in a decade. A decade. Maybe you can move the needle on that 6%.