In this year’s employee survey results, a particular employee comment brought a smile to my face. One of our team members enthusiastically expressed, “Innovation and strategy over the last 2-3 years have been something that I have not seen in many years. (It is a) strong leadership that walks the talk.” “Innovation” has been at the core of our team culture, a focus I’ve passionately nurtured over the last three years. My efforts have been dedicated to fostering an open environment, empowering team members to develop the mindsets, skill sets, and tool sets for innovation. This comment reaffirmed the path I’ve chosen. Here I’d like to share my two cents on fostering a culture of innovation and I look forward to learning from your perspectives and experiences as well.
The most challenging but critical aspect of building an innovative culture is the cultivation of a growth mindset. This mindset encourages team members to embrace learning and development. More importantly, those with a growth mindset prioritize the learning process over the final outcome, transforming failures into opportunities for growth rather than setbacks. Such a mindset helps the team establish a “Fail Fast” culture. In addition, competition is no longer a zero-sum game. Instead, it is a means to growing ourselves. Team members become more open to sharing knowledge, helping people around them grow together rather than worrying about their competitiveness will be undermined. Therefore, it’s easier for the team to build a culture of collaboration and healthy competition. Furthermore, it’s crucial to create an environment of psychological safety. It ensures that members feel free to voice different opinions without fear of retribution, fostering an environment for sharing ideas.
So, how do we build such a culture? I’ve tried a couple of approaches to convey my desired mindsets to the team members. One such approach is a team-building game I developed – “Failure Iceberg“. In this game, each team member documents a past failure at the iceberg’s peak, identifies the opportunities it could have opened up, placing them at the iceberg’s base. Other team members then contributed additional opportunities or possibilities. The purpose of this game is to help team members approach failures with a positive attitude. I’ve also shared my authentic failures, rather than polished “success-after-failure” kind of stories often told during interviews, promoting vulnerabilities and openness within the team. Additionally, I organized a book club during my weekly staff meeting, encouraging team members to discuss the insights they gained from the book ‘Mindset: The New Psychology Of Success’ by Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck. Through this book, I aimed to raise awareness among members about their positions on the spectrum between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.
With the right mindsets in place, we can focus on developing the necessary skill sets for innovation. From my experience, I’ve found design thinking to be an effective skill set for reshaping our conventional thought processes. It emphasizes empathy and a user-centric approach, blending qualitative and quantitative methods (e.g. data analysis, surveys, user research, interviews, and experiments, etc.) to grasp user needs. This approach prevents us from hastily jumping into solutioning mode. Instead, it encourages us to approach the problem with an open mind, enabling us to come up with more innovative insights and solutions. Another effective skill set is the practice of coaching techniques. Coaching revolves around posing thought-provoking, open-ended questions that delve into problems without subjective bias. This practice encourages us to reflect on our worldviews, core values, and underlying beliefs. These techniques are helpful for managers to foster a non-judgemental environment, motivating teams to pursue creative exploration. They’re also beneficial for individual contributors, aiding them in boosting self-awareness, challenging habitual thought patterns, and thus generating inventive solutions.
Last but not least, we utilize various tool sets to foster an open environment, where interactions among team members are encouraged. Among these, one of my favorites is brainstorming. While most teams engage in brainstorming by inviting members to share ideas, followed by selecting the top concepts for refinement, there are more innovative approaches to this process. Take Brainwriting for instance. In this method, each member writes down their ideas and then passes them to the next member, who then expands on the previous ideas. This iterative process can go on and on, often resulting in a final idea that is vastly different from and more creative than the initial idea. Another powerful brainstorming tool is Mind Mapping. It places a theme in the center, and radiates out sub-themes associated with it. Each sub-theme further sprouts additional ideas. Another interesting tool is Forced Analogy. This exercise compels us to draw parallels between two seemingly unrelated concepts or objects. Initially, each member receives an item – perhaps an animal, a person, or something else. They then list the key attributes of that item and ask: How is this problem similar to this object? How would I solve this problem using this object? The more unrelated the item appears to the problem, the better it helps us break out of conventional thought patterns and spark creativity.
Aside from brainstorming, I also often leverage Hackathons to foster collaborative innovation. To break down organizational silos and enhance diversity, I use random drawings to form the teams. This approach encourages collaboration across different departments. Inspired by Google’s “20 Percent Time” philosophy, we’ve established “Innovation Friday” on the first Friday of each month. This dedicated day allows team members to upskill themselves or work on projects aligned with their personal passions. Additionally, we occasionally invite experts from external organizations to come share their best practices. This not only makes the meetings more fun but also sparks innovation through fresh perspectives.
Shaping a team culture of innovation is an exciting and fulfilling journey. It is not a destination but an ongoing adventure. Every team’s innovation journey has its own unique story to tell. What unique innovation experience have you encountered? What’s your favorite approach to innovation? What’s your next step on this innovation journey? Share your thoughts below. Let’s exchange ideas, experiment with different approaches, and make the journey more fun!
Aim at Life Coaching 