In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world things are changing, and fast. Adapting to this environment is essential for organizations to survive. Cultivating an innovative organizational culture enables organizations to drive the change – rather than simply react – and achieve their potential too.
At iOpener, we have been writing a white paper focused on how leaders can help embed innovative organizational cultures that ensure they’re ahead of the curve.
Our paper will be published in March. It will boil down the main messages from existing research, alongside interviews with change-makers from several organizations we partner with to create exceptional solutions for their teams. In the spirit of bridging the knowing-doing gap, something we’re always focused on, these interviews will bring the theory to life and highlight how leaders are already putting these principles into action.
We’re so excited about this topic that we’d like to give you a sneak peek of what we’ve been discovering.
Why is innovation so important for organizations?
Organizations sometimes find it tricky to get the balance of innovative organizational culture just right. It relies on the interdependence of behaviors and knowledge-integration between teams. The dynamic tension this creates can generate innovative gold dust, but also make it difficult to navigate as a leader.
So how can leaders manage the innovation process?
The short answer is – that they can’t. Management, at least in a traditional sense, emphasizes minimizing risk and reducing variance in the system, something which is essential for innovation to occur.
What leaders can do is help create a system that can discover the next big thing. Encouraging teams to be creative and to think outside the box to come up with new innovative solutions is an essential part of this process. The price to be paid for this, however, is the occasional failure. Leaders must be prepared to accept and learn from this if they are aiming for true change.
Several of our clients are focused on this already, including a Global Strategy Consultancy that asked us to work with them to develop a session for their high potentials on Celebrating Failure. Why did they want their highest potentials to celebrate failures? Because this consultancy recognized that by creating spaces where it is safe to fail, they could also create spaces where their teams can innovate. After all, it is often the failures that make way for later successes, which you can see here.
Want to know more?
Watch this space for a link to our white paper when it’s published next month.
And, if you’d like to know more about how we can partner with your organization to create brilliant leaders, please get in touch.