Building a Culture of Innovation – Step 1: Get Buy-In

If you want to make innovation a key competitive advantage of your business, organization, or department, then it is critical that you build a “culture of innovation.” Rather than just periodically trying to be creative, you make innovation an ingrained part of what you and your team do.

Building a culture of innovation is a process, and it can be a long one.

Over three articles, we’re going to talk about how to start the process. These three steps are just the foundation;  this is not a “complete end-to-end innovation process guide.”

Why just focus on the start? Two reasons:

1. Writing out the entire process would be much longer than just a few blog posts
2. If you jump to implementing innovation without this foundation, you are setting you, your team, and your organization up for failure.

The three steps are:

1. Get Buy-In
2. Set Proper Expectations
3. Build the Right Mindset

In Step 1, we’ll look at getting buy-in:

Step 1) Get Buy-In

You must have buy-in from all the people involved.

Nothing struggles as much as an initiative forced on people that they neither care about nor believe in.

When I worked at a Fortune 500 Bank, our leadership created a nationwide vision and mission statement for our department. They were very excited and proud of it. Since it was just thrust upon us, however, no one in my team or department cared in the slightest, myself included.

There are three levels of buy-in you need:

• Top Leadership – If you are in charge, this is easy. If not, you must get top leadership to agree to innovation initiatives. Without their support, you are dead in the water.
• The Front Line – As was my corporate experience, the people at the bottom of the totem pole are not asked to buy-in, they are simply told they must. This may yield some results, but it usually leads to begrudging compliance. To have the greatest success, you are much better off getting buy-in from everyone, top to bottom. Your front line people are the ones who are going to implement, after all.
• Middle Management  – Middle management is a tough place to be. You are not only told what to do, but you also must then tell your people what to do. And then get them to do it. It’s not uncommon for a manager to sympathize with the employees who don’t want to do it: “I know this is a pain and I don’t really want to do it either, but the head of the department says this is what we are doing so let’s just all suck it up and do it.” Not a great attitude to move things forward. Get their buy-in, and your innovation efforts will yield much better results.

How to Get Buy-In

1. Create Involvement  – People respond to questions, not demands. As you plan your innovation initiatives, create forums and opportunities for everyone to provide input. Then be open-minded enough to consider what everyone says (i.e. don’t have a rigid agenda and only look at feedback that supports it).
2. Appeal to Organizational Self-Interest – A “buy-in killer” is when people do not understand why they are being forced to change. Make it clear how these initiatives will benefit the organization. This is extremely important to get top-leadership buy-in.
3. Appeal to Personal Self-Interest – At the end of the day, most people just want to be happier and more successful in their own lives. If you only talk about how great things will be for your organization, your middle and frontline people won’t care all that much. Make it clear why the changes and new initiatives you are implementing will help them directly (beyond, “well, anything that helps the company helps the people in it.”) Is this change going to lead to more money, less time, greater opportunity for growth or career advancement, etc.? Look for the upside, and make sure your people see it too.

Building a culture of innovation is not easy and not quick, but it is worth the effort. As the world gets smaller and faster your ability to compete in the market will be directly related to how innovative you and your people can be.

Use the techniques above to start down the road to a culture of innovation. And be sure to subscribe to the blog, sign up for email updates (right column), or bookmark this site to get Steps 2 and 3!

Do you want to create a culture of innovation with your team, department, or organization?  If so, contact Avish now to find out how he can help you do just that!