Are your “incentives” stopping your ability to Innovate?

One situation that is very much in front of almost every business leader today is the melding of different workforces (Baby Boomers, Millenials, etc.) to work together and be productive – let alone innovative.  This integration of the “Four Generations” is not only real but it can be a real barrier to growth but to a company’s very survival.

We have this exact situation and Brian and I talk about it frequently – how do we get the employees from different generations and age groups working more effectively together?  Not an easy answer and it one of the biggest management challenges we face and I would suspect you do as well.  One thing we know for sure it isn’t going away.  We need the more experienced employees because of their knowledge, experience, and leadership.  But we also need lots of younger, energetic, “get it done” employees as well.  But they don’t think the same way and they don’t work the same way.  But there is a bigger fish to fry here – how do you get everyone to be more innovative and build a culture of innovation?  That is the real dilemma…

There was an article in Fast Company a few weeks ago, “5 Ways Process is Killing your Productivity,” that had a very interesting study cited in it that I found very interesting and thought provoking.  While the article was mainly focused on processes within your workplace, there was also reference made to a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2011 where they talked about a major “bind” managers and leaders are in today in regard to innovation that stopped me in my tracks.  They summarized the issue by saying,

“Those in middle management… found innovation disruptive to their day-to-day activities and felt it got in the way of running an efficient operation–which is what they were paid to do.” They went on to say, “When people’s jobs depend on meeting metrics and maintaining the status quo, can you fault them for their reluctance to expend any energy toward creation and invention?”

In texting terms, OMG, or WOW – no wonder we have such a hard time innovating.  If we subscribe to this notion, our incentive programs and ways we measure management actually thwarts our attempts at being innovative.  Is that an eye-opener or what?  When we look at our own company, we can see this happens but isn’t something that was ever a conscious decision – just part of how we make our company successful.  But as we continue to accelerate our journey into creating an innovative culture of employees and management, this is a huge issue.  Any of you out there see this happening in your own organization? Have any of you taken any steps to keep this from happening? Share your stories and comments, this is a major issue and one we can all use some help with to become more innovative…