A few weeks back I wrote about “4 key ingredients to being Innovative” and one of those key ingredients was TRUST. It was focused on “creating a culture of trust” for openness and innovation to flourish and “trusting the process.”
I want to come a little clean here and share a little more “under the covers” of where we have been. We use to be an organization that frowned on mistakes; mistakes became a “CLM” (career limiting move). If you made one in front of management, it would be like cutting yourself on the set of Twilight! We quickly saw and learned that playing the “blame game,” fixing or covering up mistakes, or just ignoring them does not create an innovative environment.
I sometimes think of innovation like baseball, which I thoroughly enjoy. You can be a .500 career batter. But if you only have 10 at bats it isn’t really saying much that you can sustain it over a certain period of time. Just being in the game for 10 bats and afraid to not get a hit is focusing more on eliminating failure than creating success. If you put in way more than 10 at bats, over time you will become more consistent and know what you are really capable of delivering, but it will not be a career .500 batter any longer. Time and skin in the game is what drives innovation.
Remember the “Crazy Guy”? What I didn’t focus on was all of the trial and error that we went through over time in order to gain success! Are you willing to put in the time and effort and allow your people be creative and innovative?
To build trust from within and create this type of culture, let me suggest some questions you might ask yourself and your leadership team:
- How do you treat mistakes?
- How much experimenting do we encourage from others or allow?
- How and whom do we recognize for what type of behavior?
- What systems and support structures are we willing to put in place?
- How do we develop skills?
- How do we use and share information?
- Do we stay committed and keep promises?
- Do we truly live according to our values?
- Do we provide clarity in our goals and priorities?
All of these are a part of the trust building process. How do we implement these into our organizations and stay true to the test? We work on this every day, and it still isn’t enough. How are you building trust in your organization as a leader and fostering innovation…I’d love to hear your ideas!
I am so pleased that you learned that innovation comes from having the opportunity to get a bit messy and make a few mistakes in order to allow innovation to take place. People need to be in a non-fear based environment to make fearless discoveries and take leaps of faith!
Lena-
Thanks for the comment – you are exactly right! Innovation is not a “perfect” and “clean” process but rather being willing to dive in and see what you find. People go much deeper into figuring out what the possible opportunities are to innovate when they aren’t inhibited to explore. Fear is a great way to stifle someone’s motivation to be innovative. Thanks again for you thoughtful comment and insights.
Rick
The “TRUST” issue is an excellent area of focus, especially in light of so many outdated paradigms in management today. In fact, Stephen M. R. Covey wrote an excellent book, The Speed of Trust, that focuses on a new path towards productivity and Satisfaction. Stephen highlights how trust and the speed at which it is established throughout an organization and with clients, is essential to improve and gain the reputation as a high-performance, successful organization. This is an excellent way to fore-go the time-killing, bureaucratic process of checks and balances that eat up time and cash-flow: an excellent read!
Rick
Thanks for taking time to comment – this was EXCELLENT! I appreciate the reference to Stephen Covey’s book, have to add it to our “reading list” for sure. I can’t wait to read it – sounds like something we could all gain more insight from for sure.
I would also add that “TRUST” is not a paradigm, it is a way of doing business day in and day out. We get exposed to many paradigms that can’t stand the test of time but Trust is one component that will never go out of style. Without it – game over from my perspective. It is a core ingredient to getting great things to happen!
Thanks again for the thoughtful comment – I hope you continue to read and contribute here – we are better off today for reading your comments…