Is a sense of freedom a prerequisite to innovation?
Every two weeks one of the largest publicly traded companies drops off due to failures in adjusting to the blistering pace of change in the post-modern marketplace. Today’s rapidly changing reality has decreased companies’ average lifespan from 90 to 15 years. In order to avoid becoming a statistic, businesses in all sectors are focusing on innovation.
Innovation, the successful implementation of creative thought, needs the right environment to blossom. In constructing such an ecosystem one is inclined to wonder how much of a role the concept of freedom plays. In other words, what does a feeling of freedom do for the employees’ ability to generate and implement novel and useful ideas?
Reading through the extensive body of research on organizational creative output, one quickly gathers that innovation depends on the presence of three core elements: motivation, resources and adequately skilled individuals. If these components are sufficiently existent, employees are more prone to generate and integrate creative ideas in the pattern of the organization. So let’s unpack how the concept of freedom informs this golden triad.
A TNO-CBS study on employment conditions revealed that a staggering 44% of burnouts is due to lack of autonomy. This is an important indicator of how lack of freedom hampers joyful engagement in the workplace. Authoritative research indicates that autonomy positively influences intrinsic motivation, the main driver of high performance. Allowing an employee to be at the steering wheel and directly affect the final product fulfils the human need for spontaneity and self-assertion. Considering that this feeling colors the exerted efforts with purpose and fuels motivation, it is a sad statistic that only 50% of Dutch employees report to be encouraged to think creatively at their jobs.
Besides the obvious need for adequate monetary resources, successful innovation further depends on having access to a pool of employees with sufficient time and energy at hand to tackle the challenge of successful innovation. One cannot compel the muse to burst through employees’ cluttered brains at a predetermined point of time. In Orwellian terms, the workforce shouldn’t be too busy to think. Likewise, exploration requires vitality, an internal resource. It is life in its purest form to give yourself over to the process of creation. Performing a daily uninspired ritual of executing the newest whims of just another middle-manager saps the life out of everyone not identifying as an automaton.
With regards to the last element, the most innovative companies staff their leading positions with those that have demonstrated ability to balance clear agenda-setting with individual autonomy. It is the deluded manager that expects an eruption of unbridled creativity whilst simultaneously burdening employees with procedural restrictions, tight deadlines and excessive oversight. However, carte blanche of unlimited freedom is equally perceived to hamper the creative process. In the absence of imposed limitations, paralysis may ensue. Parameters act as an anchor in the abyss of creative possibilities. Innovation demands unfree freedom.
Freedom is a necessary element of transformation. A company can facilitate the generation of novel ideas by granting employees freedom to share their thoughts, freedom to create mental space for such thinking, freedom to translate their thoughts into action and freedom from management interference in that process. This is not to say that a framework cannot be provided. It means that within certain contextual restrictions, employees should be granted the safety and time to freely explore.
I lead the Energy Project Europe and help companies and individuals implement/adjust to new ways of working. Increase in pressure is forcing us to rethink the status quo, and transforming ourselves along with company cultures is imperative for “success” in the future. If you want to get in touch or get an update whenever a new blog post or case study is posted, please e-mail me omri@theenergyproject.nl
