Why building a culture of innovation is incomplete without implementing discipline of execution

We all have heard stories of successful innovations that changed the world. We’ve also heard the number of times these innovators failed, but persevered. Whether it was Thomas Edison, Walt Disney or Henry Ford, almost every story mentions how these people remained unperturbed to failure and kept trying.

Fast forward to present day, there is an increasing number of companies who are investing in building an innovative culture. Much like Google and Apple, organizations are building innovation centers, R&D buildings, and Think Tanks to motivate employees to come up with new ground-breaking ideas. Alas! What they don’t see is that innovation thrives on discipline of execution.

Let me explain.

Trying to innovate without any set boundaries on timelines or outcomes overwhelms people with options. They keep looking for an elusive ‘best solution’ and ignore putting in daily labor to produce results. Without any structure in activities, or any discipline in maintaining the relevant efforts towards doing innovation, organizations/individuals often fail to produce desired results. Innovation, for them, becomes just another activity, devoid of any action. It eventually becomes a task to disconnect from the mundane and spend some free time mulling over the fancy idea.

HBR in an article on “the hard truth about innovation” also touched upon this topic and said-

“Innovative cultures are misunderstood. The easy-to-like behaviors that get so much attention are only one side of the coin. They must be counterbalanced by some tougher and frankly less fun behaviors.”

So, how can organizations embrace a more disciplined approach to innovation?

Accept failure, not drudgery or incompetence

There is no denying the fact that one master-stroke of innovation goes through multiple rounds of failure. And that’s understandable. Like Edison said- “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”, innovation truly requires tremendous patience in attempting, failing, and never giving up on the task.

But what we shouldn’t overlook is that every failed attempt must turn out to be a valuable lesson in the explorations ahead. Otherwise, what’s the use of repeating the same mistake again and again? Moreover, the tolerance for accepting repeated failures may give way to people making lame excuses and showing sluggish progress quoting that they’re onto something big, something that takes time!

Failure to produce desired results also stems from declining motivation to work on the project, lack of transparency on the expected outcomes, mismatch in skills required to execute the project or sheer drudgery.

The only way to come out of this situation is to maintain a level of competence required for the job and allowing only those people to be on the team who adapt, learn and deliver results at any cost.

Therefore, if you’re in a position to make decisions, always leave room for failure, but not for incompetence.

Make people/teams accountable for outcomes

Basecamp gives it employees an entire month off (every 3 years) to work deeply on their own projects. At the end of the month, the company holds a “pitch day” where everyone presents their ideas. So, it’s not just a corporate fad to attract employees. It’s rather a genuine attempt to empower people to work on innovative ideas within a restricted timeline in order to produce maximum output. It’s a great idea to hold people accountable for the outcomes they generate.

Moreover, accountability allows people to take ownership of the tasks and see the gaps in what they imagined v/s what they’ve accomplished so far. As a result, when people are held accountable for producing something tangible, they produce better results.

Another positive side of accountability is that it speeds up decision-making. When people know they’ve promised an outcome, then they learn to be confident decision-makers, rather than waiting for someone to make their decisions.

Criticize brutally (and candidly)

One of the many reasons why innovation never materializes into something real and functional is because we humans like to avoid getting into difficult conversations. If someone is not performing as per expectations, or if someone is not self-directed in accomplishing his/her goals, we find it difficult to reprimand and speak the truth, just to preserve the harmony of the workplace.

Jeff Bezos too believes that harmony is often overvalued in the workplace — that it can stifle honest critique and encourage polite praise for flawed ideas.

Therefore, make sure that you are not caught up in the niceties and speak your mind. Criticize and seek criticism, but never let someone pass of their mediocre work as great.

Allow people to daydream, but with discipline

It’s in human nature to build castles in the air and dream about various possibilities that can exist. But innovations are rarely built on imaginations. Yes, they do begin to take shape from creative thoughts, but innovative teams need rigorous discipline to deliver possible outcomes.

Let’s look at it with an example. You’re building an employee engagement tool for use within the organization. There are numerous ideas from everyone on the team regarding what features the tool should have. Now, obviously one can’t move ahead with every idea. Every team member must sit together for a decision on whether to implement, modify or reject the idea. Once there is a consensus on which ideas should be implemented, strict timelines (2-weeks from now) should take place of vague dates (sometime in the end of the year).

Discipline-oriented innovative cultures bring more cadence in the team and translate into better creativity.

Bring in transparency at all levels

When a big idea takes shape, it involves a lot of team members from various parts of the organization. While it’s important to maintain modularity in functioning of each team, an even more important thing is to maintain the communication between each stakeholder.

What’s in progress, why something was put on hold, what’s holding back a particular team, why one team is performing better/worse than the other, what release is due next week — communicating all these concerns to everyone in the innovation squad, maintains the level of transparency that’s needed for teams to deliver faster results.

This helps the team members in entrusting their leadership and management to take the right decisions for them.

I wish I had given this disclaimer in the beginning of the post. Nonetheless, here it is — building a culture of innovation in organizations will never be easy.

Even with the suggestions listed above, you would find various factors inter-playing and slowing down your progress. The only way to deal with it is to go back to the purpose of your innovation and keep your team motivated about it.

I hope you find my suggestions helpful in building a kick-ass culture of innovation in your organization.

I wrote this blog for our Medium Publication- Unboxing Product Management. The publication is a weekly column by people of Quovantis to share their learning.