Culture — The Fulcrum Of An Innovation-Driven Organisation

New-age entrepreneurs envision building and sustaining an organisation that lasts for generations. However, for a business to thrive and survive in a dynamic environment, consistent innovation should be adopted as a cardinal ingredient.  An organisation’s culture that facilitates regard for employees, and reverberates with valour is bound to drive a groundbreaking discovery coupled with absolute innovation.

In order to succeed, it is of utmost importance to have a well-iterated strategy in place, but it should be noted that these plans are temporary in nature. What matters are the people contributing and working towards accomplishing the organisation’s goals.

Here are a few things entrepreneurs should adopt to establish a work culture that facilitates innovation:

Collaboration 

Studies have found that an individual tends to give better ideas whilst working in a group as compared to solo-conceptualisation. The size of the team is immaterial as long as collaboration involves the workforce is diverse, with varied backgrounds.

This approach is highly beneficial when it comes to building consensus, increasing levels of motivation and participation, pulling teams together, and training members. Additionally, it brings teams together and makes room for experimentation, sharing ideas, building unity and fostering innovation culture.

Further, a free and open communication channel facilitates the easy and improved exchange of information.

Creative nourishment 

Entrepreneurs need to understand the importance of nurturing creativity amongst their team members. Constant and consistent training and development plays a key role in enhancing their performance and leads to improved outcomes.

A modern trend that is taking over organisations is around beyond-the-job talent enrichment. Under this umbrella, the workforce is asked to invest 20% of their time in cultivating those skill sets that do not pertain to their direct job role. This initiative does not only drive in a sense of belongingness but helps in increasing an individual’s productivity and innovative thinking.

Respect failure 

The maxim rightly says, “Failure is the stepping stone to success.” Organisation heads need to understand that not every single idea will lead to a break-through. The very essence of innovation is that it takes multiple experiments to come up with the final batch of novel products and solutions.

Employers should be open to accommodate the mistakes of their workforce and view them as trials rather than failures. Business is a risk-taking endeavour, and one should create an environment wherein employees fearlessly take calculated risks so that they can achieve remarkable outcomes.

Motivation 

Business leaders should constantly encourage their employees to come forward and scale greater heights. One of the key reasons to incorporate this element is to share transparently, the core reason and existence of the business among the workforce, the “why” of the business.

While employees may have their own reasons to work hard, either for the motivation or the benefits that can be both monetary or non-monetary. The commitment that comes with sheer association and realisation of business goals is very soul-satisfying, long-lasting and very healthy and productive for the business.

An organisation should focus on recognising and acknowledging the efforts put in by an employee in the innovation and ideation of concepts and solutions. Additionally, the reward and incentive system should be devised in such a way, that the risk taken to conceptualise an idea should be valued more than the outcome.

There are various methods to appreciate an employee’s efforts —performance evaluation programs aimed at initiating innovation, recognition for failure (that is deemed to be a learning for the future), creation of accelerated career growth plans, non-monetary recognition amidst the rest of the workforce, and several others.

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