The destination: Success. The road: innovation.
Creating a culture of innovation & what it means to business
Rob Weber, co-founder of W3i, can usually be found talking about topics that relate directly to the business of apps. But lately, culture has been on the mind of the Minnesota tech entrepreneur.
“I am beginning to realize that creating the right culture may be the key to what separates organizations that make it big, from those that don’t,” Weber says.
Recently, @Courtney Guertin recommended a book to Weber. Guertin is a former engineer with Digg and founder of FollowStyle.
The recommendation? TonyHsieh’s “Delivering Happiness”.
When the culture starts sucking, change better be a-comin’
The Zappos CEO talks about his decision to sell a former business, LinkExchange, to Microsoft after the work stopped being fun and the culture sucked. Hsieh talks about how he went on to “get it right” with Zappos by focusing the company on culture.
“Whether it was weighting 50% of an employee’s performance review on culture, or focusing an entire interview round during the hiring process, Hsieh credits Zappos’ commitment to culture as the single most important factor fueling its growth,” Weber says reflecting on the recent read.
Even the folks over at the Harvard Business Review think there’s something to this “culture” concept. Tony Schwartz points to a recent poll of 1500 CEOs from 60 different countries. For them creativity is the most important leadership competency in cultivating culture.
Creativity and the complexity of business
A majority of the CEOs in the survey say the business environment is “so complex that it literally demands new ways of thinking.” Schwartz goes on to note that over half of the CEOs surveyed thought their organizations weren’t equipped to deal with “this rising complexity.”
Schwartz provides 6 steps organizations can take to cultivate a culture of creativity and a culture of innovation. In a nutshell, he points to focusing on your people. Look at their needs he says, people who have unmet needs spend more time focusing on the unmet need than being productive. Many of his tips mean starting a dialogue with your team. The conversations will act as a barometer: Does the work matter to them beyond just a paycheck? Are their passions being nurtured? Schwartz also notes a need for renewal. It appears my junior high creative writing teacher Mrs. Sallberg was right in her charge to write, step away, and return later to edit. Schwartz also notes a need to take breaks from the creative process, let the machines in the office go nonstop.
Meanwhile, in the state of innovation
Back in the land of 10,000 lakes, innovation takes multiple forms according to the guys at Minnov 8. In a recent podcast the voices behind the stage for innovation and creativity in Minnesota identify innovative leaders as being able to look beyond the norm.
Julio Ojeda Zapata, a tech writer for the Pioneer Press and author of Twitter Means Business, joined Minnov 8 on the podcast. He sees an innovative leader as someone with the ability to “redefine [their] own assumptions and perceptions, remov[ing] [themselves] from [their] own box and look[ing] at problems in different ways.”
There’s no place like home . . .
A key to creating a culture of innovation is to focus on accountability. W3i has been a-buzz around the concept of @theOzPrinciple. A week ago, Weber spent the day with Craig Hickman, co-author of the book “The Oz Principle.”
“My biggest takeaway was the need to clarify key organizational results and to align people’s daily work objectives with those results. I’d highly recommend ‘The Oz Principles’ to anyone in the industry looking to move mountains through changing their organization,” Weber notes.
Ryan Ruud, Freelance Writer
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October 19th, 2011 at 11:04 pm
Thank you so much for this article. Innovation through focusing on culture does seem to be a very successful technique.
Jon