July 29, 2011

7 things to foster a Culture of Innovation

When you say the word "Boss", you immediately picture a personality in your mind. It is not always necessary that you picture your boss like your worst nightmare; you even get to picture them like an angel with a halo. All bosses carry different personalities and if you have a closer look at them they tend to manage their employees also on the same ground. They exhibit different traits, patterns and habits.

Some difficult bosses are completely toxic, while others just have very annoying habits. And sometimes an employee and a boss are just a bad mix. If you're not happy with your manager, you need to determine if the problem lies with you, your boss, or the combination of your personalities. There are different types of bosses, which one of these do you think is your boss?

The Perfectionist:

He is tough, he is hardcore solid about his work, and he has no patience for impatience or for anything other than perfection. Perfectionism is a personality trait. He is highly conscious and hyper critical about the mistakes that you make. He sets absolute ideas which are only black and white and there is no room for grey. He is the harshest critic that you can come across. He fears failure and thinks about only the end goal. He has all-or-nothing approach. If the situation does not allow him to achieve the standard he laid out, he will abandon the task because it does not make sense to spend time on something that he is not going to conquer. This is actually one of the good traits of a boss, only when it is used appropriately.

Innovation and creativity are the two important terms that organizations are always looking for. They can shape up the future course of your business in the market. Today every organization is in the race of coming up with something new and innovative. They need people with different perspective and who are ready to experiment. Creativity is measured as one of essential attribute to hit the right cord in an interview. However, it is highly impossible to find this trait in each employee or candidate, but it is possible to foster a culture for innovation through inculcating certain organizational values among the staff.

Here are few steps to breed the culture of innovation in your organization.
1. Curiosity:

Develop the instinct of curiosity among your people. This instinct of curiosity will also land and expose your team to many questions, ask those questions and get your clarity right. Make sure you have a team which is clear headed as only such a team can volunteer fantastic ideas to you.Curiosity will lead one to discover many new things into it, which will definitely serve as a background research when one is in the process of inventing something new and original

2. Nurture passion

Passion is the key ingredient for any phenomenal achievement; hence nurture passion in your organization. Every great invention is driven by passion in its first place and followed by technology and skills. Motivate your team to build in the passion to discover something original and if fueling of passion is right it will end up in the right place.

3. Celebration:

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Celebrate the ideas of your employees by giving them recognition in public forums. This will bring immense joy to your employees and will boost the zeal to work even further. Building an environment of rewards is a sure shot to long time success of any organization.

4. Autonomy:

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Creating an environment is not sufficient alone; you need to conceptualize the structure of trust and believe in the inputs they are putting together. Show them the confidence that you have trust on the decisions that they had made and also that you are contented with their output.

5. Embrace failure:

Fear of failure and being responsible for the onus is the real reason that prohibits people in experimenting. It is important to make them understand that it is ok to make mistakes. Hence create support systems that will enhance your team's confidence to carry the project further. It is interesting to note that nearly every breakthrough innovation in history came after countless setbacks, mistakes, and "failures

6. Collaborate among people:

Forget the normal boundaries and bring together talented people from a wide variety of fields and disciplines to work together and cross-fertilize. Look both inside and outside your existing organization for new types of innovation partnerships.

7. Stay updated:

Forward-looking organizations should identify and embrace new technologies that can increase the flow of input from external sources and simplify operational work such as the grant making process. Update your team with the latest happenings, one might find the solution of a problem in this process.

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