Innovation culture & internal communications

There’s been a lot of talk about the need for organizations to innovate.  But, since organizations don’t innovate, people do, there’s also been a lot of talk about building “innovation cultures”.  My friends at CommScrum have taken the discussion further and begun a conversation about innovation and what the drive to an “innovation culture” means for Internal Communications.  Here’s how I’m thinking about it.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.

“Innovation culture” seems to me a lot like the next generation “leadership culture”. Then everyone had to be a leader. [how that was possible I have no idea.] Now everyone has to be an innovator? [makes about as much sense as everyone’s a leader.]

So, the challenge for Internal Communicators is not to get caught up in the organizational hype and feel pressured into delivering on demand tools and tactics [sound familiar].  Instead, we need get the answers to these fundamental questions.

What needs to be innovated?  Products? Services? Systems? Decision taking? Codes of Conduct? Accounting procedures? Pay policies? You get my point. Some things really benefit from continuous innovation.  And some things just don’t.  In fact getting too innovative would be detrimental and perhaps even illegal.

Why? To improve our employee experience? To improve our customer experience? To make it easier for the CEO to brag on the golf course? To get a headline? Understanding what’s motivating the drive for innovation will tell us how important it really is to the organization’s strategy.

Who will be most impacted? And what will the implications be for what they do and how they do it? No matter how wide or deep the drive for innovation goes, not all employees [I include execs in here too] will be affected equally [see What?  above].  As communicators if we assume anything different we may find ourselves creators or amplifiers of mixed messages.

What? When? and How? It’s important to get an adequate take on what’s already being planned/done to create an “innovation culture”?  And to understand how those changes will support employee innovation.  New processes? New reward systems?  Training? Supporting tools and tactics? For an interesting take on what needs to change, check out Jon Katzenbach and Zia Khan’s book, “Leading outside the lines”, p.177.  This should give us a clear idea of how seriously the leadership is taking the change and where their priorities are. It should also help us discover where, when and how we can be most helpful.

What do you think?  Will the drive for ‘innovative cultures’ change the role of Internal Communications?  And, if so, how?

Tags: Behaviour change, Collaboration, Cultural norms, Culture change, Employee communication, Innovation, Work