While the development of innovative ideas can take time and money, having an idea doesn't cost anything. Sitting down and thinking is free. And that is how innovation always begins — with someone having an idea. So if an organisation has a hundred people, doesn't it make sense to encourage them all to think?

Think back to all of the jobs you have had in your life. How often has a manager said either of these things to you?

Thinking of new ideas to improve the way we do things is a part of your job.

or

You're new. There's lots to learn, but one of the advantages of being new is that you bring fresh eyes. We probably all take things for granted a bit, so if you see anything you think we could do better, please tell me.

If the answer is never, you're not alone. If you want to create an innovative culture, make it clear that thinking of better ways of doing things is part of everyone's job. That is, their job isn't just doing the things that have to be done to keep things ticking over today. It also involves thinking up ways to improve the business so it will still be relevant and successful in five years' time.

How do you do that? In some roles, being innovative is a natural part of the job. An intrinsic part of the CEO's job, for example, is working out what to change to ensure the company prospers. But further down the food chain, many employees simply ‘do their job', rather than questioning whether it could be done better.

That's not because they are incapable of being innovative. It's often because they have never been asked to think about ways of improving things, much less told that it is an essential part of their job.

Sometimes the reason people don't think about ways to improve the business is that they don't think it is part of their job. Other times people do come up with new ideas but don't share them because they have never been told that their ideas are valued and that management wants to hear them. So instead of sharing their ideas, they just let them float away. Often they are convinced that if they did try to develop or share an idea, no one would be interested and nothing would happen.

Everyone in an organisation is capable of thinking of ways of doing things better, but you have to encourage them and give them a structure through which to do it.

Make it clear it's part of the job

How do you make it clear to every member of the organisation that part of their job is to think up ways of improving the business?

Of course most of their day should be spent ensuring that today's business is done as well as it possibly can be, but a part of everyone's day should also be devoted to questioning the way things are done and thinking about how they could be done better.

Ensure that being innovative is one of every employee's key performance indicators. That is, part of their job is to come up with ideas to improve the business, and they are accountable for that in just the same way as they are for all their other KPIs.

Create an innovation KPI for everyone that looks something like this:

Each month think of, and share, two ideas to improve the way the organisation does things.

You can choose the target, but two per month is twenty-four a year, which is a good number.

Okay, that sounds nice, but how do you measure an innovation KPI?

Quantity not quality

Often we stress quality over quantity, but if you are trying to up the innovative output of your people, you need to do the opposite.

Emphasise that the innovation KPI is about having and sharing a specific number of ideas. It's not about only sharing ideas they think are great. You are asking them to come up with two ideas per month, not two brilliant ideas per month. The goal is to get access to as many ideas as possible. If you emphasise to your team that you only want good ideas, then you will inhibit them, and many of the ideas they have will never get to you. Employees will come up with an idea but then think, ‘No, I can't share that one. It's not good enough'.

Remember, it's difficult to know at first whether an idea is good, great or terrible. Some ideas that start out sounding terrible end up turning into something worthwhile.

If you say, ‘I only want you to pitch ideas that are fully formed and ready to be immediately implemented in the business,' then you may miss out on some good ones. People often have an idea and then strike a problem they can't resolve. Make it clear that you want to hear about those ideas too, because someone else might be able to supply the missing piece of the jigsaw that makes the idea workable.

Suggest people develop their ideas as far as they can, but if they get stuck before all the kinks are ironed out, that's okay. You still want to hear about them, because they may contain something valuable. So encourage staff not to be harsh in judging their ideas.

Emphasise that they don't have to come up with an idea that radically transforms the business. Any small incremental improvement is good, because over time those tiny improvements add up and can make a big difference.

Get access to as many ideas as possible. You don't want to miss out on one just because the person who thought of it lacks self-confidence and isn't sure if it's good enough. If you make sure that you get as many ideas as you can, then you will maximise your chances of finding some great ideas.

Keep it simple for staff. Emphasise that only want them to do two things:

1. Generate new ideas to improve the business.
2. Share them with management.

Don't set the bar too high. Just get people to do as much as they can, and then share their idea.

The hardest part is getting people to start thinking that innovation is part of their job, especially if they are not used to doing so. Change is always hard, but as the idea that innovation is everyone's responsibility grows and becomes an accepted part of the culture, it should get easier, and eventually become the new normal.

Once you have made innovation a KPI, follow through. If someone doesn't hit their target for ideas submitted, then call them out on it. Make them accountable. It is perfectly legitimate to say to someone at a performance review, ‘You've hit your sales targets, your clients love you, you meet deadlines and are easy to work with, but in the past three months you haven't pitched any ideas to help us do things better. And if everyone did that, in five years we'll be in a lot of trouble'.

But, you might be thinking, you can't dream up ideas to a deadline. Ideas come or they don't. You can't conjure up an idea just because it's the end of the month and you have to hit your target.

Actually, you can.

Deadlines are a wonderful way of motivating creativity. Think of the cleverest, most creative and brilliant television shows or movies you have seen. Much, often most, of the creative work was done to a deadline. There would have been deadlines on writing and rewriting the script, on filming each scene and on editing it into its final form. Charles Dickens serialised many of his novels and had to write each part to a deadline.

We have all faced tasks we have had to finish by a certain time — writing a report, preparing a speech, writing an essay, studying for an exam. Two weeks before the deadline we act as if we have all the time in the world. A few days before the work is due we realise we have actually left it much too late and there is no way we will have enough time to do it properly. We panic, we work really hard … and get it done. And that work often includes lots of creativity. I have already talked about the advertising industry. They have to be creative to deadline. Clients don't say, ‘We need a thirty-second ad for our new car. Obviously, we can't put any sort of deadline on you having creative ideas, so just take as long as you need. A week, a month, a year, whatever. I know you can't rush these things'. No. They say, ‘We need it in a week'.

I used to do an evening radio show five nights a week from 7 pm to 10 pm. It was almost all talk, and by the time I got to the studio in the afternoon, most of the news of the day had already been covered by earlier programs. My producer and I had to try to think up original stories, or new angles on the stories that had already been covered. Some days it was easy, but sometimes it was really hard. As our deadline loomed we knew we had to come up with something interesting, or we would have a big block of nothing in the middle of the show. And you know what? Day in, day out, for six years, we always came up with something. I didn't have all my ideas because I was brilliant. I had them because I had to.

The motivation for staff to generate innovative ideas involves a mixture of stick and carrot. The carrot: by encouraging staff to think up ideas and share them, you set them a task that is challenging, interesting, creative and potentially exciting, and thereby empower them. The stick is that innovation is one of their KPIs, so they know they are accountable for it in the same way as they are for all their other KPI's. This factor, especially, helps with motivation when it gets hard. And thinking of new ideas almost always does get hard, so motivation is important.

Managers need motivation, too, so they can also be set a KPI that makes them accountable for encouraging, harvesting and passing on the ideas of their staff. For example:

You are responsible for encouraging your team to generate and pitch innovative ideas to you, and for conducting an initial assessment of those ideas before passing them on to the innovation committee.

A manager can be accountable not just, for example, for the sales output of the team, but also for the innovative output of the team. Just as a quarterly target may be set for sales, a target can also be set for how many ideas a manager's team should come up with.