If you believe the claims made in many organisations' mission statements and core values, on their websites and at conferences and meetings, you would assume they value innovation highly. Often, however, when you look deeper, you get a suspicion that while companies work hard to look like they are innovative in every way they can, many are ignoring some very simple opportunities to create an innovative workforce.

Innovation campaigns

Even companies that claim they are committed to innovation often treat it as an extra — that is, as icing rather than the cake itself. For example, they might run an innovation campaign for a month in which they invite staff to submit an idea to improve the organisation, and reward those who come up with the best ideas. But then the campaign ends and life goes back to normal. The message sent is that innovation is an add-on — it's not core business.

Innovation should be something we do all the time, not just for one month a year. If you think innovation is important, then act like it's important. Don't send the message that it is something the organisation should just focus on sometimes. Organisations don't run campaigns where everyone is urged to focus on sales for a month, because everyone knows they are supposed to focus on sales all the time.

Running a campaign to encourage innovation is better than doing nothing, but it's not nearly as good as entrenching innovation as a part of normal, daily business.

Tell people what you want them to do

There is a big difference between motivation and instruction.

Motivation isn't that hard. You just say, ‘Innovation is very important. We pride ourselves on being innovative and we embed innovation in everything we do. Everyone in our organisation needs to be constantly on the lookout for ways to be innovative'.

That's a good message, and most people who hear it will think, ‘Yeah! Right on!' But it's not telling anyone what to do to be innovative. So when staff get back to their desks, or wherever they work, because they haven't been clearly told what to do, it's likely that nothing much will change.

Don't just talk about innovation being important. Tell people what to do. If you want to create an innovative culture (or any sort of culture), you have to be really clear about exactly what it is you want people to do differently, because instruction is more useful than motivation.

This is true in most areas. You can tell your children why cleaning their teeth is important (motivation), but what will really make a difference is giving them a very clear and simple instruction: ‘Clean your teeth for one minute every morning after breakfast and every evening before you go to bed.' Or whatever. I'm no dentist.

So if you want to create a more innovative culture, what should you tell people to do?

• As discussed in chapter 7, ask them to achieve a monthly quota of new ideas to improve the business.
• Ask them to spend some time each week exploring where there may be opportunities for innovation. Tell them to look out for, and take note of, things they suspect might not be perfect and to think about ways to make them better.
• Ask them to spend ten minutes each day thinking about how to take advantage of the opportunities they identify.
• Suggest they question everything they do, and ask, ‘Might there be a better way of doing it?'
• Ask them to identify what assumptions they are making about the business, about their customers, about the market and about their competitors. Urge them to question those assumptions.
• Encourage them to think like their customers and clients. Ask, ‘How can we make life easier and better for our customers and clients?'
• Have them develop their ideas as far as they can before they pitch them.
• Urge them not to judge their ideas too quickly. Emphasise that you just want them to have ideas. They don't have to be brilliant ideas.
• Ask them to collaborate if they get stuck when developing an idea.
• Keep reminding your team in as many different ways as you can that innovation is important. For example:
  • – Talk about it in meetings.
  • – On random days send around an email that says something like, ‘Have you spent ten minutes today thinking about how to make this organisation better? If not, make sure you do!'
  • – Put up posters reminding people of what you want them to do.

Consider instituting ‘innovation time', a period in the week during which people concentrate on generating and developing new ideas. You have probably heard of companies that permit employees to work on their own projects during work time. Google has allowed employees one day a week to do this, and claims that ideas developed in that time are responsible for the company's ‘most significant advances'.

You don't have to go as far as that and allow 20 per cent of an employee's time to be used for innovation, but what about an hour a week, or even half an hour? Here are some of the benefits of doing so:

• Staff might devise, develop and share ideas that will improve your business and make or save the organisation money.
• Management will send a clear message to staff that they are committed to doing innovation, not just talking about it.
• By instituting innovation time, management will get people into the habit of thinking independently, challenging norms, and coming up with and developing their own ideas. There may be spin-off benefits. Once staff are used to thinking in this way, then it might not just be in their weekly half-hour of innovation time that they come up with new ideas. They will be more likely to have their eyes and brain open for ways to take advantage of opportunities for innovation all the time.

If you do implement innovation time, how do you make sure that everyone uses it? It's easy to say, ‘You should all spend half an hour a week thinking about how to make the business better'. Everyone will loudly agree, set off with the best intentions, and then get swamped with work they think is more urgent.

‘It's a fantastic idea,' they will explain. ‘It was just that I was really busy and didn't get around to it this week.' And they'll mean it. The problem is that every week is really busy, and innovation time will usually be the first thing that gets dropped.

If you are determined to embed innovative thinking in your organisation:

1. Make innovation a KPI, as discussed in chapter 7. If people know they are accountable for their innovative output, then they are more likely to make time for it.
2. Institutionalise innovation time. Have everyone nominate their own half-hour or hour block. Make sure that time is in everyone's diary, as immoveable as any other appointment.

How much direction do you give?

When encouraging people to be innovative, you can either direct them to come up with any idea to improve the business, or be more specific in your direction. There may be a particular area that you want people to focus on. You may think the sales team is really working well but things are a little stale in marketing. In that case, you might want to urge everyone to think up ideas to improve things in the marketing department. The following month you may want to direct your team to focus on a different area, and the month after that on a different one again.

Alternatively, you might want to get those who work in marketing to focus on coming up with innovative ideas for marketing and those in sales to focus on sales. Or maybe you would get some fresh ideas if you asked the sales people to focus on ways to improve marketing and the marketing people to think of ideas for the sales team. Try it all out, and see what works best.

What if someone says ‘I can't'?

Sometimes people will be so fixed in their habits, and so lacking in confidence in their ability to think in a different way, that they will believe they are incapable of coming up with original ideas.

They're not.

Yes, everyone has different abilities, and some people are more adept at solving problems and exploring new possibilities than others, but very few people are incapable of thinking up new ideas.

As with most things, the hardest part is beginning. Usually, the more you do it, the better you get. Once someone comes up with one idea and realises they can do it, then the next idea is often easier to find.

So encourage your team. Take the pressure off by assuring them their idea doesn't have to be great, or even good. It just has to be … something. Remind them that innovation is part of their job, and when they do come up with something, be encouraging.