A Challenge-Based Culture

An innovative culture requires that employees challenge assumptions and question the status quo. A fear-based culture does not allow those practices. In some organizations, it may be political death to continually ask questions like:

•    Why does that process take 14 steps?

•    Why are we using aluminum in that product?

•    Why is the sales force structured that way?

•    Why do we have to fill out that form?

In innovative cultures, these questions lead to cost savings, efficiencies, and innovations. Innovators challenge the industry orthodoxies. They eat sacred cows. They test assumptions ruthlessly. They ask “Why?”

Examine the insurance industry, for example. If you wanted to buy insurance years ago, you had to have a rep come to your house, take down two hours of data and then get back to you in a month or so with a quote. Now, you can go online and fill out the information, submit it, and have an estimate in about ten minutes. What is more, you can have comparative quotes from other insurance companies also.

What is important in a culture that encourages challenging the status quo? First, it must be a trust-based culture. Employees must trust that they will not be punished for challenging a way of doing things, or an existing policy, or even the ideas of their superiors. They must trust that management will see such challenges in the light of an innovative spirit that welcomes the clash of ideas.

Second, it must be a high-dialogue culture. Employees must be trained how to discuss and dialogue ideas fully, building on each other, and constructing the truth creatively. Ideas are built on and worked with rather than attacked and destroyed. Instead of a right/wrong culture, it is a culture with many owners of partial truths. Discussions are used for bridging and adding, not staged as battles with winners and losers.

Third, it must be a flat culture where hierarchies, or perceived hierarchies, are not entrenched, where the ideas of management and employees combine and combust freely. Great ideas rarely flow from employees who “know their place in the world.” Committees and task forces are composed of people from many levels of the organization, not just the top. Ideas are welcomed from all cracks and corners of the organization.

Subtle cues can hurt innovation in organizations. “Bill,” a top manager of a Midwestern organization, often frowned in meetings with his employees. They took his frowning to mean that he was displeased. That signal cut short productive conversations. Upon questioning, Bill said that he was not frowning; he was just closing his mouth to hide his decaying teeth. Funny story, but in what ways do managers subtly put down ideas in your organization?

Physical Environment

Physical structures can help or hinder a spirit of innovation. The comic strip Dilbert and the 1999 movie Office Space poke fun at the uncreative landscape of cubicle hell. In this world, employees are trapped in stuffy cubicles, told what to do and how to do it, and are given no opportunity to express their innovative spirit. In fact, the environment all but kills their spirits. Most people can tell stories about stifling environments where one needs five signatures to go to the bathroom.

What about innovative spaces? What do they look like? Playful and original physical spaces help innovation for many organizations. At Design Logic, a medical device product development firm in Minneapolis, employees create their own cubicle space. Design Logic’s offices are located in an old warehouse: the employees create the space while the company creates products. The company thus has an organic feel. Ideo, another product design firm, encourages employees to do the same. They create their workspace to match their working style.

Some organizations have created innovation rooms. The Innovation Office at the Singapore Department of Defense redesigned a room for ideation at the department’s headquarters. The room has movable furniture, walls lined with flipcharts, and closets filled with everything from toys to materials (pipe cleaners, play dough, Legos, pop-sicle sticks) for prototype creation. The Department of Defense has an annual innovation contest with cash prizes. Any group can use this room in their innovation pursuits.

Other organizations build fun into their daily routines. Some have Nerf basketballs or golf putting areas, others sponsor exercise and yoga classes, and still others have their own on-site fitness centers. Physical movement during the day helps mental functioning as well as creative and innovative thinking.

Much innovation happens at “watering holes,” spaces where people gather informally during the day. A good example of this was the employee cafeteria at Ecolab’s (a specialty chemical company) research facility in Mendota Heights, Minnesota. In the 1980s, this was a standard, perfunctory, drafty place with plastic chairs and a linoleum floor, not a plush comfortable ambiance. No designer coffee. Yet, at about 9:30 am most mornings, the chemists and scientists would start congregating here with their coffee. They talked about their projects, experiments that worked and did not work, new ideas for products, and cutting edge equipment. Sometimes, the “break” went on for 45 minutes. One or two executives complained about these elongated coffee breaks. As a witness to these conversations (I was a Marketing Manager at Ecolab), I found them as fascinating and innovative as any I have observed. They were exciting interchanges; ideas sparked, were built upon, were redirected, were sliced and diced, and were sent on flights of fancy.

Organizational Structures

In the 1980s, the term “skunkworks” began to be popularized. Organizations realized that some bureaucratic structures were too thick and regimented to allow for radical innovation. Embedded budget and reporting structures inhibited creating something new. So, they sent their product design teams offsite to warehouses or basements, allowed them autonomy and its own budget, and told it to create. One documented example comes from Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of A Machine: A group of young employees from a computer company were sent to a warehouse to develop a new computer and do it well. General Motors’ Saturn division was given a similar mandate: they were given acreage in Tennessee and told to build a totally new car, outside of the stodgy confines of the GM bureaucracy.

Another approach is to embed many innovative structures within an existing organization. 3M, a Minnesota manufacturer and distributor of adhesives and other products, embeds many innovation enhancers. Innovation clubs, round tables, circles, and awards are funded at 3M. When entering corporate headquarters, one can meander through 3M’s innovation museum. Scientists who produce winning products like Post-it Notes and Scotchgard are given opportunities for cutting-edge research. The company allows many researchers to allocate up to 15% of their time to work on projects of their choosing. Top management mandates that 20% of revenues need to come from products developed in the previous five years. There are many other structures at 3M which encourage innovation.

How do you eat an elephant? According to the children’s joke, one bite at a time. You change a culture the same way: one person, one initiative, one committee, one action at a time. Changing culture is a difficult process, but worth it. The rewards, monetary and nonmonetary, can be enormous. Besides, it might be the best survival tactic there is.