I've been thinking about new rules that will lead to XXI Century profitability. Yesterday's rule: "create a joyous system." Today, "enable innovation."
Innovation is the new corporate version of "Mom and apple pie." With the exception of the odd curmudgeon, everyone sees innovation as a key to success in the modern business environment. But, don't let anybody fool you, innovation's hard work. And creating a system that enables innovation is harder still. Why? Because innovation can't truly be "managed."
According to its classic definition, to manage is:
To direct or control the use of; to handle
To exert control over
To make submissive to one's authority, discipline, or persuasion
To direct the affairs or interests of
And what about "innovate?"
To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time.
Now, certainly, "modern management" has developed many practices for directing, handling, controlling, disciplining, and/or persuading. But the dicey part about innovation is your theory of the case about how it comes about. Because, "beginning or introducing something new" usually can't happen through the application of a pre-established formula. If it could, computers could innovate. No, innovation requires imagination and creativity.
OK, so, how does one manage to encourage imagination and creativity? Well, for all intents and purposes, Teresa Amabile has spent her whole career researching that question. Her answer in a nutshell: you manage very carefully. Too much or too little structure: not so good. Too much focus on conventional motivators (carrots/sticks): won't work. Keep the heat on: see, stories about "geese/golden eggs."
So, what's a manager to do? Well, it looks like the same approaches that could enable joyousness within a system might also be conducive to the imagination and creativity that yield innovation. Challenging work in a context that encourages people to experiment.
And so, I get to this point in this post and take a bit of a brain breather...check my feeds...and what do I find...I find this from Evelyn!
Now, if that's not the universe trying to tell me something, I'm not sure what is.
And what might be the universe's message to me?
I don't know...but I'm going to stop here and try to listen.
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