I have found that I love being in a position where things are disruptive or innovating. It’s invigorating to me. For 15 years I have been building environments, culture in the work environment and creating teams. For 11 of those years, I was full time in non-profit ministry related building. I am now finding myself in the corporate setting. I LOVE building a staff culture. I am not sure if it’s because I have this beautiful love-love relationship when things change, because it means a whole new canvas, or if I enjoy the hard work of helping maneuver environments toward those changes to make sure those changes are good and stable foundations. All I know is I love it, and I’m good at it.
Having said that, I decided to help give a broad idea of what you can expect. Here is what I know about innovation in culture.
Designed
Every staff or corporate culture is designed for one of two paths: status quo maintenance or innovation. You will never have a culture that stays stagnant forever. It will always be moving and shifting and shaping. It’s influences are people, leadership, current events… etc The problem with this design is there is a natural and environmental tension within the design that pushes away from innovating and toward status quo. Things naturally want to remain status quo. People like comfort, and they don’t like things messing with those comforts.
An innovating culture is designed from the beginning and needs to be cultivated, like a garden. You HAVE to make adjustments to pull out the weeds that will stifle the culture and cease to let it innovate.
Trapped
It’s been my observation that cultures unintentionally trap themselves. They do this by focusing too much on education and experience, and not enough on creative elements or outside innovative thinking. Education and experience are only two pieces of the thousand piece puzzle in your culture. When they weigh heaviest in the organization, primarily the hiring process, you’ll find your culture is leaning toward status quo and away from innovation. Essentially this traps you into a track. Why does it matter? It’s simple. Not all education is from a class room, and not all experience is found in a specific track of employment or industry.
Innovation comes from thinking outside of the box. I actually think I am starting to cringe at the phrase “business as usual”. That was great for yesterday… but what about today? You will not be able to answer all of today’s questions with yesterday’s answers.
How will you know if you’re trapped? You’ll hear phrases like “business as usual” or “that’s how we’ve always done it” or “let’s go back to the old way” or “let’s not reinvent the wheel here”. All of these are indicators that you’re trapped. It’s easy to say you want to innovate… but incredibly difficult to keep it as a main priority. Which leads us to the next point.
Driven
Cultures are driven because they are primed for drivers. Leaders love this about culture. A culture doesn’t arrive on accident. It’s driven there by someone. I’m not about to make this political… but look around. When movement is being made, it shifts the culture of movement. It takes a savvy leader to make decisions that will impact 6-18 months from now and be able to read those situations well. Much like a quarterback who sees the receiver being open before the ball is snapped and in play, an innovating leader will be able to anticipate situations before they develop. Here’s the kicker… YOU NEED TO LEAN IN ON THOSE LEADERS!
If you find yourself a part of an organization that seems to keep losing those leaders… you’re part of an organization that is drifting toward the beautiful utopia of status quo. This will be an issue for you if you’re an innovator.
Disclaimer
Having said all of this, here is a disclaimer: not everything that’s organized and foundational is a bad thing and needs to be changed. But you have to be willing to get into the metaphorical garden and pull weeds, flip some things out, and nurture some dying items if you want to innovate and grow healthy crops. Like it or not, the pandemic happened. And it changed things. No more business as usual! Anything in your organization that was foundational pre-pandemic is in need of some serious scrutiny. Scrutiny doesn’t mean it’s all bad but it needs to be looked at, and if it needs to be pruned… get some snippers.
3 Keys to Walk Away With
- You have to maintain innovation as a primary goal for the organization and do everything you can not to let it drift to being trapped.
- You have to lean in on out of the box thinking, which means you need to open up organizational communication from top to bottom of the work environment where you can filter the best ideas. This will allow you to have the best design.
- You need to do the hard work of foundational gardening and pruning so the organization can be driven to the actual mission it was organized around in the first place.
I’m in your corner, and I’ll see you out there.
leadershape 