Organizational culture defines shared beliefs, values, and behaviors between organization employees and stakeholders.
It maps out a unique social and psychological environment in the organization that influences the business processes, employee engagement levels, and customer experience.
One vital cultural trait that is fast defining business performance is the culture of innovation.
It influences both existing and future efficiency levels in the organization and it is essential for organizations to consistently develop a system of innovation in their culture.
The next few tips help business leaders foster a culture of innovation among their employees.
• Empower your employees to deliver value creatively: Employee empowerment is about supporting and motivating employee creativity.
Enable a system that encourages employees to become comfortable with and learn from failures.
Foster a system that encourages contribution even from employees with previously failed ideas while embracing risks and experimentation.
• Think about the business process: Every organization needs to critically examine its business processes regularly and assess its impact on performance levels.
This helps to identify failed processes, learn from them, and allow for the development of improved processes in the organization.
• Create an office space that fosters innovation: The physical office space influences the mental spaces of employees and has the tendencies to enable or inhibit their creativity levels.
Workspace designs should be such that enhance the speed and outcomes of innovative efforts factoring in elements like communication flow, user needs, and space preferences.
• Hire a diverse workforce: Team composition in various business units should comprise of a balanced combination of employees from diverse backgrounds.
The diversity they possess allows for different perspectives in the analysis and solving of problems; that encourages creativity in seeing how best the perspectives can deliver a creative solution.
• Knowledge Sharing with Innovation Experts: Organizations can also glean from the vast experience and knowledge of innovation experts by organizing periodic consulting sessions with guest speakers to educate employees on how best to address certain issues.