Practical Innovation

One clear theme we often hear is pressure from leadership to “innovate.” Enabling your team to create impact is an obvious priority for any leader. However, many teams get halted by process, and often struggle to generate meaningful outcomes.

We’ve outlined some simple, yet commonly overlooked ways to empower your team. We call it practical innovation.

1. Create space to experiment. Validate & measure by defining clear expectations, responsibilities and measured outcomes into individual roles. This should include discovery, which provides agency to identify & understand nuanced challenges. Find ways to incentivize scalable solutions & improvements that achieve key metrics, such as efficiency or CSAT.
   
2. Embrace design thinking. Human-Centered Design (HCD) tactics can be leveraged to deeply understand stakeholder needs, challenge assumptions and reframe problems. This approach is used by many organizations to create innovative solutions that drive business results. According to a Design Management Institute report, design-driven companies reported: 41% higher market share, 46% competitive advantage overall,  50% more loyal customers, and 70% digital experiences beat competitors.
   
3. Keep innovation simple by starting with quick wins. Innovation doesn’t always have to look like groundbreaking market shifts or billion dollar valuations. Identifying opportunities to innovate can be as simple as finding ways to minimize tool limitations and their associated workarounds. Prioritize problematic workarounds as high value targets. This builds a foundation to scale innovation by increasing early outcomes – a critical factor in changing culture. Other benefits such as increased employee satisfaction, efficiency and engagement.
   
4. Communicate wins, even small ones. Winning builds momentum, and momentum builds engagement. Recognizing iterative enhancements and their collective impact to key stakeholders shows team members that their efforts are important. It also builds trust with leadership that is important when buy-in on needed investments and new solutions is required.
   
5. Identify and engage “change champions.” Building buy-in across organizations can often mitigate resistance to change. Start by evangelizing your approach, what you’ve done and the impact its had. This helps to showcase the progress your team is making, as well as effectively communicate why you’re implementing specific tools & processes. Building partnerships throughout the organization can help you achieve increased participation.