Truth 49. Innovation begins with y-e-s
Leaders have long been in the habit of assigning the responsibility for being creative to the people whose job it is to deliver something new. So it’s natural to assume that the most important whizbang, breakthrough ideas come from research and development departments, business development, or even customer service. However, as management experts are becoming increasingly fluent in all the benefits of engaged employees, they’re discovering that breakthrough creativity comes not so much from people who own the job of delivering new ideas as it does from people who feel great about the job they own—regardless of its core function.
According to a survey conducted by the Gallup Management Journal, 59 percent of engaged employees strongly agreed with the statement that their current job “brings out [their] most creative ideas.” The more engaged the employee, the more likely she will offer new ideas.
Breakthrough creativity comes from people who feel great about the job they own—regardless of its core function.
But wait! There’s more! The Gallup survey also showed that engaged employees are more likely to be positively receptive to ideas offered by their teammates. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, they also report that they “feed off the creativity” of their colleagues. So, the result is an upwardly spiraling dynamic of free-flowing creativity and positive reinforcement, which then generates even more free-flowing creativity. That culture of mutually supportive breakthrough thinking can appear anywhere in the company, ultimately benefiting the entire organization’s bottom line, regardless of whether the idea is a new product eureka or a simple solution for reducing waste in the recycling area.
Create a culture of idea generosity.
But this spiral has to begin someplace. In your department, that someplace had better be your office. To take advantage of this upward-spiraling dynamic of energized and original thinking, you want to create a culture of idea generosity. If you establish a culture where employees trust that their ideas will be respectfully heard, they will be more likely to approach your office with breakthrough notions and inspirations. Therefore, your office must be Destination Yes.
This is not “yes” as in “Your wish is my command.” You’re not a genie. This is “yes” to your employees’ most pressing request: to be given fair, respectful, and open-minded treatment. When your employees can assume that they’ll be heard, they’ll assume it’s worth their energy to speak up.
Assumptions are contagious, and your employees will catch their clue from you. Consider your own automatic assumptions about the quality of ideas that your employees are most likely to bring forward. If scarcity thinking, mistrust, impatience, elitism, and hide-bound allegiance to rules cause you to assume that your employees’ ideas are a waste of time, your employees will assume the same. And your office will become Destination What’s the Point of Even Trying?
Good ideas become great ones when they’re safely bounced around a team of well-willed colleagues who thrive on each other’s inspirations.
But the culture of idea generosity thrives within an office that has the reputation for being Destination Yes. Good ideas become great ones when they’re safely bounced around a team of well-willed colleagues who thrive on each other’s inspirations.
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once wrote, “And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating as possibility?”
Only one answer comes to mind: possibility shared in the safe and trusted circle of colleagues who gather within a culture called “yes.”
When that happens, the possibilities are endless.