Should leaders expect innovation from their employees? It’s a common misconception that innovation is not a part of everyone’s job—but you can become a more innovative employee.
Every day, employees have the opportunity to solve a problem.
Otherwise, why would they be at work? Organizations hire employees for positions that each have specific purposes and deliverables. In the day-to-day execution of any job, there are always opportunities to improve—whether the CEO managing strategy or an entry-level employee applying processes.
Despite these opportunities, most employees don’t see themselves as innovators or believe they are responsible for innovation within their jobs or the company. This is the challenge for leaders who desire more innovative employees. Innovation cannot be expected from someone who doesn’t see it as a part of their role. If leaders want to encourage innovation, they must address this issue.
To create a sustainable culture of innovation, every employee must become a student of innovation, and understand clearly what and how they contribute to innovation in their job.
While there are many ways for leaders to help get their teams excited about innovation—including exposing them to innovation in practice, building confidence around innovation, and providing the mentoring and encouragement required to create both personal and corporate innovation cultures—the responsibility is not all in the hands of leadership. Employees themselves should seek out opportunities to learn, develop their own skills, and set aside time to work on innovation as well.
Here are three elements to incorporate into your daily routine to become a more innovative employee.
Grow your self-starting skill
Self-starting is one of the most important skills for innovators. If you are going to incorporate innovation into your everyday work, you need to have a clear understanding of what innovation actually is and how it can be used in your day-to-day tasks. This requires the ability to self-start and immerse yourself in learning about value creation, creative thinking, and problem solving. Consider how you can grow each of these skills and use them to improve your work. Soon, you will be able to see and respond quickly to the problems and opportunities around your job.
Take pride in your ability to solve problems
Since the Industrial Revolution, employees have been led to believe that they are simply units of production—only there to get a job done. In that situation, improving was not a priority. This is not the case today, yet the standard still exists. Think of the last time you solved a customer’s problem and how they responded. With satisfaction, joy, words of encouragement? It is because you did something that mattered to them and improved your product or process.
As an employee, you don’t exist to simply get a job done. You are an innovator who can use your individualized skillset to solve problems in creative and exciting ways. This should be celebrated often. And solving problems for yourself, your team, your customers, or your boss, should become a daily habit.
Collaborate with your colleagues
As you innovate around your own job, the opportunities to learn and share as a team will grow. You should practice consistently collaborating and integrating ideas with your colleagues across departments, companies, or industries. Perhaps you have experienced this before when talking to a coworker in another department about a problem that needs solving—and they have already implemented a similar solution in their department! Don’t forget to share and communicate with those outside of your immediate team, whether in a company-wide Idea Bank or in cross-departmental meetings. Develop this mindset of collaboration and cross-pollination, and you can solve problems faster, better, and in more creative ways.
A growing organization must expect innovation from everyone, employees and leaders alike. If leaders invest, hire, and enable employees for innovation, then innovation will be a significant performance metric for any job. You cannot over-invest the skill of innovation.
Without it, an organization has no future. Leaders fail their employees when they do not invest in innovation and employees fail their company when they don’t take pride and ownership in innovating—because employees are the future that drive innovation. Infusing your day-to-day work with a self-starting attitude, pride in your innovation abilities, and collaboration will ensure your future as an innovator.
Header Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash.
