HR's Contribution to Creativity and Innovation

HR’s Contribution to Creativity and Innovation MAIN PRESENTERS: Bill Pasmore, Senior VP, Centre for Creative Leadership, and Visiting Professor Columbia University, NY Matt Copeland, Client Director, Ashridge Business School

The meeting reviewed a CRF report by Bill Pasmore and Rebecca Stilwell and featured an off-the-record presentation by Tesco.

CONTEXT What has changed since CRF’s 2007 report Embedding creativity and innovation? 

The operating context for organisations is increasingly VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Sustaining brands and reputation is critical.

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Agility and innovation are especially important to succeed in the digital workplace and across globalised markets. Organisations must adapt at an ever more rapid pace.

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It is more urgent for human systems to keep pace and integrate with technological advance.

What has not changed? 

The role choices for HR, ranging from key enabler to non-involvement. The latter however has negative consequences for the organisation.

THREE LEVELS OF HR INVOLVEMENT

Figure 1: Three levels of HR involvement in supporting creativity and innovation ©Corporate Research Forum 2013

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HR’s Contribution to Creativity and Innovation HOW INNOVATIVE DO YOU NEED TO BE? 

While the overall pressure to innovate is greater, there are clearly differences in degree across different sectors of commerce and public service.

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Similarly, not everyone in an organisation has to be ‘creative’. Innovation spans different contributions – from the highly experimental to modest but value-generating incremental improvement.

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Organisations should articulate strategically where and how they need to be innovative, and what this means behaviourally.

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If that is unclear, HR has a responsibility to spark debate. Why?

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First, people in all parts of the organisation need to know how and where they can make a contribution.

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Second, HR also needs to know what its activities should be seeking to achieve.

Bill Pasmore pointed out that by no means do all leaders understand the human systems aspects of innovation. HR not only needs to help, it needs to get good at helping.

WHAT SETS INNOVATIVE ORGANISATIONS APART? 

Innovation gets baked into culture. That starts with organisational purpose but then needs reinforcement in the way everything gets done.

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Experimentation is encouraged; there is positive learning from failure.

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There is clear recognition and reward for making a contribution

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Organisation design and people processes need to be supportive and enabling.

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The organisation is effective in learning from customer and employee experience.

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Rigorous processes exist for decision-making about what innovations add value and what don’t.

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Collaboration – both internally and with external stakeholders – is a strength.

Google  3rd most valuable commercial company, in less than 10 years since IPO.  One of Google founders Page & Brin's first hires was their HR head, Laszlo Bock, exGE.

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HR’s Contribution to Creativity and Innovation  HR owns responsibility for culture, which is modelled on a research lab environment, maintaining a start-up feel where everyone is a hands-on contributor and idea sharer.  Design thinking is promoted in on-boarding and in leadership development  Highly collaborative environment, regular questioning of leaders, lots of training.  Physical spaces, including cafes, designed to foster interactions – fun orientation.  Googlers-to-Googlers education programme fosters peer learning about virtually anything.  Very careful and extensive recruitment process to ensure fit with the culture. Very diverse.  Bonuses determined by peer nominations based on how collaborative you are, helping others to succeed. Benefits philosophy designed to support people focusing on what they do best.

ADOPT A SYSTEMIC APPROACH

Figure 2: A systematic approach HOW INNOVATIVE DO YOU NEED TO BE?

A change in one area will not work – all elements need to shift in an integrated way.

A systemic approach includes: 

aligning performance and reward systems with behaviours that foster innovation

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creating supportive environments – cultural, physical – and provide tools;

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HR’s Contribution to Creativity and Innovation 

providing both autonomy and responsibility, remove structural barriers, encourage networks;

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selecting, developing and promoting individuals with necessary mindset, skills and expertise;

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promote effective collaboration internally and externally.

HR also needs to focus hard on the two other dimensions: 

changing the behaviours of key players and role models;

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helping the workforce feel the benefits by experiencing new ways of thinking and acting.

Freeing up leadership and (consequently) workforce mindsets represent deep challenges, as Clorox found – see box below. A visionary figure at IBM, Thomas Watson, generated a focus on THINK back in 1911. “We don't get paid for working with our feet — we get paid for

working with our heads.”

Disney  De-centralised structure – each business funded to allow creative people do what they do best.  HR's role is to provide tools and recognition process that keeps people fired up positively.  HR has creativity goals, avoids bureaucratic practices that would drive people towards Google.  HR is about flexing, not imposing rules. Do what is right for the situation.  HRBPs serve as informal, internal coaches, helping leaders demonstrate vision and values.  Consulting and relationship expertise more important than HR technical knowledge.  “People don’t leave Disney. It’s a tribute to the creative culture.”  This is fostered by use of social media, creativity tools and awards for ideas.  Note – CRF participant pointed out that Disney also has an office block full of lawyers to protect IP, rather than be creative.

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HR’s Contribution to Creativity and Innovation EVERYWHERE ISN’T LIKE GOOGLE OR DISNEY So what should be done in companies that don’t have innovation in their DNA? 

HR needs to have the courage to pose tough questions about strategy and competitiveness, even if it hasn’t been invited to.

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It must build its own capability as change agent and innovative business problem solver.

Clorox  US household products company, has made significant investment in fostering innovation.  Partnered with Stanford, Berkeley and IDEO company in order to develop vision, train in design thinking, and learn how to support both creatives and ‘lay people’ in innovation practices.  Engage people as ‘business owners’ to empower them to simplify things and find big ideas.  ‘Connective thinking’ model– starts with definition of the challenge, generating ‘nuggets’.  Then, ‘challenge to improve’ – why ‘OK’ isn’t good enough. Slow down and think.  Last, speed up prototyping – ‘Act to learn’, don’t wait to seek approval for experimentation, but also learn to kill off what doesn’t work in order to find something better.  Also brought customers into prototyping to enrich ideation.  What’s worked – more consistency in rolling out and implementing global innovations.  Biggest challenge – unwinding the historic ‘task culture’, doing in preference to thinking, and listening and exchanging better.

DISCUSSION GROUPS Participants made observations and posed questions about 3 topics – organisation, people and HR.

Organisation 

How can HR have a say where it lacks explicit power?

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Who should own culture – HR, or the CEO and executive colleagues?

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Line managers struggle with ambiguity, and easily revert to a task focus.

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HR’s Contribution to Creativity and Innovation 

Many organisations suffer from the tyranny of fixed targets and deadlines – asking for reflection time is counter-cultural. Task focused organisations are not conducive to learning.

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Head offices are often out of synch with the parts of the business – is it HR’s job to sort this?

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Devolution can generate initiatives that are uncoordinated, competitive and re-invent the wheel.

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Important to focus on breaking down silos.

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A lot of innovation is about continuous improvement, rather than step-change or ‘transformation’.

People 

Language can be a barrier – ‘creativity’ can seem daunting to many. ‘Ingenuity’, ‘imagination’ and ‘experimentation’ sound more achievable.

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Reward for good ideas – recognition is often more powerful than money, which can have negative side-effects. Dragon’s Den style competitions can have a bit of both.

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Ideation – people are disappointed when ideas get dropped or are not pursued. It can feel like criticism. The fear of failure inhibits proposals and sharing.

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There’s an art to managing truly creative people. Not all leaders have this. Meanwhile, large organisations are intolerant of mavericks and tree-shakers.

HR 

HR can show it works on things that matter by getting stuck into innovation.

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The job starts with sorting out what innovation really means for both the organisation and for individuals.

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HR must have the requisite facilitation skills, credibility to hold up the mirror, and avoid being prescriptive.

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HR must in some respects know more about business than ‘the business’.

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HR’s Contribution to Creativity and Innovation OBSERVATIONS, THOUGHTS, PROVOCATIONS Matt Copeland from Ashridge made these observations.

Some talk about innovation is rather waffly, and approaches can be hit-and-miss. Isn’t it time to professionalise management of innovation? There are well-delineated methods – it’s just that managers and HR don’t all seem to know that.

Lego tell people what (should be aimed at), not how. Developing a shared idea of what innovation means involves clarifying 

where to go for incremental improvement and/or more radical shifts

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where are we prepared to take risks, where is it OK to fail?

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what the right mindset looks like – asking questions, sharing, being open.

‘Busy is the new lazy’ – people need to reflect and evaluate. Matt observed that Generation Y is strong on scanning, but less good at evaluating HR needs to sense-make, enable, ask good questions and not be a process junkie or get in the way.

Mike Haffenden concluded by observing that HR should help organisations: 

get better at what they are doing already;

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stop doing things that don’t make a difference;

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help business colleagues be clear about the systemic implications of innovation;

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build the right infrastructure and environment;

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get used to the idea that innovation should often be uncomfortable.

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