BiteSize - Creating a Culture of Continuous Improvement and Innovation: Proven Key Strategies.

Ever wondered how to create a culture that fosters continuous improvement and innovation within your organization? If you're curious about embedding innovation, building psychological safety, and balancing individual contributions with collective goals, this episode is for you.

Welcome to this bitesize episode, where we delve into the essential elements of creating a culture that encourages continuous improvement and innovation. We are joined by Annicken R. Day, an expert in building innovative cultures, who shares key insights from her experience at Tandberg, a technology company renowned for its focus on culture and innovation.

Imagine gaining practical strategies from an expert who has successfully embedded innovation within organizational culture. 

By listening to this episode, you can:

• Embed Innovation: Learn how to foster a culture that encourages innovation without explicitly labeling it.
• Build Psychological Safety: Discover the importance of trust, freedom, and psychological safety in empowering people to innovate.
• Balance Individual and Collective Goals: Understand how to balance individual contributions with collective goals for shared success.

Three Benefits You'll Gain:

1. Innovative Culture Building: Practical advice on creating a culture that supports continuous improvement and innovation.
2. Trust and Psychological Safety: Insights into building trust and psychological safety to encourage risk-taking and creativity.
3. Collective Mindset: Strategies for fostering a collective mindset and balancing individual contributions with organizational goals.

Are you ready to foster continuous improvement and innovation within your organisation? Scroll up and click play to join our enlightening conversation with Annicken R. Day. Gain the knowledge and strategies you need to embed innovation, build psychological safety, and balance individual and collective goals for shared success.

Exploring Key Concepts and Issues:

Embedding Innovation in Culture:

• Annicken discusses the significance of embedding innovation within the culture of an organisation without explicitly labelling it as such. She highlights the importance of creating an environment where people feel empowered to innovate.

Trust and Psychological Safety:

• Building trust, freedom, and psychological safety are crucial for fostering an environment where people can take risks and innovate without fear of failure or ridicule.

Common Purpose and Collective Mindset:

• Annicken emphasises the importance of a common purpose and a collective mindset over individual egos. Everyone should be committed to a shared goal of creating something extraordinary.

Encouraging Conflict and Adaptation:

• Annicken talks about the need for a culture that encourages healthy conflict and the willingness to let go of ideas that may not align with the company's strategic direction. This includes the ability to adapt.

Resilience in Innovation:

• Resilience is key to navigating the ups and downs of the innovation process. Being part of something bigger than oneself can drive collective success and help teams overcome challenges.

Chapters

• 0:35 The Elements of Innovation Culture
• 3:14 Defining Innovation and Innovative Mindset
• 3:40 Creating a Trusting and Free Environment
• 5:40 Embracing Conflict and Killing Darlings
• 6:49 Balancing Egos and Collective Contribution

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:08] Well, welcome to It's an Inside Job Bite Size Fridays, your weekly dose of resilience, optimism, and well-being to get you ready for the weekend. Now, each week, I'll bring you insightful tips and uplifting stories to help you navigate life's challenges and embrace a more positive mindset. And so with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[0:27] Music.

[0:36] Hey folks i'm glad you can join me for another bite-sized friday i'm your host jason lim so in today's episode we are featuring anakin r day you know i went back into the archives and dug up season 4 episode 19 and in today's bite size we're going to be discussing the essential elements of creating a culture that fosters continuous improvement and innovation within organizations and companies. Anakin will be sharing with us five important points. The first is the importance of embedding innovation within the culture rather than treating it as a separate entity. Second, how psychological safety and trust are crucial for fostering innovation. Third, the impact of common purpose and a collective mindset on driving innovation. Fourth, the necessity of flexibility and resilience in an innovative culture. And finally, last but not least, the strategies for balancing individual contributions and collective goals. So with that said, let's slip into the stream.

[1:37] I've been working with culture on the inside of large companies for quite a few years. I was part of Tenberg, which was a huge technology success company with a very, very strong focus on culture, as strong as it actually hired me as its chief culture officer. And this was back in 2002. That was long before people, most people talked about, you know, the importance of culture. And and my job was to help build uh the company to be able to do extraordinary things uh grow while keeping our values uh and become the world leader in technology in video conferencing that we were aiming to to become and um it was all about innovation but the interesting thing is we never talked about innovation so you know it's a little bit like uh the fish never talks about water we We never talked about innovation because that was everything that, you know, we stood for. It was all about challenging ourselves, thinking new, growing, learning, failing, trying again, you know, and not letting limiting beliefs stop us for anything.

[2:44] And so I've been asked many times about innovation culture and the innovation culture that I helped build in Tandberg. And that made me just think that I very rarely use the word innovation. I talk about culture, but it is about creating a culture that enables innovation. So that's kind of how I talk about it. But yes, you're right. I also have a very, you know, I'm passionate about innovation as such, but I don't think I use that word as much either, but I definitely do live by it. So, yeah. So thank you for reminding me of that.

[3:15] Yeah, no, no worries. No worries. Well, maybe I'd like to kind of maybe start there. I mean, you've come from, obviously, a culture of Tandberg originally that didn't have to use the word innovation because it was in its DNA as a company. From your perspective, how would you operationally define innovation? What is an innovative mindset like?

[3:40] Well, I think in order to create an environment that allows innovation, it has to be very trusting. It has to be very free. It has to allow people to come up with crazy ideas and not being afraid to be ridiculed or, you know, not being blamed if they make mistakes and all that. So it's very much about creating a safe environment. Environment we we talk a lot about psychological safety which i think is is crucial in order to have that trusting relationships uh it's about having a common purpose that everyone kind of knows why they're there and what they're working towards and i think the most dangerous thing you can do if you want to have an innovative culture is to uh limit people like also in the way they are organized or what they're asked to do and all that so you have very often you see companies where you have over here is the innovation department like you guys do innovation the rest of you do the work uh but i believe like if everyone in the whole company knows that okay we're here to do something extraordinary and we all need to look at all the time how we can do things better differently uh how we can take uh chances just to become like the best version of what we can be as a team as a company so for me it is it always boils down to culture it's the the environment that you create.

[5:04] And without that kind of environment, it's very hard to make real innovation happen. And I know this, because I've seen a lot of companies that are trying to figure out how to become more innovative and creative. But I always tell them, if you're not willing to do the hard work, which is actually creating a place where people dare to be innovative and they are inspired to be innovative, that's going to be a hard nut to crack.

[5:32] Innovation for me, there's a number of adjectives I could assign to that,

[5:37] such as change, such as creativity, such as curiosity. But an important element, I think, is also conflict. I mean, we can come up with innovative ideas, but sometimes we can become so enamored with our own idea that we stick all our eggs into one basket. gets. And if we don't learn to kill our darlings, you know, then we can get so, we can get so jaded if our idea doesn't float and it sinks. Now, I think part of an innovative culture from, I understand, and again, this is from a layman's perspective, is that you need to be able to have some level of conflict to discuss ideas, to play with ideas, but to understand that not all ideas will take off, that some will crash and burn, and that we have to some extent, you know, kill our darlings. What I mean by that, we can't be so locked in, so enamored on one particular idea because we've invested so much time. For me, innovation also means that there's a plethora of different ideas and

[6:44] that everyone brings in, you know, a spectrum of different ideas to play with. I mean, what's some of your thoughts on this?

[6:53] Well well i have another great example to you of the first thing you talked about that you sometimes have all your darlings and this was back in in the tamberg days uh and we had you know the r&d department and we're working on lots of different products and and solutions and all that right and then um like once in a while and actually quite often there could be a team that had worked so hard on a project and they were so happy and they were so proud of their achievement And they've given it all for such a long time, for a year. And then there's like a strategy meeting where you're actually looking at, okay, what is going to be our core products, core business moving forward? And they actually had to kill some of those projects, even though they had gone really well, even though they had this team and they could have worked on it for a year and created something extraordinary.

[7:47] But being able to say, you know what, it was great. You did an amazing job, but this is not going to be part of our portfolio or strategy. So we just have to stop this project. It's a really, really hard thing to do as a leader. And it's a really hard thing to experience as a person who's given their all and their, you know, night and day for such a long time. But then again, you come back to culture. Because if everyone is there, they know they're there for a greater purpose. They're there for making the company and the team and these products go out in the world and make it a better world, which was what we really believed and still think, to a larger extent, we did in Timber because we were one of the first ones who brought video conferencing to the world.

[8:33] But the fact that people then accepted it and we even had like little like morning time, like it was like a week or two, just like chill, work on some fun project before we start on the next one. But everyone understood the reasoning behind it. They respected it. Even though they didn't like it, there was also a, well, you know, thanks to the culture and a common understanding that sometimes that just happens. So, yes, you're so right. Right. And I think you said another thing, which is extremely important, and that is you just cannot have egos in such a setting, because if there's an ego and a person with his own or her own agenda who wants to be there and stand like a shining star and just like they go to the deathbed to just like make this product live on, you know, it will be of the wrong reasons. sense. So you also need people to collectively buy into we here as a part of something bigger than ourselves. And we're doing this together. And it's not about me or you or them. It's about all of us. And I think when you create that kind of culture, you know, you can handle anything. And you talk a lot about resilience. I heard you talk about that. And I think that is like you create that kind of resilience that you can take the ups and downs and the challenges that comes along the way because you're part of something bigger.

[9:55] If you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. You will find the link in the episode in the show notes. So make sure you hit that subscribe button and I'll be back next week with my long form conversational episodes on Monday and the latest Bite Sites episode on Friday and have yourself a relaxing and rejuvenating weekend.

[10:15] Music.