Be Less Zombie

33Enabling Ingenuity

Equipping people to turn on bolder innovation.

Innovation as a Core Competency

Most organisations simply don't teach people what innovation is, how it works, where their personal strengths may lie, or how to do it well. Yet they expect ingenuity on demand.

A training video on brainstorming that's playing in the background whilst doing your email isn't going to move many innovation needles. Harsh, perhaps, but sadly true in many organisations.

And whilst innovation sometimes benefits from serendipity, great innovators don't leave such high-stakes outcomes to chance. They train and coach people in innovation and help it show up in daily life through processes, rewards and metrics. It is cause and effect. It's a core competency for all.

Train Less, Do More

Innovation often has a mystical reputation for being unteachable. Or is a power that leaders instinctively develop by virtue of their seniority. Neither are true.

I've watched nervous employees bloom into confident innovators inside dozens of organisations. But don't expect it to come from a training programme. Not on its own anyway.

‘Learning innovation is 2% instruction and 98% application,’ says Andy Billings, Vice President of Profitable Creativity at Electronic Arts Inc. Based on the many contexts in which I've seen innovation capability develop, I would agree.

Yet when many companies decide to train their employees in innovation capabilities, the model is usually flipped. People attend a course ...