The hard truth about what an innovation culture is

Innovative cultures are usually described as quite fun and laid back. They are characterized by tolerance for failure, high levels of psychological safety, and a lot of experimentation. While all of this is true, it is only one side of the coin. Harvard has found that for a truly successful culture of innovation, there are other, tougher, less fun behaviors, such as intolerance of incompetence, rigorous discipline, brutal honesty, strong leadership, and a high level of individual accountability.

There are five main characteristics that they have been telling us about what an innovation culture is:

1. Failure tolerance.
2. Willingness to experiment.
3. psychological security.
4. Highly collaborative.
5. Horizontal: Non-hierarchical.

You, dear reader, can find abundant material regarding these five points. In this article we will focus on those behaviors that are not talked about much and counterbalance them, creating a virtuous tension that allows achieving high levels of creativity and at the same time high levels of performance.

Gary Pisano, in a fantastic article from Harvard called "Innovation is not just games and fun", defines that there are actually five behaviors that we are not told about and that each one creates a virtuous tension with those mentioned above:

• Intolerance for incompetence: innovation is undoubtedly accompanied by failure. To take risks we must have a minimum platform of skills, outside of mediocre performance where bad habits and poor management are not allowed. There must be a minimum quality standard. As Gary says: we should celebrate the learning that comes from failure, not poor performance.
• Highly disciplined: the innovation process includes experimentation, but it is important to establish criteria that allow us to decide with discipline on the facts at the end of each experiment. It is not about shooting to execute the "best ideas" in short sections. We must be disciplined in learning, validating hypotheses, and analyzing the evidence.
• Individual Accountability: people must be able to make decisions and take responsibility for the consequences, which means having an environment that promotes collaboration but at the same time incorporates a sense of responsibility in people who autonomously make decisions and become owners of Your results.
• Brutal frankness: an adequate balance between being frank and respectful is what allows an innovation value flow to flow more effectively. That is, opposing ideas and proposals, based on powerful arguments, contribute to better results, because it allows, on the one hand, to create sharpness for analysis as part of the competencies, and on the other hand, it provides principles and criteria to be more effective when discuss and create alignment.
• Strong Leadership: Leaders need to set clear priorities and strategic directions so that people within the organization can unleash their creativity in a strategic direction. Which in turn provides the opportunity for leaders to be closer to the innovation process and not be distant leaders.

In conclusion, to promote a culture of successful innovation, it is necessary, among other things, to place emphasis on enabling beforehand, a minimum platform of competencies where we ensure that we maintain a quality standard, we promote frank and respectful conversations with powerful arguments and we empower people with clear priorities and strategic directions, so that they can adopt criteria that incorporate a sense of responsibility when making decisions and move forward as a single team.

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