Encourage employees to take advantage of every opportunity

"What we need is more innovation, and our employees need to think more creatively and to be more entrepreneurial." I've been advocating this for years and it's disappointing that things don't seem to change. The

This is a customer's recent feeling that he is an executive at a mid-sized professional services firm. To his grief, although his organization encourages employees to take advantage of every opportunity to try new ideas, there are few employees who actually do.

I asked him what he meant by "encouraging employees to take advantage of every opportunity".

He explains that the need for innovation is a thread that runs through all the recent communications. Company executives have repeatedly stressed that they need to innovate or lose their footing. They discussed specific issues that missed market opportunities and are now catching up. They worry that if there are any more such mistakes, the company will lose its leading position in the market. Sadly, most of the company's employees are "understood", but their behaviour remains unchanged.

So I asked him how he treated the failure in the organization. He didn't know how to answer the question. He had never really thought about it before. His first immediate reaction was, "(failure is) something that should be avoided." He immediately saw the inherent question of the answer.

Unfortunately, this customer story is very common in today's organization. It is logical that companies need to do more innovation, but innovation has not emerged over time. The reason is simple: this is an emotional problem, not a logical one. Innovation efforts are risky and may (in definition) fail. And failure can make people feel tingling. So if you haven't figured out how to pull the plug from your failure, you won't be able to innovate.

First of all, define what is a smart failure. Everyone in your organization knows what success is. That's what you'll be listed on the calendar: increase revenue, lower costs, launch a product, etc. It is much less to know what is wise to fail, but to fail is to be the one to be congratulated. Those are thoughtful and elaborate plans that have not been done for some reason. Define them so that the employee knows the acceptable scope of the failure. If you don't define failure, all failures seem dangerous, and this will stifle creativity and innovation.

The question to consider when defining a smart failure is: What causes intelligent failure in our organization? What causes stupid failure? Specifically, what guidelines, practices, or processes can describe the characteristics of smart risk? Can we tell our employees what obvious examples to demonstrate the failure of intelligence? You want your employees to know the right and wrong way to fail.

The next step is not only to reward success, but also to reward smart failure. Once you define a smart failure, reward them as you reward smart success. This will send a powerful message to employees about what behavior is encouraged in the organization. For example, India's Tata Group's "Innovation Vision" (INNOVISTA) project, not only do they issue the best Innovation Awards of the Year, they also award the best trial prizes, the latter being called "the courage to try the prize" ("Dare to try Award"), is the most thoughtful thinking and the failure of good execution. When they first launched the project in 2008, few teams were shortlisted for the "Try it Out" award. Then everyone saw the winners and other award winners with the CEO's praise. By the year 2011, 132 teams were shortlisted for the award. The Tata Group's thoughtful commendation has changed employees ' perceptions of the value of risk-taking. The intellectual risk of employees increases, and so does the number of innovative ideas.

Finally, being a manager is a way to make your risk transparent; As a leader, you take the risk to get in that seat. You have achieved the fair results of your success, and have experienced some unforgettable failures. Share these things with your subordinates. Share with them how you handled these two things, how you made mistakes, how you learned to mitigate risk, how to deal with uncertainty, and how you succeeded. Let them see your decision-making process and how you weigh the pros and cons. Let them know that you will support them when they try and learn to take the risk of being smart.

Doug Sandherm (Doug Sundheim) has been a leading and strategic consultant for more than 20 years, helping leaders to promote organizational and personal development.