"Little drops of water make a mighty ocean.”
- Julia Carney
We see it all too often. An organization desires to adopt Exploratory Leadership practices to build a more innovative culture and propel its growth. The organization invests in a development program like Expedition for key team members or for the organization at large. Following the program, the participating team members, with a renewed sense of clarity, confidence, and motivation, go back to their work and an organization that is unchanged; one that fails to incentivize their development and the application of their newly learned exploratory practices. As you can image, the end of this story is not ideal. Ugh!
What is equally, if not more, important to developing our teams around new values and behaviors is clearly incentivizing those values and behaviors we want embodied and put into practice. Exploration and innovation are no exception.
Many successful businesses, organizations, leaders, and their teams are intentional and committed to ongoing learning through the use of exploratory practices on a regular basis. They see it as an ongoing journey, not a destination. It’s like consistently going to the gym to maintain fitness. There is always progress to be made.
Exploration and innovation require regular and ongoing application and action, and both are essential leadership skills at all levels of any organization. Like any developed skill or practice, ongoing incentives are critical to maintaining effectiveness and further development. If you’re looking for ongoing and consistent application of a new skillset, there should be ongoing and consistent incentives for it.
Given that a newly developed skill or practice is additive and differs from the norm, it is often necessary to think differently and additively with our incentives as well. While there is much to consider when it comes to motivating our teams, here are three essentials when it comes to incentivizing exploration and innovation:
Elevating the conversation around exploration and innovation and recognizing them as “must do” vs. a “like to do” can help align and incentivize the organization from the top down. While innovation is often assumed to be an input to our strategic activities and growth, it can then be siloed to certain team members, departments, and projects. By putting it front and center, and recognizing it as an imperative across the organization, we create a domino effect of consistent focus, actions, and outcomes that is otherwise difficult to achieve.
Not all exploration and innovation activities are created equal. But that doesn’t mean it’s not all important and meaningful work. There is a tendency to focus on, and thus incentivize, big outcomes - what ultimate value was created or achieved? We need to see exploration and innovation as a continuum with incremental innovation (e.g., internal optimization) on one end and transformative innovation (e.g., breakthrough change) on the other end. Transformative innovations are equivalent to hitting homeruns in baseball. But when it comes to hitting homeruns, three things hold true: 1. Being a homerun hitter doesn’t come without a lot of practice; 2. Hitting homeruns often comes with hitting a lot of singles and doubles along the way (and plenty of strikeouts!); and 3. It’s often the singles and doubles that really make the difference and help win games.
The same is true when it comes to exploration and innovation, and we need to equally encourage the other end of the continuum, the incremental innovations and internal optimizations that come from more near-term efforts and smaller steps forward.
Return on investment (ROI) is a meaningful and necessary business metric. When it comes to exploration, we encourage a slightly different approach – Return on Learning (ROL). Learning can have a compounding effect if we harvest our lessons learned, share them with others, and apply them to future activities, projects, and business challenges. So often though, we see our efforts as a zero-sum game – either we win or we lose. What if instead we win or we learn? Incentivizing learning outcomes is such a valuable practice, yet often missed opportunity. Taking it a step further, rewarding learning, often through consistent sharing and recognition, is a small yet mighty way to reinforce and incentivize the ongoing skills and behaviors of exploration and innovation.
Questions to Explore:
- How do you intentionally incentivize exploration and innovation for yourself and others?
- How can you elevate and set expectations for exploration and innovation in your organization’s strategy?
- Can you identify recent examples (for yourself or for your team) across the innovation continuum, “incremental innovations” through “transformative innovation”? If so, how were those outcomes rewarded?
Equipping yourself and your team with Exploratory Leadership skills empowers you to navigate even the most turbulent times. As our world continues to evolve, this is more important than ever. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can become and Exploratory Leader, we think you’ll love the 2nd edition of our book, Explore or Expire. Explore or Expire will outfit you with the principles—and their supporting lessons, questions, and practices—that you need to tackle the unknown. Available for pre-order now!