Blog: The unexpected element driving innovation—and how you can unlock its potential
By Alexandra Matthiesen, WOTC Advisory Board Member
If I were to ask you, “What is innovation?” I suspect you’d be quick to respond. Your answer might include references to newness and novelty—maybe descriptions of products and services you deem innovative. You might highlight innovators, like Alan Turing or Steve Jobs, listing characteristics of their lifestyles and personalities that seem to inspire the sort of creativity that results in awesome outcomes.
Our desire to define these details is natural—the market routinely rewards those who exude creative ingenuity and the organizations capable of scaling their visions.
Yet, many companies perpetuate cultural and organizational standards that directly conflict with what’s required to spark innovation. Staff demonstrate hesitancy in coloring outside the figurative corporate lines; they resist sharing ideas and insights that may force questioning the status quo.
Simply put, many professionals are afraid to do things differently.
Encouraging teams to explore what’s unproven
No matter the nature of your work, whether you’re leading a team developing the next LLM-centric software or implementing a new administrative process, exploring innovative solutions can elicit tension. When you ask people to innovate, at a brass-tacks level, you’re asking them to be vulnerable. And vulnerability can be uncomfortable—especially in the workplace.
Sure, there can be a sense of freedom in assessing what’s working and what’s not, but there’s also a very real threat of backlash when we propose alternatives that may not reflect the current standard.
So, how can we draw from known key elements of the world’s most innovative companies to build teams where stepping up to the leading edge is possible? It starts with psychological safety.
The interplay of innovation and psychological safety
“Psychological safety” made its way into corporate vernacular about 10 years ago through Google’s Project Aristotle—a two-year internal study by the company to define the behaviors and patterns of its top performing teams. To sum the results in a statement: Google’s most successful teams reported high psychological safety.
The concept itself was mainstreamed by Harvard Business School’s Amy C. Edmondson—an organizational psychology researcher initially seeking to identify a correlation between cross-team collaboration and reported errors in medical environments.
Edmondson believed her research would unveil a negative correlation between high collaboration on teams and reported error rates—so, teams demonstrating strong collaborative spirit would report fewer errors in their work. Yet, she discovered the opposite.
On teams where colleagues communicated and connected with ease, more errors were documented. So, what gives? The catch is in the wording, or more specifically, the adjective: Reported errors.
Edmondson had uncovered a truthier truth: Collaborative teams are more likely to report errors, not hide them. In psychologically safe environments, people can share outcomes and perspectives without fear of negative repercussions, even when the information presents concerns or conveys alternative ways of thought.
Embracing discomfort for the win
Now, the effort of evolving a workplace ecosystem is no small lift; given your individual professional reality and its variables, it may seem daunting. Fortunately, there are a few accessible, even easy things you can do to boost the sense of shared ground on your team.
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Ask questions—and practice saying, “I don’t know.” Simple, right? Demonstrating openness to exploring possibilities requires strength. So often, we believe we must hold a definitive position—especially as leaders. It requires vulnerability to acknowledge where we don’t have a clear understanding; where we have an opportunity to learn.
- Be attentive to language when talking through opportunities to improve. For example, instead of asking, “Where did we fail?” you could ask, “Did our outcome meet your personal measure for success? How could we improve as we move forward as a team?”
- Take failure as valuable data—and reward it with gratitude. What better way to encourage openness to facing challenges—and thriving through them—than to respond with gratitude? The power of “thank you” is real. The next time your team encounters a misstep, acknowledge the value of the newfound tribal knowledge and thank its messenger.
Innovation requires both the ability and willingness to do things differently. We cannot expect colleagues to show up ready to offer up fresh takes if we haven’t laid a foundation of psychological safety. Luckily, it’s possible to begin shifting the state of your workplace in a positive direction through simple acts of awareness and vulnerability.
You might just position your team to create and deliver the industry’s next big innovation.
Additional resources
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CRN on Inclusive Leadership | Cass Cooper
Bio: Alexandra Matthiesen brings over 15 years of experience to the Women of the Channel Advisory Board, having supported marketing initiatives for some of the industry’s most impactful technology companies, including Intellectual Ventures, Microsoft, and Veritas Technologies, among others. In addition to her professional post and commitment to WOTC, she maintains board positions with CyberUp and Hepatitis Education Project. She believes everyone has a right to a voice in our shared, tech-driven future. In her off hours, she’s into momming her fifteen-year-old son and running big distance—grounded literally and metaphorically in the heart of Seattle, Washington.