Fostering Innovation and Change

My favorite thing about teaching amazing young students who are eager to learn is that every chance I have to share something, I get something in return. It’s truly a gift to me.

To foster change, innovation and open-minded attitudes, consider the following:

1. Inherent in change is conflict. Many leaders try to squash conflict or avoid it altogether. “Don’t bring me problems, bring me the solutions.” But the journey to change should be a push-pull relationship among people who need to be engaged and involved. Questioning, challenging and raising obstacles to implementing change doesn’t mean the change effort won’t happen, or that individuals are actively resisting it. It means they need a forum to talk about what might need to be addressed or that is getting overlooked, or to raise concerns about the change’s impact on their professional lives. Embrace conflict. “Good” conflict isn’t fighting and yelling, it is being open to other’s opinions even when they don’t agree with you and trying to learn from one another.

2. Create a psychologically safe environment for people to raise ideas without punitive responses that might shut them down. Last week in class, we reviewed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Safety and security sits at the bottom of the pyramid. If team members don’t believe they are “safe,” they won’t be able to contribute in a meaningful way to the organization. In many change efforts I’ve seen lately, the change is top-down – “This is what we’re doing” – and there is no room for questions or observations. Team members need to be safe to share their concerns and insights. If they can’t be authentic and they aren’t able to voice what they see, they won’t really embrace what’s happening. They will stay stuck on the first level of the hierarchy, seeking a safe place to wait out what’s happening in the organization.

3. Top management must allow for failure. This is one of the hardest aspects of change management. Most change efforts are put in place because management wants to win – against the competition, for their shareholders or partners/owner, for the team to get better. Winning and being successful is the end goal. If it weren’t, there usually wouldn’t be a reason to change anything! However, the road to change is often littered with problems top management cannot even anticipate. Failures along the way doesn’t mean ultimate failure of the initiative. If top management views failure as information, things that don’t work can be beneficial. They are an opportunity to figure out a different way to get to the end destination.

4. Along with this idea of failure is that in every change effort, risk must be embraced and understood as part of the process. Management wants to minimize the risk and figure out the best ideas. To implement a change effort that is risk-free is nearly impossible. Change means the unknown and the unanticipated. From the smallest advisory firm to the largest organizations, middle management assumes the largest amount of risk. These leaders must answer to the top partners or management who are pushing through the change, and they must balance the team members who have to implement and embrace the change. There is tremendous risk inherent in sitting in this role. A good change effort focuses on middle management and gives them the tools and support to balance the risk factors effectively.

5. Diversity matters and is important to the outcome. I’ve seen so many situations where leaders surround themselves with “yes” people who agree with what they have to say and work hard to implement the change without questioning or debating. Research by Harvard Business School shows that diverse teams lead to better ultimate outcomes because they do push back on one another, question one another, and often notice nuances and small things important to consider. Working with a diverse group is hard. It’s much easier to find people who think and act like you do, and everyone marches along together. But the outcome is never as strong as when the leaders embrace the diversity and use it. If you don’t have diversity in your teams, find it.

6. You can’t force innovation onto team members. In all the firms I work with, people are beyond busy. Staffing cuts, resource reduction and an increasing workload all lead to team members feeling defeated and burned out regularly. Instead of asking, “How can we innovate differently?” of people who are overwhelmed, ask them what obstacles they are facing and how you can help to remove them. If the leader cares about the obstacles and will put steps in place to try and mitigate them for the team, the team often responds by challenging the status quo and considering new ways of doing things. It has to be a two-way street; the team has to know you are committed and serious about helping them to succeed.

7. Indecision is a decision. When teams do embrace change and want to work to bring it about, give them a roadway to do this. Sometimes the team is ready, but the top management or partners/owners stand in the way. There isn’t enough information, they are concerned about client impact or they simply don’t understand the change so they resist it. Doing nothing is making a choice. Your team might see that while change is discussed, it isn’t really lived and therefore they lose momentum for helping to implement it.

It isn’t easy to bring about change – especially in an organization that is working relatively well and doesn’t have the need for wholesale change. Everyone has seen the company that survived for many years, maybe even decades, but didn’t change with the market and/or competitive landscape. Those firms ultimately fall behind and must either be acquired, shut down or regroup and implement aggressive change efforts to reinvent themselves. Be on the lookout for change opportunities and recognize the important components to make the change effort successful and effective.

Beverly Flaxington co-founded The Collaborative, a consulting firm devoted to business building for the financial services industry, in 1995. The firm also founded and manages the Advisors Sales Academy. She is currently an adjunct professor at Suffolk University teaching undergraduate and graduate students Entrepreneurship and Leading Teams. Beverly is a Certified Professional Behavioral Analyst (CPBA) and Certified Professional Values Analyst (CPVA).

She has spent over 25 years in the investment industry and has been featured in Selling Power Magazine and quoted in hundreds of media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MSNBC.com, Investment News and Solutions Magazine for the FPA. She speaks frequently at investment industry conferences and is a speaker for the CFA Institute.

Read more articles by Beverly Flaxington