Innovation – Role of Management

I recently read a great blog on role of management in innovation, see http://www.missionmindedmanagement.com/innovation-snobbery-is-not-serving-organizations

I think Michelle Malay Carter makes a great point.  Management role is everything in innovation.  Their role must be to encourage renewal and continuous improvement in every aspect of the business.  Too often the day to day busyness gets in the way of encouraging innovation.  Often management get annoyed when somebody comes up with a question or idea which challenges their basic assumptions or preconceived ideas.  If the reaction is one of annoyance or impatience then the people will likely in future keep those ideas to themselves.  Building this culture is difficult but one of these incidents can set it back a long way. 

How many managers or measure on the record in providing continuous improvement?  More often the manager is measured by achieving certain operational objectives.  Look at your own personal goals, do any of them include innovation targets or improvement targets? 

I suspect they are like my golf game.  When I try to make some improvements in my game, I often have to take some poor scores until the improvement shows results.  I am often tempted to go back to my old ways.  We often get comfortable in doing things the way they have always been done.  You all have heard or felt the instruction from your boss or co-workers, "Don’t rock the boat".

Project X is committed to encouraging innovation and looking for ways to help our clients do things in different ways that will lead to improvement.  We also look for new ways of performing our own work.  These blogs have been one of these experiments.  We are now working on some ideas for a Wiki for our people.  We want to Rapid Results using Agile methods to provide innovative solutions to complex issues.  Clarify, Simplify, Innovate.

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