The world around us is becoming increasingly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) with each passing year. Global economic and socio-environmental landscape has changed drastically and unpredictably, especially during in the COVID ERA.
Changes in customer behaviour and their buying patterns push companies across the world into fighting every day to stay relevant
Consistent innovation emerges as the key to give any business a strategic advantage over its rivals to survive and thrive amidst all this competition..
It is often seen that while all business leaders encourage their employees to be creative and innovative, very few organisational cultures accept risk-taking even though it is an integral part of the entire creativity and innovation process.
JulieWinkle Giulioni writes in her article that while leaders talk about value of mistakes, and learning from failure, few organisations encourage risk taking and accept failure at work.
Businesses fight a constant battle between improving the top line whilst maintaining the bottom line. Many times this creates a conflicting environment at the work place. Leaders demand high productivity and higher revenues. At the same time, they push their teams to drastically cut down the costs. They seem to be averse to the idea of experimenting with bold creative ideas simply because they cannot “risk” it.
Over time, these mixed signals create a culture which is averse to creativity and innovation.
In order to test creative ideas, risk taking is an important element of the entire innovation process.
So, how do we create a culture in this VUCA world to foster creativity by providing a safe risk taking environment for the employees?
Here are my top 5 suggestions –
1. Define Risk Taking
Gordon Tredgold, in his article, talks about Smart Risk Taking. This means “to clearly communicate limits to risk taking and have procedures in place for review of any proposed risk that would breach these limits, a kind of risk review board.”
No organization would want their team to endanger their business by taking excessive risks; however, well thought smart risks that have a potential to grow the business are totally worth standing up for.
It is important that leaders demonstrate their commitment towards encouraging safe risk taking, using informed methodologies, to enable their teams to experiment with new ideas.
2. Take Creative Risks
It’s true that nobody enjoys taking risks. But risks enable employees to think beyond the possible. Risk taking creates a possibility for a better outcome.
Ward Andrews writes about taking creative risks.
This means to invest time in understanding the risk to manage them intelligently. Start with a clear direction and take inputs from stakeholders before taking any rash decision.
Never be in a hurry to take risks. Do not take risks under any kind of pressure.
Creative risk taking implies that the leaders are willing to consider new experimental ideas before dismissing them completely.
This means to evaluate their pros and cons, organise discussions in an open and safe environment and invest time in the deliberate decision making process.
3. Train your team to assess risks
There are plenty of tools available to help leaders assess the degree of risk taking behaviour of their teams.
These situational risk taking assessments tools can help teams identify their risk taking ability and can also guide them to deal with adverse outcomes in different simulated environments.
A well thought training strategy to educate your team about risk taking can go a long way in helping them to take smart and creative risks for the growth of business.
4. Be a Role Model
Leaders must lead by example. When employees see their leaders trying new things, they feel safe about presenting and discussing new ideas with them.
A leader who leads by example is someone who self-motivated to try out new ideas and experiment for an innovative outcome.
There is no point in encouraging employees to innovate whilst demonstrating aversion to accepting fresh and creative ideas. Creating a safe work environment which encourages smart and creative risk taking is an essential trait of a good leader.
5. Acknowledge the Efforts
When employees experiment with a smart risk through their creative thinking, the results are not always bound to succeed.
But progressive organisations do not reprimand such failures instead they reward the effort of the employee and allow the employee to learn from their mistake.
Risk taking removes the possibility of looking back to wonder “What If?”
If innovation is the key to a successful business then risk- taking is a big part of this process.
Safe playing teams cannot create out-of–the-box products and services for their customers. If we look at the greatest achievers of the world, we would see that one trait that is common in all of them was their risk taking instinct that enabled them to go beyond what was possible.
Encouraging creativity of employees gives them a sense of purpose and with the right push it also instils in them the personal accountability to do better at work every day.
Innovation is the catalyst for change. Organizations that cultivate a culture of innovation create disruption in the markets and are the ones that survive and thrive longer.
Connecting unrelated ideas in ways that no one has thought up before is a big contribution that can be made from employees provided they are encouraged and empowered.
To create a culture of innovation, organizations will have to make cultural shift i.e. creating a culture of learning from failure.