Innovation needs you to listen to all voices

Jul 15

Duh, right?

I'll be honest - I kind of hate the word innovation. It's not the innovation itself that I hate, it's what people have done with it. A quick Google News search for the word included such gems as:

Where Does Innovation Happen Today? Everywhere

The marijuana industry needs innovation to thrive

Can You Make Innovation Happen?

I could go on.

Having been in the startup world (another word I have grown to hate, sorry, your PR company isn't a "startup", it's just a new business) in New York for a decade now, there are few companies that embody what innovation actually means more than betaworks. So when I spotted an event on their calendar called "Creating a Culture of Innovation", I figured it might be worth stopping by to hear what they had to say. Plus, a friend works out of betaworks studios, so I'd get to see her as well.

The panel was terrific - early Uber employee and current member of Pipeline Angels Nicole Cuellar was the moderator; then we had Megan O'Connor, co-founder and CEO at Hi Clark; Christina Ross, CEO and co-founder at Cube; and Jeanine Mendez, COO and co-founder of KindWork.

The night was full of gems, and things that made me think a lot about what it really means to create an innovative company.

It all starts with the hiring, Mendez pointed out. If your staff doesn't reflect the wide variety of backgrounds, you lose a lot of opportunities. Those backgrounds can relate to race, ethnicity, or gender. Or can relate to age, socio-economic level, or place of birth.

If everyone in your company looks alike and thinks alike, how much of an opportunity is there, really, to think of new ideas to attract new customers or clients?

Study after study shows that the more diverse a team or workplace, the more profitable the endeavor.

Creating a culture where innovation can actually flourish goes beyond just having a diversity of backgrounds on board, of course. You have to practice what you preach, and as a business owner, boss, supervisor, or whatever you are, you need to both be open to feedback and open with your feedback.

Once you have your team in place, you need to make sure all members have a voice, Christine Ross offered. If they were valuable enough to hire, they should be valuable enough to give input, even if it's not directly their department.

The biggest problem with feedback is that it's too often not absorbed properly, or it's not delivered properly. Meghan O'Connor had a couple of terrific tips in that regard:

When receiving feedback, summarize it back to the person who gave it to you. Make sure you're understanding what they said, or that they said what you heard.
Don't immediately respond to feedback. Take it in, then sleep on it. Ask if you can revisit it the next day so you can think about it.

via GIPHY

This doesn't mean you have to jump through hoops to make sure that every suggestion made by every person is implemented. It means you should let everyone know their voice is important and heard and consider ideas from all corners.

A corollary to this, of course, is allowing people to fail, and allowing them to fix their own mistakes.

As a parent, I know how tempting it is to just take over when something is done wrong and do it right. Man, it can save so much time.

But no one learns anything when they make a mistake and you fix it. In fact, you create a culture where you're expected to fix everything and no one else really knows how to get the job done properly. It can be discouraging, to have it taken from your hands and fixed without your being able to understand how or why.

It's very empowering - though it can also feel intimidating - to own up to your mistake and then be allowed to fix it.

By fixing it, they become part of the solution, rather than just the one who created the problem, Nicole Cuellar pointed out.