Growth Mindset
Earlier this week, I was conversing with a client about a growth mindset, what it means to have a growth mindset, and how you instill it into your culture. First, we must look at what is a growth mindset and how it leads to an Innovation Culture.
According to an article from the Harvard Business Review, someone with a growth mindset views intelligence, abilities, and talents as learnable and capable of improvement through effort. Having a growth mindset can serve you in these four ways as you grow your business and product offerings:
- It allows you to move into new fields as the growth mindset is forward-thinking, not looking back on the past.
- It fosters resilience because when challenges, setbacks and failures arise your business and team rely on your ability to persevere.
- It enables you to iterate on your product by continuous testing, learning, and iteration.
- It keeps you humble, meaning there is always more to learn in order to evolve and grow as a person and organization.
Creating a culture of innovation is easier said than done
Creating a culture that attracts AND retains top talent takes work, time, and commitment from the top leaders within the organization.
So, how do you determine whether you have a good culture that is driving innovation and results? First, look at your mission statement and values. Are you leading with them and holding you and your team accountable in everything that you do to live up to the vision, mission, and values?
An example of companies who lead the pack in culture by living out their mission and values include; REI, Patagonia, Netflix,& Google.
As you’re creating your culture based on values and mission, don’t forget to think about diversity within your workforce, which creates different ways of thinking and brings innovation. If you’re not careful, you can create a “monoculture” inadvertently, which can stifle innovation in your organization. You also jeopardize the reach of your products and services to a narrowed target audience, one that looks and thinks like your employee base.
If you’re committed to a culture that drives innovation, look at your current culture and employee base and assess whether it truly is a diverse pool of talent. Ask yourself; “do we invite different ways of thinking or do we tend to hire people that are like us with the same views because it’s more comfortable.
At Intuitive Technology Group, we often have conversations about innovative cultures, given our space and expertise in the digital transformation world. Being innovative means bringing in different views and challenging ourselves to think and work differently. If you’re ready and committed to an innovative culture here are some tips on creating an innovative culture.
5 Tips on creating an innovative culture
- Commit a certain percent of your employees’ time to generate ideas and innovate. Create scheduled time and don’t allow other, “more important,” meetings to take this time over. A good rule of thumb is 5-10% of their time should be spent ideating.
- Reward employee behaviors when they are displaying the mindset and taking the time out of their day to ideate.
- Create an environment that encourages different ways of thinking. This can be a specific space in your company, off-site space, or home office.
- Accept failure as part of the innovation process. If you’re not failing, at least in small measures, you’re not innovating and pushing enough new ideas.
- Create cross-functional team collaboration that allows for thinking outside of your world. Bring someone in from different departments such as finance, product, marketing, sales, operations, and HR that will broaden your thinking and bring a different perspective.
Saying your an innovative culture will certainly attract talent, but if you don’t live it out and reward the behaviors, you’ll have a hard time retaining top talent.
*HBR Source https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/growth-mindset-vs-fixed-mindset
Author: Susan Rylance, COO Intuitive
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanrylance/