How creativity and innovation can thrive
A look how creating a culture of learning, truth-telling, and psychological safety impacts companies goals.
“Building a culture of learning at work” from Strategy + Business shares an excerpt from Think Again, by Adam Grant. It provides an analysis that psychological safety is required to create a corporate culture where people be accountable for mistakes, raise problems, and provide solutions.
In performance cultures, people often become attached to best practices. The risk is that once we’ve declared a routine the best, it becomes frozen in time. We preach about its virtues and stop questioning its vices, no longer curious about where it’s imperfect and where it could improve. Organizational learning should be an ongoing activity, but best practices imply it has reached an endpoint. We might be better off searching for better practices.
But to be able to have a culture where psychological safety exists, we also need a culture where employees can tell the truth. In a recent article from Psyche, the authors explore what it takes for instilling a culture of truth-telling.
In place of such an individually oriented approach, people in leadership should work towards developing a culture within the organisation that supports truth-telling. To do this, we suggest that people take an incremental approach to rediscovering the potential benefits of truth-telling. Since our fears are often real, individuals should seize low-risk opportunities to experiment with truth-telling up and down the hierarchy and pay careful attention to the consequences. If the truth is well-received, the risk tolerance of a workforce will grow. Those in positions of authority will likely need to lead by example in order to encourage such experimentation. They can do so by sharing more rather than less of the truth about how they arrive at difficult decisions.
Both a culture of learning and a culture of truth-telling can work together to create a space in which it’s ok to fail so long as one learns from it. There’s little to no value when employees feel like they need to find the spin to show that everything they have done is successful; it’s as important to identify that which does not work in order to improve and grow. Those who have a curious personality and a hunger to keep learning will always have an advantage. They know that what is best practice, is only true within a set parameter, a time-frame, or certain constraints. They look for ways to learn and grow themselves, and the work they do.
The world evolves and so too should our practices; we should continue to test them out to ensure they are still “best.” Ceratin spaces evolve every few years, just look at social media to see how what was a best practice 2-3 years ago is outdated now.
Only within corporate cultures where trust, honesty, and psychological safety exist can creativity and innovation can thrive.
5 links in my open tabs:
Radio Garden: Explore the world one radio station at a time. <<cool>>
COVID-19 Vaccination Standby list: Get notified if there are extra, unused doses reach people within driving distance who want to get vaccinated. <<useful>>
Positioning Spinning Wheel: Ulli Appelbaum built this awesome tool to provide additional perspectives when you’re working on a problem. <<insightful>>
#WeAllRiseTogether has partnered with The Acceleration Project (TAP) to help Black and Brown business owners advance and grow their businesses with high caliber advice around strategic planning and finance to marketing. << Apply Here >>
Guide to creating a Zine: Just one of the useful guides in a style that reminds me of the early web. <<useful/nostalgic>>