“Welcome to the Proven, Practical, Profitable Innovation podcast! I am Richard and I thank you very much for taking time out of your busy day to listen to this podcast.
My goal is to make sure you get a high return on your time investment listening to this podcast. I want you to immediately be able to use the information in this podcast to help you sell more and make more.
Google along with Apple are two of the most long-term innovative companies. It’s not surprising with Google’s spirit of innovation that they would also take on innovation in the workplace. It’s well-known that Google hires very talented people. It’s clear from their workplace innovation that they are creating a culture and environment that enables these very talented people to be all they can be.
Please be sure to listen to the end of this podcast where I give you an exciting preview of future podcasts.
If after listening to this podcast you feel a need for more help, please contact me directly—my email is richard@i2ge.com. You can also go to my website—i2ge.com– where you can explore many innovation topics, especially check out the DIY Innovation Training on the menu bar. We customize all the training programs to our clients’ unique needs and circumstances.
Google workplace innovation
In my six years of teaching at Arizona State University in the school of management, one of the courses I taught was on advanced leadership and the workplace. Being a person who lives and breathes innovation, I was always struck at how little innovation had touched the workplace. Yes, we had moved from offices to cubicles, but it’s not clear that is much of a positive. And yes there is experimentation with things like telecommuting and job sharing. While interesting, it’s doubtful that these experiments, even if successful, are applicable to all/most workplaces.
Here are some of the major innovations Google has brought to the workplace. Most of these come from a well-written article in Fortune magazine.
Trust your people: while we can all agree that this is a good practice, what makes it an innovative practice is that the vast majority of companies either don’t fully trust or even partially trust their employees. They have a vast array of policies and procedures designed to verify even some of the smallest details. Distrust also goes beyond just formal policies and procedures. In my first book, The New Wisdom of Business, I provide a detailed case study on MorningStar, a financial services company, and its founder. I was struck by its vacation and sick days policy. It’s vacation policy was, “if you need to take vacation take it.” And the sick day’s policy was “if you’re sick please take care of yourself and return to work when you’re healthy.” Now this is trust! I also learned that in practice the vacation policy resulted in people taking far fewer days of vacation than they had previously – interesting.
Hire only people who are better than you: in my experience, the vast majority of managers would have problems with this since they believe they are the best and certainly anyone they would hire could not even be as good as them. One of the biggest workplace challenges in my experience is the associated traits of egotism and narcissism. You will recall in the quantum idea generation podcast series, I talked about the great importance of diversity. Inherent in the concept of diversity is that in the group there are always people who have more experience and skills in some areas than the other people. For diversity to work in idea generation, there needs to be a deep respect and understanding for the great qualities other people can bring to solving a particular innovation needed. Back to the workplace – this same philosophy applied to the workplace will create a rich and highly productive diversity of people who are in some dimensions always better than others in a diverse group.
Pay unfairly: in some of my teachings and writings, I have noted that human relations policies that call for treating everyone the same are just pure foolishness. The truth is, not everyone is the same. Study after study has shown that on the team about 10% of people are top performers – they can be producing 50% or higher of the actual results. So, since everyone is on the same team should they be paid the same? Not only no, but heck no. Financial compensation policies need to be constructed to reward the really top performers at dramatically higher rates than the average performer.
Give your work meaning: studies by Nielsen and people in the personal strengths business consistently show that there is a small group of people who are the top performers – maybe about 20%. What separates these people from the large group who see a job only as a paycheck and another smaller group that are actively disengaged and even inclined to sabotage is a level of meaning and purpose they see and what they’re doing. We know that when people have a very high sense of purpose like a noble purpose, that they are highly productive, innovative, and creative. The challenge then becomes instilling and inspiring meaning to the largest group of people who only see a job as a paycheck. To be clear, achieving this is not easy – there are no magic wands. Nonetheless, there are some proven ways of helping existing employees find important meaning and what they’re doing and hiring new people who very much want to have positive and even inspiring meeting and what they do every day.
Ongoing close.
What you can do today with this information.
First, I’ve only touched on some highlights from the subject. If you are interested a good book to read is Work Rules.
Second, while the four elements I shared in this podcast are innovative, the greater importance is that a workplace and culture that embraces these and other elements creates a very innovative culture. When you trust each other, when you feel you work has very positive purpose, and when you have the opportunity to work with people who are even more talented than you in some respects, it is a workplace and culture where quantum idea generation can be an everyday event. I have noted in some earlier podcasts about the extreme importance that company culture has relative to innovation. I’ve shared the company culture truly defines what a company will do and will not do, which essentially defines the parameters of their box in such a way that out-of-the-box thinking becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible. Thus, a culture that embraces these four points and others is well on its way to being highly productive, highly innovative, an exceptionally successful in the marketplace.
If you would like to see the key written points from this podcast, you can find them in my blog – i2ge.com/blog.
If you would like to contact me, please email me at richard@i2ge.com.
If you would like to create far more robust innovation capabilities within your business, I have a complete portfolio of training programs that we tailor to your unique needs. If you would like to learn more, go to the Innovate2Grow Experts website – i2Ge.com and click on DIY Innovation Training.
One of my six books is Proven Practical Innovation That Delivers Results. This very low-cost book is available at Amazon in paperback and has a Kindle book. Is truly packed with lots of practical help.
Importantly, if you found this podcast helpful, please consider helping us with a five-star rating for these podcast. Thank you in advance for your support.
A preview of some future podcasts.
Upcoming podcast focus on specific case studies and powerful innovation insights that are relevant to almost any business and business need.
The next podcast attempts to answer the intriguing question – can start up like operations survive and thrive within much larger corporations like General Electric and MasterCard. Can the learnings from these larger corporations help your innovation programs to be more successful?
Thank you very much for your time and I look forward to reconnecting with you soon. Please have a great day.
