People who are engaged in their work make appropriate adjustments without being told to. They require less supervision and solve problems more quickly. In other words, engaged employees are easier to manage. Without engagement, the only levers available to managers are command and control, reward and punish. That may keep things afloat, but it’s not a path to innovation and growth.
The hard truth is—ahem—maybe your company isn’t getting enough good ideas because you’re not as good as you think you are at recognizing a good idea when you get one.
In your business, are you trusting people to make good independent decisions—and providing the requisite resources to support those decisions? Are you willing to loosen up on command and control in order to foster collaboration and flexibility? Do you encourage an ongoing dialogue over how to best achieve your objectives? The degree to which you do those things will to a great degree determine your ability to innovate.
Here’s an interesting question: If your company is really responding to customer needs and not merely pushing product, what has changed upstream from your sales force to enable that to happen? If you’re not making substantive changes in your products or services, can you honestly say that you’re responding to your customers?
As we go forward, we will increasingly view innovation as a set of behaviors...our ability to adapt, improvise and solve novel problems will increasingly define how effective we all are in all aspects of our lives.