Embrace Failure and Create a Culture of Iterative Innovation
Tags: Company Culture, Innovation Management, Innovation

Embrace Failure and Create a Culture of Iterative Innovation

Iterative innovation requires a shift in mindset within every department in your company. Appnovation Follow Dec 8, 2020 · 5 min read

To innovate, you must fail. The single most significant hurdle I see with companies becoming more innovative is their inability to accept failure. It’s intrinsic to the businesses that do this well, and it’s a vision that must clearly be established by senior leadership and relentlessly reinforced.

As I talked about in my recent publication, Old Problems. New Solutions: How to Use Iterative Innovation to Grow Your Business, there are some common themes for the types of cultures I see at forward-thinking organizations. They…

…embrace on-going failure, …focus on changing the status quo, …have strong test-and-learn philosophies., …see their internal culture as a marketplace differentiator as much as their products or services, and …know that the product/service they have today won’t be what consumers want or need tomorrow.

If your employees are afraid of failure, your company will foster adversity to innovation. Simple as that. As a leader, it’s your job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Fail fast is a fine mantra, but it doesn’t capture the essence of the idea entirely. Instead of just being “fast,” failure needs to be wholly embraced as part of every step of your development process.

Know that innovation is a series of small things

Companies tend to think of innovation as large, headline-grabbing projects. When really, it’s many small, simple innovations that, over time, stack up and build on each other. It’s the accumulation of several little projects that positions a company to fall in that 20% category. The companies we look to today as digital innovators succeeded thanks to thousands of small yet repeatable and measurable steps.

This is the importance of looking at multiple solutions for a single priority. It delivers well-reasoned answers and inspires confidence because you’ve tried several different things cyclically rather than putting all your eggs in one basket. If you focus everything you have on one possibility, it’s all-or-nothing. That’s why so many companies have traditionally built cultures that fear failure.

How to shift from fear of failure to owning innovation

Senior leaders should take a step back and honestly look at where their company’s attitudes come from. Quite often, they’re the reason for it. I’d say 90% of the time it’s the leadership team, whether consciously or not, that’s the root cause of a fear of failure. Most individuals aren’t afraid of failing if nobody will see it. The fear comes into play when people feel their actions will be public, exposed, negatively judged, and presented without context.

Shifting opinions and attitudes across a large company are incredibly challenging to do. A four-step systematic approach is required to change that.

Step 1: Find ways to innovate every day

One of my favorite examples of this is Booking.com. They created a web development program where they test approximately 5500 small enhancements to their site every year. That’s 15 tests every single day. The bulk of that testing doesn’t just happen. They identified the difference between actual and perceived success and operationalized it to be trackable and repeatable each time. This culture of innovation has built immense online achievement for them.

Step 2: Break it down with smaller multi-disciplinary teams

Pull people from various teams, ideally people who aren’t used to working together, and give them opportunities to work — free of expectations against failure. Give them the space to exercise their expertise and surprise you with the unexpected solutions they come up with.

Step 3: (Re)Define the role of Chief Digital Officer (CDO)

A lot of companies are now searching for CDOs who understand technology like the backs of their hands. While that’s a good start, I believe the real work of a CDO is to break down silos and create a digital future for that organization. CDOs are responsible for the digital transformation of an entire company. To do that, they have to break down the walls of traditional groups that historically don’t know how to collaborate, share data, and create digital business evolution.

Step 4: Think of individuals over departments

Innovation groups shouldn’t be housed in departments. Instead, identify the people across your business who are naturally inclined to adopt the mindset of iterative innovation. Give them the freedom and encouragement to grow that capability. Then empower them as internal influencers to show their peers how and why they need to embrace innovation as well.

Innovate now to prepare for the future

We know that digital-first companies will come out ahead in the recovery from COVID-19. Investing in iterative innovation prepares you to be agile. Companies need to be laying this groundwork now — if the goal is to set themselves up to create groundbreaking products/services, attract top innovative thinkers, and forge a path to long-term, sustained success.

Be a leader, not a follower. Iterative innovation has the power to put you at the head of the pack.