Can a workforce be innovative if the environment does not encourage new perspectives, opposing points of view or radically different approaches to status quo? Do employees thrive in a workplace that doesn’t empower them to participate?
Can the work environment actually push leaders with dreams of enabling social prosperity, into managers and executives who lead by enforcing a climate of compliance (typically yielding high turnover and limited loyalty)? Do quarterly reports, earning expectations, and other short-term measures distract us from our vision?
I grapple with these questions at PwC as we strive to accelerate innovation in an organization of 30,000 people, in 78 different offices, managed by over 2,000 partners. Who defines the work environment? Who defines the culture of an organization? Is it the leadership of an organization… or is it the employees? As we look at today’s more agile and innovative organizations, we find traditional roles of leaders and employees are becoming less distinct.
Perhaps these blurred hierarchies are a reflection of today’s marketplace, where customers co-produce the goods they consume (e.g. customized athletic shoes) on online retail sites. Buyers and sellers are interchangeable on marketplace platforms like eBay and Amazon; readers are becoming writers on news sites and the blogosphere; moviegoers are creating their own films and posting them on YouTube. Today’s economy calls for co-creation of value.
In the context of a global professional services organization such as PwC, which emphasizes relationships in the creation of value, what kind of shift is desirable between employees and their seniors? How can we work together to co-create value for the organization, our clients, and each other?
I have found certain guiding principles to be essential in creating a successful work environment, where our people and our leaders not only co-exist and collaborate, but co-create value in new ways:
1. Share the vision
Leaders must articulate their vision and agenda — uniting the whole organization in pursuit of it. To determine your alignment with the values of your organization ask yourself, what really matters to me? What do I stand for? Do my work activities represent my values to my family and friends? Both leaders and employees need to be inspired and motivated by this shared vision.
2 . Accept that you don’t have all the answers
To do the right thing, you don’t have to be right. A true leader knows she doesn’t have all the answers, and seeks and considers other points of view. In highly competitive work environments, where employees are rewarded for having the “right” answers, we need to step out of our comfort zones to offer our own thinking and be open to all viewpoints — ultimately discovering the best possible solution.
3. Give feedback. Up, down and sideways
If you cultivate an innovative mindset or culture, you are continually trying new approaches… and learning as you go. It is particularly important in organizations where creativity and innovative thinking are encouraged, to provide continual feedback, up to your boss, down to your staff, and sideways to your peers. Annual feedback cycles are compliance exercises and not optimized for accelerated innovation. Monthly goal setting and self-assessment may be a more effective solution.
4 . Get real!
Be true to yourself and your colleagues. Don’t forget luck, timing, and the support of a great team may have contributed to your individual success. Harry Kraemer, Professor at Kellogg Business School shared with a group of us, “surround yourself with people who knew you when…” Be humble, be genuine, and be grounded. Avoid arrogance. One of my personal heroes, Coach John Wooden defined success as having the peace of mind that you’ve done the best you can.
5. Commit to your values
The rubber meets the road where you commit to a shared vision for your organization and the values that support it. Tony Hsieh, CEO at Zappos once asked me, are you prepared to fire your highest revenue generating employee or your highest ranking executive if they don’t live the values you’ve articulated and shared? He had to make that difficult decision… and in the end, it wasn’t all that difficult. What are your non-negotiables? Can you truly commit to the vision and not waver?
During a recent innovation experiment, at PwC, we applied these simple principles to a crowdsourcing initiative organized as an internal competition. We first shared a vision: “deliver more value to our clients by solving emerging business issues.” With full support from senior leadership, our people committed to the vision and joined the game. Recognizing no one individual has all the answers, our people self-organized in teams, connecting across all business units, staff classes and geographies, to uncover a new service that could provide significant value to our clients. Everyone talked about their idea and asked for feedback — from their superiors, their staff and their colleagues — co-creating every step of the way. The people of PwC truly rose to the occasion and with humility and courage, gave the initiative everything they had.
Although the action plan seems simple, the challenge is consistency on an individual level, and broad-based adoption organizationally. How do we sustain this momentum? We don’t wait for change to happen. We make it happen — together. We are the change agents and the sooner we recognize the duality of our roles as leaders and team players, the sooner we will co-create an innovative place to work for everyone in the organization.
