How to Drive Innovation From Within

Hello everybody. Jody Ann Johnson here with the 76th episode of “Coffee with Jody” that’s 24 more to go to reach a 100 Yeah!  Today we’re going to be talking about innovation, employee engagement and driving innovation from within. Conventional wisdom would have us believe that innovation comes from entrepreneurs, people out in their garage, creating things from nothing.  

However, my client Professor Kaihan Krippendorf states in his book, “Driving Innovation from Within” that many of today’s innovations that we take for granted, such as computers, the internet, cell phones, and email, are actually innovations that came from within organizations. He states that the belief that it’s only entrepreneurs that drive innovation is one of today’s biggest myths.  

If innovation is coming from within the organization, then as business leaders we’re going to want to know what’s going on with the engagement of our employees. Gallup’s latest study says that only 36% of people are engaged in their positions. That means 64% are either disengaged or actively disengaged and sabotaging our businesses! 

In the U.S alone, disengaged employees cost our economy somewhere between 450 and 550 Billion a year! That’s crazy. So as business leaders, we need to be looking at what are the conditions inside of our organizations that allow for and drive engaged employees.  

In addition to the employee engagement statistics of 36% of employees being engaged, Gallup also found that 33% of employees leave their positions to seek a new challenge. They’re bored, looking for professional development, learning, and ways to hone and master their professions.  

This is why it’s so important for us as owners and leaders to identify the ways that we can have variety, cross–train, career development ladders, ways to motivate people, to tap into their natural talents, their interests, their passions. What motivates them in the workplace and what their talents are, many of the things that we’ve discussed in other videos so that they’re actually working on those things that they do best, are most interested in and contribute the greatest amount to the organization. 

You’ve heard me say over and over again, the best ideas come from the people doing the doing. And yet when they’re stressed out, fearful or exhausted, the ideas just simply don’t flow. On the other hand, when they feel safe, heard, valued, and are given time to come up with ideas, to form a hypothesis, and then to test it, the creativity, the imagination, and the continuous improvement do flow. 

With the myriad of issues and challenges that business owners face on a day in and day out basis, it may seem like there’s just not enough time to put all of this in place. And yet when we do make the investment in attracting, recruiting, retaining, and developing engaged employees, we get dividends on that for years and years and years to come. 

If you enjoyed this video, please like it, share it and subscribe to my YouTube channel. That’s it for today. 

Bye for now.