How To Ensure Your Business Remains Innovative As It Grows

As companies get larger, there is a tendency for them to lose some of the innovative edge and versatility that defined them as start-ups and young enterprises. Several factors common to larger firms contribute to this, including increased bureaucracy and more rigid, hierarchical command structures.

Accordingly, one of the challenges that growing businesses face involves keeping the company nimble, and ensuring that the workforce and leadership alike continue to adapt to technology and changing market conditions.

Encourage experimentation, with some margin for error.

All businesses strive to offer products and services that are commercially viable, and for larger firms in particular, a preoccupation with maximizing shareholder value can intensify those commercial pressures. Unfortunately, a drive for immediate windfalls can undermine more sophisticated forms of innovation that require time and capital investment to develop.

Major innovations cannot happen without experimentation, and experimentation is inherently risky. Many successful businesses have invested in products and technologies that never really took off. (Think of Google Glass, or QR codes, for example.) To genuinely innovate, managers must be willing to take risks on novel concepts that may not always pan out.

Consider the potential, and not just past achievements, of job candidates.

In applying for a position at your company, job candidates will typically emphasize their past experience and achievements that are relevant to the role—and well they should. But in looking to hire and promote, don’t get so fixated on the past successes of a candidate that you overlook the potential of applicants to grow as individuals and expand their skill sets.

In the recruitment stage, in interviews, and in personality surveys, try to incorporate questions that will reveal whether a candidate is curious, open to new approaches to old problems, and believes in h/er own potential to cultivate new skills.

One question that may reveal all of these attributes is: “What new skills or knowledge have you gained in the past year, and what did the learning process involve?” Alternatively, the common interview question “Do you have any questions for me?” can help bring out the curiosity, level of engagement, and preparedness of the candidate. Consider giving job candidates an assignment that will test their skills and approach to problem-solving.

Personal accountability matters.

One of the most important attributes of strong leaders is a capacity to assume responsibility when something goes wrong. In other words, they believe the locus of control is primarily internal rather than external. These are the types of individuals you should seek to hire and promote.

Personal responsibility is important from the perspective of organizational growth. Individuals who are willing to assume primary responsibility for their own shortcomings are more likely to learn from them and modify their approach. By contrast, those who convince themselves that their errors are entirely attributable to bad luck or circumstances beyond their control risk missing the lesson.

Reflect on your performance.

It’s not enough to merely work harder or put in longer hours when your business faces a challenge: you need a plan to help steer your efforts in a productive direction. Real learning requires not only hard work and persistence, but also active mental engagement.

One practice that can help is daily reflection—over the course of the work day, what did you do well, what would you have done differently if offered a second chance, and where do you see room for improvement? To facilitate this kind of reflection, you can encourage staff to keep a work journal, and set aside time (10-15 minutes of the workday) for entry-writing.

Optimize the Employee Performance Review

In today’s technology-intensive business climate, employers must be able to accurately gauge the evolving needs of their enterprise, how individual employees are coping with change, and how each staff member’s role is shifting relative to h/er original job description. The individual employee performance review can be an effective tool for measuring progress, and for improving productivity, morale, and relations between managers and staff. But it can also be a waste of time if the participants are unprepared.

Prepare for the performance evaluation in advance and pay attention to details. Here are some areas you may want to consider:

•  the employee’s professional rapport with h/er co-workers, superiors, and subordinates

•  skills and execution in key areas like organization, timely response to e-mails and phone messages, courtesy toward clients (barring exceptional circumstances), and completion of tasks ahead of deadlines or key dates

•  any comments or feedback, whether complimentary or otherwise, about the employee from h/er colleagues or immediate supervisors

•  opportunities for professional growth, on-the-job training, and skills upgrades

It is wise to give an employee plenty of notice that a performance review is forthcoming, and remind h/er a few days before the meeting. This will give h/er time to identify issues that s/he may want to raise, including h/er goals within the organization, and areas where s/he may need additional support.

Hold the evaluation in a confidential space, and set an agenda.

 

Dedicate a certain number of minutes to each area you’d like to discuss; aim to stay more or less on topic and on schedule. Confidentiality is important. You don’t want everyone in the office to know your opinion of the employee, and the employee won’t want rumours about h/er strengths, weaknesses, impressions of relationships with colleagues and professional goals to spread.

Don’t leave compensation to the end.

Employees are understandably interested to know the level of compensation they can expect today and in the future. If the individual you’re evaluating senses that you’re glossing over the subject or avoiding it, it could become an elephant in the room. And distractions of that magnitude during an evaluation are never helpful.

Whether you believe a raise is in order or not, state your position and your rationale. If possible, try to put a positive spin on a non-raise by hinting at actions your employee can take to qualify for a salary bump and increased responsibility. Staff who feel that their pay is arbitrary, or that their career is stuck in neutral, may become discouraged and contemplate moving on.

Ask questions, and provide opportunities for your counterpart to do the same.

You may have formed a certain impression of the employee and h/er performance already, but it’s still important to hear the other person’s point of view. You could even begin the meeting by asking the employee to evaluate h/er own performance, and compare that assessment to your own.

In the event of an underperformance, there may be confounding factors you haven’t accounted for. On the other hand, if an employee is enjoying success, s/he may offer an explanation that will enable you to foster h/er continued success.

Finally, just as you would at the end of a job interview, reserve a few minutes for the employee to ask questions, raise concerns, and pitch ideas of h/er own.

Make sure you’re on the same page.

Review the key points raised during the evaluation as it draws to a close, and ensure that you both (employee and manager) understand and accept your expectations of each other, and your responsibilities moving forward.

Turning a Bad Day Into an OK Day At Work

We’ve all had those days when nothing we attempt seems to work out, there are unforeseen

challenges or delays, items we’ve requested don’t arrive on time, a presentation or business meeting doesn’t go as well as expected, etc.

If you feel yourself sliding toward an emotional low, try a few of the following strategies to help get yourself and your work day back on track.

Adjust your attitude.

You hold yourself to a high standard, and it’s natural for you to feel miffed if your performance ever falls short of your own expectations. We all experience disappointments; however, one of the defining qualities of a consummate professional is the ability to regain focus, composure, and a constructive frame of mind after a letdown.

•  Put your troubles in context. For some people, it helps to consider how enormous the universe is, and how comparatively minuscule one’s own problems are. You can apply a similar tactic to time: will the circumstances you’re experiencing right now matter in five, 10, or 15 years? Will they significantly affect your career, or your legacy?

•  Monitor your thoughts, and avoid the tendency to globalize, catastrophize, or succumb to unrealistically negative self-assessments. For example, instead of a phrase like “I’m such an idiot,” a more realistic appraisal would be: “I made an error on this occasion, but I’m actually quite intelligent and good at what I do; if I weren’t, the many successes I’ve enjoyed thus far wouldn’t have been possible.” By the way, if you’re going to criticize your own failings, why not take into account your many successes and redeeming qualities too?

•  Stay in the here and now. The most important task in the world right now is the one that’s right in front of you. Past events are beyond your control.

•  Take a moment to think. Sometimes just by asking yourself the question “What can I do to turn this situation around?”, you’ll come up with one or more ideas that wouldn’t otherwise have occurred to you. This offers you an opportunity to regain a measure of mental control, instead of feeling like a hapless passenger on a bus that’s headed for a ditch. You may also experience a placebo of sorts: if you genuinely believe a particular change in thinking or behaviour will help you, then there’s a good chance it will.

Activate your body.

An elevated degree of stress can disrupt basic functions of your body, including your heart rate, digestion, muscle tension, blood flow, and respiration. A focus on breathing (which is relatively easy to consciously control) can help you release some of the pent-up anxiety or frustration you may feel. Start with about five deep, measured breaths, in through your nose, out through your mouth.

A bit of light exercise, like a walk around the block or up a few flights of stairs, can help restore circulation to your brain and extremities, and release tension and stress.

You can also try striking a power pose, by standing tall with your feet at shoulder-width, placing your hands on your hips, and imagining that you are a superhero. Hold this position for around two minutes. Sure, it sounds a little silly, but you may be pleasantly surprised by the renewed feeling of strength and potency this brings you.

Practice gratitude daily.

Take some time to think about all the people who have made a positive contribution to your life. Express your gratitude openly to those around you whom you care about and respect.

Not only will the regular practice of gratitude help you to restore a positive frame of mind and recover from setbacks more quickly; your friends, companions, and colleagues may also be more favourably disposed to lending you a hand in times of need if they believe you genuinely appreciate their assistance. Gratitude is a positive feedback loop!

Begin your work day on a productive note

Every entrepreneur, business owner, and manager aspires to enhanced productivity. The reasons for this are obvious: greater productivity is conducive to not only increased profits, but diminished stress and more free time too—highly esteemed desiderata for most people. But, like community engagement, leadership or employee morale, productivity is not necessarily an easy concept to pin down. In the abstract, we all want it. But if we are serious about realizing it (and enjoying its many benefits), we need a clear process and concrete steps by which to make it happen.

One of the simplest and most effective ways to bolster productivity is by setting yourself up for it with good habits—including proper nutrition, regular physical exercise, and plenty of sleep. If you undertake your work feeling groggy, or having eaten poorly, your performance will invariably suffer. Formulate a daily routine and follow it—this will save time and help you develop automaticity, a prerequisite for completing quality work, day after day, while expending minimal effort. Another exercise you may find useful is to create a concise and easy-to-follow action plan, with achievable objectives, first thing in the morning.

Most of us start the day with correspondence—which sets us back

Commonly, people who work in an office environment begin their day by checking e-mails, replying to voicemails, responding to memos, or otherwise answering requests and inquiries. While it is important to stay abreast of the needs of others and maintain correspondence, beginning the day by engaging with external priorities can cause you to become sidetracked. Various psychological studies indicate that, despite the widespread appeal of “multi-tasking,” in reality, human beings can only fully concentrate on one assignment at a time—and our attempts to multi-task tend to compromise the quality, efficiency, and timeliness of our work. Furthermore, it can be challenging and time-consuming to mentally re-engage if you allow yourself to be temporarily derailed.

The chef’s method

Where confronting your daily workload is concerned, you can derive a useful lesson from the way a chef initiates the process of creating a meal. At the outset of each session, a culinary professional typically determines what ingredients will be required and in what quantity (in other words, her actions follow the format of a cooking recipe), and then measures them out. She then contemplates the procedure that lies ahead: does it involve whipping, or beating, or mixing? What utensils are required? Finally, she assembles and organizes all of the necessary components, so that she can command them at precisely the right moment.

Officially, the term for this ritual is mise en place—which roughly translates from French as “everything in its place.” The principal advantage of deploying this approach for any project (not only gastronomic ones!) is that, once all the necessities are in their place, you can proceed with minimal hang-ups or delays. You won’t need to rifle through shelves or drawers searching for the items you need, nor will you spend nearly as much time thinking about the particulars of the project as you carry it out. As a consequence, you’ll be able to devote your energy and focus exclusively to the task at hand.

Budget ten minutes for a planning session at the start of the day

Your own, individually tailored equivalent of the mise en place needn’t be time-consuming; set aside about ten minutes at the start of each day. In your mind’s eye, envision the errands you hope to accomplish over the next eight hours, think about the instruments and steps involved, then outline them (in writing) as specifically as possible. Assemble the tools and information you anticipate that you’ll need in advance, and arrange them in an orderly manner. Your goal should be to minimize friction, and ensure that you’re able to complete your work smoothly, without stoppages or interruption.

If you prepare yourself in advance, using the mise en place approach, you’ll find that relatively laborious tasks will become simpler—and comparatively easy ones will become a cinch.

Unraveling the Talent Myth

In July 2002 the New Yorker published an article called TheTalent Myth by Malcolm Gladwell. In this article Gladwell explores the shortcomings of a widely recognized management system put forward by a management-consulting firm called McKinsey & Company who advocate a three-tiered management process known as differentiation and affirmation. In this process of differentiation and affirmation employee performance is rated resulting in each employee being placed in one of three categories A, B, and C. The A’s, or talent group, are to be challenged and given generous bonuses as well as new tasks, new responsibilities, and new titles. The B’s are to be encouraged and affirmed, whereas the lowly C’s need to be let go.

The Problem… or Problems

There are a couple of flaws in this way of thinking that seem obvious. First, is that managers are encouraged to engage employees to do what the employees want and not what the employees are good at or have experience doing. Another flaw, which Gladwell points out, is that companies who are prisoner to the talent myth often move employees into new jobs with greater frequency than companies that are not tied to the same mindset, often spending less than a year at a particular job within the company. The result is that one employee’s range of responsibilities is changing so frequently that it becomes impossible to judge true performance.

Lastly, there is little correlation between a person’s IQ and job performance. The reason for this is the fact that IQ doesn’t measure a person’s competency to what Gladwell calls “tacit knowledge”. For Gladwell, it’s the difference between a school environment, where everything an individual is rated on involves working by themselves (writing an exam or an essay), versus a corporate environment where virtually everything is accomplished by coordinating many individuals around a singular goal.

Let the System Shine

It was McKinsey & Company’s belief that the best and most successful companies were those that adopted the talent mindset – the belief that the intelligence of a company was rooted in the intelligence of its employees. Successful companies were those that went out of their way to seek what they perceived as talent and that fostered that talent by molding their company to the interests of their most talented individuals.

As Gladwell points out, some of the most successful companies were those where the system, not its employees, was the star. As Gladwell writes:

“The talent myth assumes that people make organizations smart. More often than not, it’s the other way around.”

You Learn More on the First Day

My own experience has been that no amount of schooling has ever adequately prepared me, or anyone I know, for what it’s like to actually be out on the job. I’ve heard the old adage “I learned more on the first day on the job than I did in 4 years of university” so often that it’s become cliché. Coming out of college labeled as talent is a great thing and is capable of opening a lot of doors, but talent in school is only one type of talent.

The people I am constantly seeking are those that have broader, even hidden, talents. Someone who graduated from university with less than stellar marks, but did so while holding down a part-time job, or involving themselves in a bevy of extra-curricular activities, is just as impressive as an ‘A’ student. Also, with so much time spent together on the job I tend to try to surround myself with people who have complimentary talents or people that I genuinely like. Operating a business, especially a small business, becomes a shared experience and the people you work with become your family. No matter what might be on their CV, if everybody in the company is not on the same page, it will not be successful.