A642.9.3.RB – The Innovation Experience
As a health care organization, health care reforms and the consumers’ shift to value are pushing organizations like mine to deliver enhanced outcomes and patient experienced at a reduced cost. We are under pressure from regulatory agencies to align our patient care standards and initiatives in providing high-quality patient care with cost efficiency. Organizations like mine are trying to reassess our existing capabilities and technology to manage our workforce, finances, and elevate our standard of patient experience re-defining focus on investments to best approach the challenges we face and expand for the future.
While different research in innovation has provided a higher understanding and perception of the social, economic and individual benefits extrapolated from new technologies, there has been minimal significance in the dialogues regarding the probability of detrimental effect that innovation may induce (Edgell & Vogl, 2013). According to Carmeli, Gelbard, & Gefen (2010), organizations are steadfastly finding different avenues to cultivate internal and external strategic fit because the fit is not only critical to organizations’ capacity to change and conform to contingencies that are unforeseen and have the ability to act as an impediment to unauthenticity. Carmeli et al., (2010), defined fit as an organization’s demands, goals, objectives, and needs on one component are congruent or aligned with another component’s demands, goals, objectives, and needs.
Most Influential Elements
McKeown (2014) stated that innovation is an adventure or an opera where there is always a new or another episode. Innovation can renew and transform an organization’s position or even disrupt the marketplace. Powerful new ideas can have an immediate effect depending on the way they are applied or exploited. At times the consequences that a new idea can cause is unintended by the innovator or creator, but there are also times that innovation can be deliberately utilized to gain outside benefit to the user.
Renewing. McKeown (2014) described renewing as reinvigorating a new culture within the organization from the old way of thinking. When employees do the same thing every day for multiple years, there is a tendency that they will settle for less and will result in organizational stagnation. Reenergizing or reinvigorating can be accomplished by cultivating a culture of innovation.
A powerful way to encourage a culture of innovation is to focus or aim our direction to usefulness, today and in the future. Insight to Innovation pathway will be effective and efficient if organizations make their determination to new ideas based on potential value. Innovation needs a rebellious innovator as its refuge for creativity that is practicable. But the challenge for organizations is how to influence or create a climate or culture of practical creativity. Organizational leaders will need for their workforce to care or conform to the overall success of the organization as a whole (McKeown, 2014).
In my current organization, we are ensuring that the cultural changes are embedded in our system taking a firmer root and making sure that there is no rebounding from previous thinking and expectations. The emphasis on making sure that our system is performing at a high level is crucial to attaining our new system-wide brand promise. Our executive leaders are guaranteeing that we are hitting a high-performance system and no one in the organization is allowed to blemish our brand promise of “Extending the Healing Ministry of Christ.”
All new ideas and products in our group are reviewed and assessed by our Strategy and Innovation team. Once the quality of the product or the usefulness of the new idea pass our Strategy and Innovation team, a focus group is created to brainstorm and make appropriate recommendations on how to improve and implement the new idea. What makes us stand out is that for every innovation or changes in our organization, it is always tied to our company mission of “Extending the Healing Ministry of Christ.”
Opening the lines of communication. It is critical that members of our workforce have a convenient and safe avenue to raise rational and logical concerns about workplace issues. Once a trusting relationship environment has been developed, it is inevitable that the employees will openly share their innovative thinking knowing that their shared ideas are valued. As a leader, I have to be able to communicate with the workforce in a clear and concise manner without ambiguity.
Strong communication initiative is essential for building a collaborative team and trust within the team. With an open, clear or transparent communication channels, it opens a variety of directions leading to new ideas, creativity, and innovations. A team that consistently challenges each other positively, learning from each others’ ideas, culture, abilities, and skills is an excellent tool for planting the seed for future innovations in my organization.
Staying open to ideas while substituting punditry with constructive feedback. According to McKeown (2014), to shape a better future, we need to inspire a powerful, beautiful, and provocative ideas. Building a bigger brain is having an open mind to creativity or innovation even if the radical change is discomforting or cumbersome in the short term but eventually will be profitable in our organization’s future (McKinney, n.d.). Instead of criticizing innovative ideas, it is more to the advantage of leaders like me to ask questions that may stimulate or encourage more creative thinking at the thought or creativity that did not meet standards of expectations.
In the midst of failure, focus on productive leadership and examine your critical eye in the mirror. Developing teamwork is crucial for the success of any organization. It is to the advantage of my department and organization as a whole when every member of the team works cohesively to accomplish departmental and organizational goals. It is not only of utmost importance that team members had the autonomy and freedom to achieve assigned tasks and tapped into their creative and innovative minds, but it is also of importance that they have the capacity to work well with other members of the team.
Building bigger brain also means understanding what motivates or demotivates our team. As a leader, I need to take the hat of an innovator to understand our workforce innovator's perspective when their projects are not as successful as anticipated. Failure can also be a means of growth and success if handled with care and sensitivity. Evaluating the performance of my time is a critical part of my position where it requires to give a positive, constructive feedback. Leaders in my organizations need to avoid making comments that may be construed as negative criticisms, and it is crucial that we are transparent to our team members. Having self-awareness of my weaknesses and turns those weaknesses into my strengths to set an example to my team.
“Prime” critical thinking. Priming is activating or sparking a thought that affects an individual’s behavior or options. Research shows that in a group decision-making, giving members of the group the task of “getting along,” members often shut up or silenced. If organizations want to encourage creativity and innovative thinking, members of the team should be given a “critical thinking” task. Critical thinking is learning to think things through, clearly defining the problem or issue at hand, finding authentic resolutions to solve the problem or issue and lastly believing that the acquired resolution will solve the problem or issue at hand. In short, critical thinking is developing our intellectual traits of perseverance, courage, humility and faith. Training and developing our workforce on critical thinking is also essential if we are to get the root of our departmental and organizational issues and problems and develop reasonable and sustainable solutions.
As a human resources professional, I have developed excellent skills in coaching, identifying talented individuals that fit the culture of my organization and their future business units, and I have developed a new way to align a current employee or candidates talent, skills, abilities, and interests to their position in the company. Although my new idea of tailoring the “job description” to the individual's skills, talents, strengths, and abilities is getting good feedback and acceptance from the group of our leadership team, there is still a presence of resistance from a handful group of leaders. Developing and sustaining the type of cultural transformation required for organizations like mine to achieve our innovation objective is an excellent opportunity for me as an HR expert to bring in this kind of change.
For organizations like mine to be able to sustain with the high-tech global market which landscape is rapidly evolving, we have to develop and cultivate an innovative culture. Developing an innovative culture helps leaders like me to generate an organizational-wide behavior that motivates members of our workforce to take responsibilities of their innovation, infusing each other in the success of their organization and acclimating systems and procedures to satisfy the current and future demands of our organization, stakeholders, and consumers. In short, deciding to innovate and improve are now business imperatives. Disruption is inevitable and forecasting the particular progress of disruption in any industry.
According to Wessel & Christensen (2012), to decide the strengths of the disrupter, organization’s need to utilize the extendable core concept. The extendable core is described as a business model state that permits a disrupter to sustain the performance advantage as it impacts the upmarket looking for more customers (Wessel & Christensen). Regardless of the benefits that disruptive innovators have, our organization should still continue to counter the strategic threat that disruptive innovation poses. Our leaders need to focus on the advantages that our team captures over the disruptive competition rather than an emphasis on the negative influence of innovators on the healthcare industry. As a healthcare provider, we need to distinguish what makes our offerings or contributions to our patients, community, employees and stakeholders and maximizing those identified attributes. By focusing our efforts strategically where healthcare innovators have more challenges in competing, we would be able to preserve many facets of our business operations.
References
Canfield, J., and Smith, G. (2011). Imagine: Ideation skills for improvement and innovation
today. Holland, MI: Black Lake Press.
Carmeli, A., Gelbard, R., & Gefen, D. (2010). The Importance of Innovation Leadership in
Cultivating Strategic Fit and Enhancing firm performance. The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 21, Issue 3, Pages 339-349, ISN 1048-9843. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984310000494
Christensen, C., Wang, D. & van Bever, D. (2013). Consulting on the cusp of disruption.
Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2013/10/consulting-on-the-cusp-of-disruption
Edgell, R. & Vogl, R. (2013). A Theory of Innovation: Benefit, Harm, and Legal Regimes, Law,
Innovation and Technology, 5:1, 21-53. http://dx.doi.org/10.5235/17579961.5.1.21
McKeown, M. (2014). The innovation book: How to manage ideas and execution for outstanding
results. Harlow, England: Pearson
Wessel, M. & Christensen, C. (2012). Surviving Disruption. Harvard Business Review.
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