Innovation Culture: #1 Behaviours

Happy New Year all!

At the end of last year I shared four common challenges that organisations face with realising value from strategic project delivery: inertia, leadership, focused resource and decision-making.

Embracing a new year I thought I'd shift to look at what the right organisational culture looks like to create and manage a successful balanced portfolio of projects driving maximum value realisation.

Starting with the way we act, there are 4 key behaviours which should be demonstrated and developed by an organisation wanting to get the most out of their portfolio:

1. Entrepreneurial: A willingness and capacity to believe that there is a better way to do things, constantly challenging the status quo, and to regularly stepping back, reviewing and revising the approach
2. Expertise: An investment in continuous learning, exploring and experimenting to build knowledge, and a want to deeply understand customer needs and behaviours
3. Collaboration: Recognising that an organisation can’t do it all themselves, instead adopting an approach of open-innovation, using the broader ecosystem, and embarking on co-creation as well as internal sourcing of ideas through clear vision setting, and providing an environment to support idea generation
4. Trust: Empowering and rewarding people to take considered risks and providing an environment where it is safe, and even celebrated, to fail if realised quickly and learnt from

Does your organisation demonstrate these behaviours - what impact are they having in your organisation and how are you encouraging and developing them?

What others do you think are important?