Connecting innovation culture and ethical survival
Jo Clare shares selected findings and reflections on the research she did as part of an MA in ‘Leading Innovation and Change’ at York St John University
The question
The literature says that today’s innovators are at risk of a ‘trap of success’ (1) bound to become tomorrow’s stick-in-the-muds, apt to roast old chestnuts over cold coals. No matter how cool and cutting edge we think we are now, all organisations need amulets against stasis and stuckness. Making innovation a matter of culture rather than personality, embedding it in values and behaviour, making sure it is practised by many not few, should empower people to challenge that old-innovation-become-status-quo. Hence my research question: how does leadership create an innovation culture?
The context
The answer was principally intended to help the Three Cs’ team move from a climateof innovation which is top-down and temporary (2) to a culture of innovation which is bottom-up, adaptive and more enduring (3).
The context begged urgency. Deficit-reduction policies have been driving health and social services commissioners to demand more for less, and now even more for even less. Many leaders face an ethical dilemma about how our organisations survive. Should we compete on price, the prime casualties of which are often the lowest paid and quality and safety of services? Should we compete on quality, risking survival? Should we compete at all?
However unwelcome the dilemma, no leader can escape the ethical and political ramifications of their strategic choices, including the basis on which they elect to compete (4,5,6) or, indeed, the decision to walk away. Whilst we might usefully mount the barricades to protest that markets are not the best way to distribute health and social care resources in the long term, the mantra of ‘no cuts’ does not resolve a dilemma which impacts on people’s lives now. Handing services back or not competing leaves the spoils (which roughly translates as ‘the lives of vulnerable people commoditised by commissioning’) to those providers who are winning the race to the bottom.
In this context, innovation offers an opportunity to increase people’s freedom, independence and inclusion and stay in business ethically.
The conclusion
Based on in-depth interviews of Three Cs employees and grounded theory, my research found that leadership is more likely to create an innovation culture if:
- staff feel intrinsically motivated by authentic shared values
- leadership itself is dispersed and distributed
- the innovations in question fit shared values
- bottom-up creativity and innovation is invited and nurtured
But here’s the rub: creating these conditions will count for nothing if our employees are under-remunerated and devalued. Extrinsic reward, including pay, may not be a prime motivator in a values-led not-for-profit sector, but it is a powerful and prevalent de-motivator.
Innovation-values fit
My findings highlighted a critical connection between authentic shared values and intrinsic motivation and suggested it has the power to make change-makers of all of us. Like personal values, organisational values must be credible and cannot be faked; they are read and must be aligned in all aspects of organisational culture, including systems and structures not just behaviour. Take iPlanit for example – these web-based accounts for recording and monitoring person-centred outcomes proved spookily popular for what is essentially a personalised accounting system. According to one informant it is “a central place where you’re not just talking the talk but walking the walk”. Properly implemented, iPlanit is acceptable to staff because it resonates with our group values and has what Klein and Sorra call ‘innovation-values fit’ (7).
Likewise, anything which is dissonant undermines. So, talking equality and shared leadership whilst playing guru, oracle or standing on ceremony will not wash; if you believe we are all equal, flatten your hierarchy, eschew the red carpet, listen up and let your people lead. This is not to be confused with being indecisive, absenting yourself from leadership or being laissez-faire; ‘jackets on chairs’ are as demotivating to work for as autocrats.
Cherish challenge
New people are a precious source of new ideas and challenge to the status quo and should be treated as an asset. If you say you are inclusive, as Three Cs does, make sure that the burgeoning band of staff who have transferred under TUPE understand and own your core values. The little things matter – even using an old form with a previous service name or company logo devalues people and makes them feel they do not belong.
To leverage the great boon of cultural diversity in a multi-cultural workforce, it is not enough to value difference. Aired and reconciled, the conflict of cultural difference is a rich source of challenge to orthodoxy and fertile soil for innovation but not if it remains the scary, silent elephant in the room. Where managers have understood and worked openly with cultural mores and perspectives in their teams – especially when it comes to issues of trust and risk – Three Cs has had its most evidential success.
And on this subject, those of us who like to ‘play nicely’ might want to consider a career change. In-group harmony and accord, if cosy, can lead to groupthink, even gang mentality, where only conformist thought prevails – or else! Conversely, nurturing troublemakers, dissenters and ‘contrarians’ might be a proverbial pain in the neck but it can guarantee continuous challenge to the status quo.
Person centred innovation
The most promising finding was that genuine person centred-ness is a source of bottom-up innovation in its own right and has the potential to pull staff out of over-done care routines and into ‘small c creativity’ and problem-solving (8). Under the right conditions, and with those they support at the absolute centre, support workers can be true leaders themselves, wielding “the power to change the way people think about what is desirable and possible” (9), laying waste the disabling tendency of care and support.
The idea of an army of powerful person-centred innovators is quite a long way from the current stereotypes of the social care workforce as routine-bound, institutionalised change-resistors. To fully realise workforce potential, the culture and climate in the social care operating environment would have to change radically. Exacerbated by cost pressures and rampant professional panic, the current environment is still essentially punitive and risk-averse, demanding a level of standardisation and back-covering which is anathema to thinking outside the box and risk-taking, key ingredients of creativity and innovation.
Formal Western education has a strong bias for logic, right answers and thinking inside the box, whereas the creativity which feeds innovation needs the fertile soil of divergence, high risk and no box (10). Imagine a freer risk-tolerant operating environment, not so much no box as minimal box, with a well-trained but formally under-educated workforce proving a richer source of imagination and far better value than formally educated graduates, professionals and executives…
The rub
Here’s the rub again. Creativity must also be nurtured and rewarded. Many private and not-for-profits alike pay their front-line staff the minimum wage, which does not provide a minimum income standard (Davis et al 2012). With no policy on the Living Wage or the London Living Wage, more and more commissioners are inviting poverty wages. Whilst the right conditions are not just about remuneration, working a tired 50 hour minimum every week at £6.50 per hour just to earn the same as somebody working 36 hours at London Living Wage, is not conducive to safety, let alone creativity.
If you need those additional hours to stay above the breadline your own family’s economy is served not by innovation for greater freedom and inclusion but by the continued or increased dependence of those you support. When commissioners invite a race to the bottom predicated on poverty wages, they do not just hazard an attack on quality and safety but perpetuate ‘doing for’ and doom any chance of converting the increased well-being and independence of those we support into longer term savings.
Bottom-up person-centred innovation has huge potential but will not be delivered by making casualties of the lowest paid in social care. In a payroll-intensive business it is only bottom-up innovation that will yield both ethical outcomes and the efficiencies necessary to remain competitive for the long term.
REFERENCES
- Shaw, R. B., A. E. Walton, et al. (1995). Discontinuous change : leading organizational transformation. San Francisco, Calif., Jossey-Bass.
- Holbeche, L. (2006). Understanding change : theory, implementation and success. Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann.
- Beerel, A. C. (2009). Leadership and change management. Los Angeles, Calif. ; London, SAGE.
- Kohlberg, L. (1969). The relations between moral judgement and moral action : a developmental view. [S.l.], [s.n.].
- Thoms, P. and J. F. Fairbank (2008). The daily art of management : a hands-on guide to effective leadership and communication. Westpoint, Conn. ; London, Praeger.
- Yukl, G. A. (2010). Leadership in organizations. Upper Saddle River, N.J. ; London, Pearson.
- Greenhalgh, T., Robert, G., Bate,P., Kyriakidou, O., Macfarlane, F., and Peacock, R. (2004) ‘How to Spread Good Ideas A systematic review of the literature on diffusion, dissemination and sustainability of innovations in health service delivery and organisation’ NCCSDO
- Chen, K. K. (2012) Organizing Creativity: Enabling Creative Output, Process and Organizing Practices
- Zaleznik, A. (1977) Managers and Leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review 55
- Robinson, K. (2007) Do Schools Kill Creativity? TED TALKS: You Tube.
- Davis, A. Hirsch, D. Smith, N. Beckhelling, J. and Padley. M, (2012) A minimum income standard for the uK in 2012: keeping up in hard times Joseph Rowntree Foundation
