Hi, I’m Astrid. I’m an organisational psychologist. I specialise in innovation, and I’m a new parent. Now, these things might seem unrelated, but as you’ll see in this series, I assure you they’re not.
Someone once asked me why I wanted to be a parent, and I must admit, I went somewhat blank. It was a great question, and a question I was surprised I hadn’t asked myself. The question I had been pondering was ‘do I want to be a parent?’, and once I figured out the answer to that, the ‘why’ didn’t get much of a run.
It’s interesting how easy it is to forget to ask the ‘why’ in any scenario really – to simply focus on the ‘what’ instead. It happens when new clients knock on our Orange Squid ‘door’ all the time. They’ll come to us to ask for help with becoming more innovative, but when we ask why they want to innovate, things often start to get a little vague. Often innovation has recently become a ‘pillar’ of their strategy; or it’s a ‘value’ they have as an organisation; or perhaps there’s just a general desire to ‘keep up with the times in a changing world’, but it typically doesn’t get much more specific than that. Now don’t get me wrong, I would never argue that innovation isn’t important. It’s critical. But it’s not a goal or objective in and of itself. You don’t innovate for the sake of innovation. You innovate to achieve a specific goal or objective. Innovation is a means to an end. And articulating what that end – that goal or objective – is, at the right level of abstraction, is one of the foundations of innovating successfully.
Are you keen to set your organisation up for innovation success? Are you ready to ask why? Here’s how to get started.
- Reflect on your organisational strategy. What are the strategic objectives? What is the organisation looking to achieve?
- Now think about where some of the gaps might be. In other words: if you keep doing what you’re doing, which of these goals are you unlikely to achieve?
- Translate the ‘gaps’ into innovation objectives. Ensure they are broad enough to allow innovation, but specific enough to provide focus.
- And voila! You’ve articulated the core of your why.
If you want to articulate the innovation ‘why’ and set your organisation up for innovation success, shoot me a message at astrid@orangesquid.com.au. I’m always up for a chat. And if you’re ever afraid you’ll forget to dive into the ‘why’ of anything in life, you’re more than welcome to borrow my daughter for a while. It’s her response to almost anything.