Founders can empower teams to innovate independently
For startup businesses, founder dependency is often not even an issue, but rather the reality of a limited number of employees working to get the business off the ground. However, maintaining such a practice once a business has grown can have particularly negative effects on its success, scalability and longevity. Founder dependency creates a single point of failure and makes it difficult for your business to adapt to industry trends by making quick decisions. For these reasons, and more, it’s important to shift the focus away from the founder and start sharing responsibility with the rest of the workforce. In this article, we explore 6 effective strategies for fostering innovation beyond leadership while empowering employees at all levels to take ownership of their work.
Fostering innovation beyond leadership in 6 steps
Promote psychological safety
Perhaps the most important element of innovation and initiative in your organization is promoting psychological safety for your employees. You can’t expect employees to take ownership of their work or experiment with new ideas and methods if they are made to fear being criticized or punished for every mistake they make. Experimentation and change often come through failure, which is why employees need to be given a safe space to try new things. Start by practicing honesty and humility and share some past mistakes with employees and how those contributed to future successes. Then, encourage them to challenge established processes and workflows, inviting them to propose innovative solutions that can make a significant impact on your organization.
Create clear operational processes
Innovation is always the goal for organizations, but you must first create a foundation upon which to build the organization. Beat founder dependencies and encourage innovation at all levels by standardizing processes and workflows. When employees know where to find information about a specific process, they don’t immediately turn to the founder for guidance. Instead, they are encouraged to actively seek information and take responsibility for completing a task independently. Innovation can also be given a structure by integrating experiences and mindfulness into employees’ routines. This can be achieved by establishing regular cross-departmental meetings for idea exchange and collaboration, as well as implementing rapid experimentation cycles to provide employees with a clear framework for testing new ideas quickly and effectively.
Encourage problem solving rather than task completion
In founder-dependent organizations, it is common for employees to receive tasks to complete rather than problems to solve. This means that the founder has already analyzed the situation and is now asking the employees to take the necessary steps to solve the problem. What is missing from this interaction is a clear explanation of the thought process behind the work and how it is expected to affect the problem. An even better approach than explaining the problem to employees is to present it and invite them to propose and test their own solutions. Then, you can discuss the results together, and help employees improve their critical thinking and problem-solving skills instead of giving them solutions. Ultimately, this method helps employees to be able to solve problems successfully without the help of the founder.
Recognize and reward innovation
Recognition plays an important role in fostering innovation beyond leadership, and encourages employees to be actively involved in projects rather than passively following instructions. To motivate employees to constantly strive for improvement and innovation, you need to reward them for taking the initiative. For example, you can publicly recognize employees who participate in pilot programs or cross-departmental collaborative projects. Additionally, include achievements in creativity, problem solving, and innovation to show employees that their efforts are noticed and valued. If this recognition also leads to better career development opportunities, then taking the initiative will become a common practice for more employees.
Invest in leadership development
What better way to drive innovation beyond the founder than by investing in employee training and development and middle management? Provide access to training courses, mentoring programs, seminars, and workshops that will help employees build their confidence and knowledge, enabling them to take initiative and successfully lead projects. What’s more, this approach will help you build a succession pipeline of capable leaders who don’t need to turn to the founder for every problem and question. As a result, founders will gradually be able to remove their input from all meetings, tasks, and projects, so that the organization can continue to function without disruptions in their absence.
Give employees room to take initiative and innovate
Speaking of gradual retreats, founders who care about fostering innovation need to understand that it may not be inevitable for their organizations. While their experience and knowledge are valuable, it’s important that other employees “earn their place in the sun” to prove they can make a meaningful impact. For this to happen, founders need to take several steps, starting with reducing their involvement in day-to-day operational decisions. This will empower other employees to take on more responsibility. This must be done gradually, gradually increasing the difficulty and importance of the tasks. Founders can also allow leaders and managers to run keynote sessions, thereby increasing their confidence. This change will eventually spread to more projects and processes, allowing employees at all levels to experience independence and innovation.
The result
Driving agility and innovation is essential for businesses that want to stay relevant despite constant advances in technology and their respective industries. However, this is something that only one person cannot accomplish. It is important for organizations to foster innovation beyond leadership and trust their workforce to share responsibility and give them the freedom to take initiative without fearing consequences. This can be done through psychological safety, leadership development, establishing clear workflows, and fostering beneficial innovation among others. In this way, founders can successfully transition their organization from a founder-centric existence to a flexible and scalable enterprise.
