Written by Gary Skelton, Northern Ireland Site Lead, Imperva
As a cyber-security company, innovation is an essential part of what we do. Every day there are new vulnerabilities being found, new threat actors coming onto the scene, and new challenges being posed by customers. We are constantly reacting to these developments to help keep our customers secure.
And, as a proud part of the Northern Irish tech sector, the need for innovation is doubly important to us. Northern Ireland’s reputation for talent and creativity is a key reason why the region has been transformed into one of the most important tech hubs in Europe, and it’s fantastic to continue to see foreign direct investment flow in to support growth across the country.
But creating and maintaining a culture which encourages, and champions innovation can be a challenge. There is no silver bullet for creating such an environment, but there are some key steps that can be taken to make the task that much easier.
1) Interview for innovation
Building an innovative team starts with bringing in the right people, people who can mesh together and drive creative friction rather than unproductive tension. Some of the most important qualities we look for in hiring are candidates who are curious, willing to take sensible risks, and who can approach problems in different ways.
One of the best ways to develop creative friction is to prioritise diversity as part of the hiring process. As an example, many teams benefit from having a mixture of introverted and extroverted people, and this needs to be considered as part of the interview process. Hiring managers will want to see problem solving skills from all candidates, but some will do better thinking on the spot, while others do their best work when given a few days to go away and consider their approach. Building in different types of problem-solving challenges can allow everyone the chance to show their full talents, resulting in a more diverse team.
These benefits are even more pronounced when hiring employees from non-traditional backgrounds, or those with alternative skills to the ones already in the team. It’s amazing how people with skills that are apparently not relevant to a company's current tech stack can offer new perspectives and breakthroughs to knotty problems.
2) Keeping the cream of the crop
Once you’ve hired good people, the next step is making sure that they stay, which is especially difficult in a market as competitive as Northern Ireland right now. If your hiring practices prioritise curiosity and problem-solving, then one of the most important things to do is make sure that your teams understand why the work they’re doing is important.
Curious people are rarely motivated to work on a project because their manager told them to do so. They want to understand why they’re being told to do something. And taking the time to clearly communicate the purpose and strategy behind the work is often beneficial because, once they see the logic, innovative talent tends to come up with even better solutions.
Closely related to this is ensuring that individuals know that they’re not operating alone and that there is a whole team there to support them - something that has become even more important in the hybrid era. Very few people are able to produce their best work if they feel disconnected from colleagues, both physically and emotionally.
However, as the pandemic moves on, there is an opportunity for Northern Irish businesses to recast hybrid working. By providing a generous budget for home office improvements - as we have at Imperva - the shared office can be reorientated more towards collaboration, freeing people up to work wherever they want, however they want. If they need solitude to concentrate, there is a full set-up home office for their use. And when problems require a more dynamic, collaborative approach, the office can be that creative space.
3) Understanding the system
A crucial part of giving people the platform to take smart risks and be creative is removing the fear that they’re going to be singled out or shamed for making mistakes. Instead, innovative companies shift the focus away from individuals, and towards the larger systems. This is a far more productive approach because, in almost all cases, problems aren’t just the fault of one person, but arise because of a flaw in a complex system.
By examining issues at the systemic level, e.g. through the methods like the ‘5 Whys’ pioneered by Toyota, it’s far easier to identify root causes and design robust counter-measures to prevent similar failures in the future. And, while this approach doesn’t obviate individual responsibility, it does allow businesses to shift away from a ‘blame culture’ and towards one where employees feel more empowered and free to experiment. This is particularly true when the approach is modeled by executives as it sets a tone which filters down throughout the rest of the organisation.
4) Communicate the goals and expectations
One challenge with ‘innovation’ is that it can become a buzzword in some scenarios. If left undefined, it can mean everything to everyone, so a vital step in creating an innovation-led culture is to make sure that everyone, from C-Suite down, understands the types of problems that are being tackled, and how progress will be measured.
Getting agreement on metrics, especially, is fundamental because not all changes will be positive initially. Creative growth - whether it’s through trial and error, research, or process changes - often takes time and things can sometimes get worse before they get better. These teething troubles can often be seen as ‘wasteful’, if they aren’t dealt with head-on from the start.
However, if everyone in the business understands the goals and expectations of the innovation process, there is likely to be far less pushback and more internal championing of the progress that is made, which can result in a virtuous cycle of great innovation.
5) Make haste slowly
Finally, there is the question of how to make sure that innovation is directed and purposeful, which means really listening to customers, understanding their needs and considering their constraints.
Deep listening is important for two reasons. The first is it builds better customer relationships and delivers usable solutions. If a customer is having system resource issues and needs something lightweight, developing a new all-singing, all-dancing offering isn’t going to be the answer.
The second is that it can unlock patterns which aren’t always initially obvious, especially to customers. In many cases, individual customers don’t have the full context, leading them to only bring you half of the problem - they’re asking for a faster horse when what they want is a car. But by building in additional time for employees to think and reflect on the problems they’re solving, there is often the opportunity to fix a problem that customers didn’t even know they had by offering a bigger, more overarching solution.
Eyes on the prize
Every company talks a good game about valuing innovation and innovative people. But developing the right environment for creativity to flourish freely depends on a host of interconnected factors. From the C-Suite down, there has to be a culture which prioritises autonomy and diversity, where everyone feels able to share ideas and collaborate to come up with the best possible solutions. These five steps are by no means exhaustive, but they can go a long way to making any business more inventive and competitive.
This article first appeared in the Summer 2022 edition of the Sync NI magazine. You can download your FREE copy and sign up to receive future digital editions here.
