The (Non)Sense of Employee-Focused Innovation Training

A lot has been written about Innovation Training in the recent past. At Culturevate, we clearly see the sense of such training, but there are some important conditions that needs to be met for these efforts to generate long-term impact for an organization. Not all companies understand these conditions, which often leads to mediocre results and missed opportunities. One extra difficulty is that a good Innovation Training should be driven by and aligned with several functional parts of a large corporate organization.

An innovation training effort should be an integral part of any corporate innovation program/strategy. A concrete training effort gives a clear message that innovation should be taken seriously and supports your employees who may not know how or where to begin.

However, just launching an innovation training effort independently, without context to a company’s strategy or culture, will create confusion and generate low output at best. We prefer a model that makes use of the momentum of a training effort to explain (and reinforce) the organization’s innovation program and strategy throughout the curriculum. This way, you achieve the additional advantage that a big picture strategy is much better understood by the community and that the training fits in the big picture strategy of the company.

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Top Online Learning Management System Tools in 2016

The e-learning industry has tremendously evolved and is continuing to evolve year after year. It has become an industry grossing tens of billions of dollars. There are numerous online platforms which have utilized different learning management system tools to make education available to their remote students. The popularity of learning management systems is expected to continually grow, as various companies have realized the potential of these tools, which can be used to teach future employees about the business in a quick manner.

But, like in every industry that grosses billions of dollars, the competition is high. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular learning management system tools and what they offer to their users; so that you can find out which learning management system is right for you.

Read the full article about Top Online Learning Management System Tools in 2016 at Innovation Management.

To Focus Employees on Innovation, Align Their Goals and Compensation

The ability to deliver new value requires systemic evolution in business strategy, culture, organizational design, and customer awareness. Employees can and will deliver new customer value, but the way they are paid and directed must change first and then the results will follow.

People perform the way they are compensated to perform. If an enterprise is structured and compensates its people to be creative, it receives creativity from them. If the company preaches that creativity and innovation are valued but don’t align their compensation and employee goal setting with these objectives, not surprisingly, very little innovation happens.

With all of the downsizing, offshoring, and Six Sigma/Lean that people have been living through for the past 20 years, they have learned to, “keep their eyes inside the boat” and not to stray too far from their defined goals and objectives.

People who are engaged in profit-orientated businesses are, for the most part, employed to perform specific types of tasks. Whether the task is on a production line or producing invoices, people develop a set of skills and sell those skills to an employer. So it should come as no surprise that the employees of a company are focused on what they are compensated to produce. If people are not compensated or rewarded in some way to be creative, to produce changes that delight a customer, and to find new opportunity areas, why would anyone expect them to do so?

A variety of tools have emerged over the years to assist managers in directing their employees’ efforts. Key performance indicators, 360 degree performance, management by objectives. Do any of these ring a bell? Performance management should be focused on setting goals that are aligned with business strategy, extending a person’s skill set, and aligning resources to achieve business strategy.
Most people are compensated based on their ability to achieve a predetermined set of goals and objectives. Managers review employee performance based on their ability to meet the goals. Many, many words are being written currently about organizations delivering innovation . Executives are refocusing their attention on delivering new value to their customers, but how many executives are looking at the way they compensate their people? It doesn’t make much sense to tell people to be creative, to discover opportunities, to increase customer value when these same people are being paid to deliver completely different things.

If business strategy requires new products, services, or business models to extend its competitive advantage, it also requires new ways to focus and reward the people who work for the enterprise. If people are compensated based on their ability to complete tasks, it isn’t logical to also expect them to create new things unless they are rewarded and recognized for this ability.

The ability to deliver new value to the customer (i.e., innovation Management) requires systemic evolution in business strategy, culture, organizational design, and customer awareness. Employees can and will deliver new customer value, but the way they are paid and directed must change first and then the results will follow.