Impact of Leadership on Innovation Culture in an organisation

 

The previous post spoke about the hypothesis that the key thing that makes innovating organisations become what they are , is leadership.

 

While practices and organsiational models et al are positive contributors to the innovation process, if an organisation has to stay innovative – complete with the side effects of that state of mind, the most important factor is that the leadership must continue to believe – generation after generation, in innovation.

 

Here is how this works –

Organisational behavior is shaped, at the primary level, by the rewards system. When a type of behavior is rewarded, we start to value that behavior more, because it leads to a positive outcome. this relationship is a function of the thinking mind – i do this, i am appreciated/ rewarded – the cognitive level.

 

Over a period, the repetition of this reward system leads to us developing a positive attitude towards that behavior. We automatically associate that behavior with positive response. – the conative response.

 

Over time we internalise the positive attitude and start to respond with positive emotions to the behavior itself – at this level, the affective level , the behavior is internalised. Then we become “innovators” simply because of who we have become. Its the same process that works when we enter a university a fresher and exit as an alumnus. Our mental associations change to be congruent with the associations of the university.

 

This is how the innovative culture is built – but by bit – moving from the behavior-reward (cognitive) to conative to affective (internalised and emotional)

 

So, to sum up, the foundation of culture change is in the rewards and punishment factors – the rewards may be tangible and institutionalised, or it may be intangible and simple like positive feedback or even just permission to work on research during office time.

 

And who decides, in the most significant way, what this reward structure in the organisation will be? The leader. Even if the tangible organisational models and employee appreciation criteria are not immediately touched, the intangibles like positive feedback trickle down really fast and without doing anything documented or formal, leaders are able to kill the innovation culture relatively fast.