There’s one, single component of a company’s culture that has more impact than any other on innovation: truthfulness. Truth-telling is foundational for cultures that prize speed, creativity, decisiveness, and risk-taking. But it’s often missing. Here’s why:
Telling awkward truths has little upside for the truth-tellers. These truths can:
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- Have widespread positive impacts, but create few specific big winners
- Lead to there being quite clear losers
- Could be stated by someone else better suited to absorb any blowback
- May be wrong
Even those unscathed by a truth-teller may come to fear the person. After all, something dear to you might be targeted by that individual in the future.
Yet innovation requires this behavior. Without it, zombie projects persist, companies march in the wrong direction, and firms miss big opportunities outside their usual target zones.
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How can you cultivate a culture of telling awkward truths?
1. Talk with your team about instances where things got derailed because hard truths were ignored.
2. Show that mistakes are OK. A project-ending mistake doesn’t need to be career-ending; thus, truth-telling won’t be fatal to work colleagues.
3. Invite dissenting views about important decisions. As legendary GM boss Alfred P. Sloan once famously said in a meeting, “Gentlemen, I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision. Then, I propose we give ourselves time to develop disagreement, and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”
4. Do skip-level meetings to get hard truths from those below you. To quote a Kellogg’s executive about the perils of managerial sugar-coating, “Problems enter this building on the ground floor as Corn Flakes, and by the time they get up here they’ve become Frosted Flakes.”
5. Talk about your own mistakes and things you wished you understood earlier. Role-model what you’re looking for. Posters on the wall won’t change the culture. Truth-telling will. Do it, or all other efforts to improve your innovativeness will struggle.
Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by Stephen Wunker, Managing Director of New Markets Advisors and Author of The Innovative Leader.
The Blake Project Can Help Build Your Brand From The Inside-Out. Please email us for more about our purpose-driven brand culture programs.
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