Innovation is In-Ovation

Want to increase the level of innovation in your team or organization?  Then the key is to get into more of a sense of ovation.  Ovation is a latin origin word that means “rejoicing, shouting, enthusiastic celebration, loud and prolonged applause” (Dictionary.com).  If you want to get more innovation you will need to figure out if you are celebrating the people in your team, the team and the people around the team.

Innovation is the value outcome produced through productive creativity.  Creativity is the natural human state of enjoying play.  Playing with things, ideas, concepts, challenges, solutions and new ways of thinking and working are the “natural” state of human beings (just watch a group of children playing hard and learning and creating!)  We shut that sense of play down in most office environments, teams and organizations.

We use motivation 2.0 (carrot and stick extrinsic drivers) and wonder how our rewards and punishments actually work against creating and innovating.  We need to begin to free up the sense of fun and play again by granting more autonomy, inviting more of the sense of emerging personal mastery and, as leaders and facilitators of change and innovation, by providing a core sense of Purpose around which all of this can coalesce.

How much celebration, encouragement and outright ovation do you bring to or provide for your family, your team, your department and your organization.  Work can be a joyful process much of the time and the requirements of true innovation, permission and support and outright joy in play is essential.