Page 186 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

Innovating for the Future 175

key managers and engineers have begun learning how to address problems
differently and with more flexibility, skills needed to help Boeing develop
and inspire its people, innovate more quickly, and further grow its business.

Incentivizing innovation
In order for innovation to take root and become part of the culture, peo-
ple on your team or in your organization have to feel that you will reward
and recognize the pursuit and development of new ideas, and not dismiss
or punish them. Doing this is more difficult than it might seem. For most
ongoing enterprises, no matter whether large or small or for profit or non-
profit, incentives are inevitably weighted toward maintaining, servicing,
and incrementally growing the current business. After all, you don’t want
people to sit around and daydream and doodle when there’s work to be
done. Some companies (e.g., 3M and Google) famously encourage employ-
ees to spend a certain percentage of their time working on speculative and
innovative projects. But these are the exceptions. Most companies focus
their people on what needs to get done today, while leaving innovation for
the future to the R&D group or a few senior executives.
As part of the TIAA transformation, Ferguson knew that new ideas
and innovation had to come from many parts of the company, not just from
him. He encouraged new business exploration more widely with the cre-
ation of growth teams comprising people from different functions, tasking
them with explicit objectives to pursue and develop new ideas. Ferguson
also actively promoted people who exhibited the spirit of innovation, and
he made a point of knocking down potential procedural and process block-
ers that were getting in the way of new ideas. Ferguson also communicated
constantly about the firm’s transformation and publicly recognized people
who were at the forefront of TIAA’s reinvention.
Thomson Reuters’ Catalyst Fund exemplifies another kind of incentive
mechanism that goes beyond just the promised seed money. Employees at
all levels were energized not just by the cash, but by the promise of im-
proving the business itself. Indeed, the internal publicity about the initial
winners and the overall process triggered a steady flow of applications.