Building a Culture of Originality

"Where everyone thinks in similar ways and sticks to the dominant norms, businesses are doomed to stagnate." Said Adam Grant in the HBR March 2016 - How to Build a Culture of Originality. The key lessons learned are that leaders need to sustain original thinking in their organization by given employees opportunities and rewards for generating ideas; vetting those ideas and selecting the smart ones; and ensuring a balance between cohesion and creative dissent.

Think Like the Enemy - Playing on the offense will force you to think differently and stimulate out-of-the-box idea generation and innovation.

Pursue Smart Ideas - Not every vote is equally valuable. Let fellow innovators be the evaluators of originality. Like in scientific publications, peers' reviews are more meaningful than the majority consensus or researching customer preferences that may be prone to confirmation bias (looking for information that supports one's view and rejecting the rest).

Got Cohesion and Dissent - Cultivate a culture of diversity to balance out strong culture with a steady supply of dissent (or critical) opinions. As in the navy's rapid-innovation cell, the norm is "loyal opposition" - i.e., creating an environment where employees feel safe to share critical opinions openly.

Here are four principles to keep cohesion versus dissent in productive tension:

  1. Prioritize organizational values. Give a framework from where to choose between conflicting opinions based on the ranked core values and the company's mission.

  2. Solicit problems, not just solutions. Thoroughly understand the problem first before exploring the solution space.

  3. Don't appoint devil's advocates. Find them. Groups with diversity in thoughts, opinions, and experiences possess authentic dissenters that promote more - and better - solutions to problems.

  4. Model receptivity to critical feedback. Leaders that infuse openness in sharing their weakness and encourage their people to challenge them out in the open are more successful in keeping (and flourishing) a culture of originality.