How to Give Busy People the Time to Innovate

There are many ways a leader can rally workers around innovation, from launching experiments to rolling out initiatives to running hackathons. But any one of these efforts must contend with the reality of the modern-day workplace — everyone is really busy.

Running a thriving daily operation is vital to a business. How can leaders make sure workers are able to balance operational necessities with innovation?

CLEAR “PROCESS DEBT” THAT’S BLOCKING INNOVATION TIME

You know those work tasks that take longer than they should because of some rule or procedure that has outlived its purpose?

When those add up, your workplace can become saddled with process debt. Any process you implement today — meetings that languish on the calendar, over-the-top communication protocols or onerous data entry — will cost workers time that could be used for innovation.

Arvind KC, the chief people and systems officer at the online gaming platform Roblox, said that process debt can stand in the way of creative workers trying to do their jobs. “When you hire really smart people who want to be creative and innovative, you don’t have to work on routines to help them be innovative, because that’s their default state. You have to work on the routines that prevent them from being in that default state,” said KC. “The moment you remove those and give them space, they’re going to be creative, they’re going to be innovative.”

Any workplace is bound to build up process debt. What can you do about it?

At Roblox, leaders depend on “Bureaucracy Busters,” an internal tool where any of the company’s more than 2,000 workers can post about burdensome processes and co-workers can upvote the ones they support. For example, an employee could post about a software approval process that required signoff from four managers, eating into precious innovation time. If the post gets enough upvotes, Roblox leaders would determine whether they should eliminate the process (which KC told me is almost always the case).

Capital One has a similar internal site called “Clearing the Way,” said Melanie Frank, a managing vice president of cyber engineering at the bank. Frank said the tool, which is also powered by upvoting, helps leaders identify time-wasting processes.

BEFORE YOU ADD SOMETHING NEW, SUBTRACT SOMETHING OLD

At Capital One, Frank said she grapples with a cycle that comes with encouraging innovation — workers generate new ideas, then those ideas become projects, but the more projects they start, the less time they have for generating new ideas.

“We’re just exponentially generating more ideas than we can complete,” said Frank.

What Frank is describing is something known as initiative overload, which happens when the number of projects accumulates to the point where they become insurmountable. Frank learned that if you wish to continue launching new things — tools, initiatives or products — you must remove old ones. She said she often reminds her team that it’s OK to pass on a new project or remove unnecessary parts of their work.

But it’s not always so easy to stop doing something in a workplace. Leidy Klotz, a professor at the University of Virginia and author of the book, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, has studied subtraction as a method for improvement. Klotz’s research with his co-authors has shown that humans are more inclined to add than they are to subtract. Adding is more noticeable, he told me. It’s rewarded and there’s clear evidence of it.Subtraction, on the other hand, is invisible.

A leader’s job is to intentionally make subtraction visible to remind employees that there’s sometimes value in removing something.

Among his ideas:

• Assign someone in meetings to remind the group to consider subtraction as an option.
• Create a rule: Before you add anything new, take something away.
• Openly celebrate when a team stops doing something, just like you celebrate the launch of something new.

PUT INNOVATION AT THE TOP OF THE LIST

If you don’t want innovation to lose out against competing priorities, you have to put it at the top of the list — and ensure your employees know it’s there.

That’s what Carter Busse did at the automation company Workato, which employs about 1,000 people. As the firm’s chief information officer, Busse’s primary responsibility is to keep systems online, ensure information is secure, and other essential responsibilities of an IT department. But in the age of AI, Busse said his team was ready to infuse more creativity into its operational duties.

So, Busse made “innovate and lead” his team’s top goal for this year. “That just completely changed the mindset of my team, because it came from me,” said Busse. “I was measuring them on being innovative and being creative.”

By making innovation a priority, workers were pushed to think about how to apply creative thinking into their daily work, said Busse.

SEPARATE INVENTION AND OPTIMIZATION

One way to solve for the collision of daily work and innovation is to separate the two. That’s the approach used by Marco Zappacosta, the co-founder and C.E.O. of Thumbtack, a home improvement platform. Zappacosta explained how he thinks about work in two distinct categories often used in the startup world: zero-to-one work and one-to-10 work. Both are vital, Zappacosta said, but very different.

One-to-10 work is about optimization — improving the business, growing the number of customers and keeping them happy.

Zero-to-one work, on the other hand, is about invention. This is when you’re bringing something new to market. To do zero-to-one work right, Zappacosta said, you have to set the growth ambitions aside and have a team start with a hypothesis, not a numerical goal.

The separation of operational work and invention work can also apply to when you launch innovative projects. Imagine it’s crunchtime for a project you’re working on. How would you respond if a manager asked you to brainstorm about an experimental product line? Or asked you to learn a new tool? I’m guessing you’d balk at the notion, and instead focus on your pressing deadlines.

Workers have seasons of peak busyness, when the daily operation clamors for their attention — the one-to-ten work. These aren’t the optimal moments to step in and push employees to think differently. Instead, prioritize innovation during the less intense stretches of the year.

Another way to separate out the invention work is to do it in small increments, such as 30- or 45-minute bursts here and there.

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The modern workplace will never reach innovation finality. The daily responsibilities will never die down. So, you must actively tend to the balance, listen to the people doing the work and adjust as needed as you roll out new initiatives.