I was most interested to your the article in PM 1 May about innovation and the "serious lack of management". I work for a company who prides itself on its innovative approach but limits this to products and services only with little or no vision on improving "people" issues. Again, as in your article there is very little management and there appears to be pride in this. For example, comments like "we don't do HR, health and safety"; "..we don't always communicate everything we encourage people to be curious". There are currently so many "projects" on the go with people not wanting to share what they are doing with the result that people are duplicating work, taking action that then has to be recinded as it is inappropriate. How did you actually convince your management team that management is not a dirty word and that some structure, communication and feedback is necessary for people to be creative and that these are not a barrier to creativity and genius? Linda Rawson
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Firstly sorry for delay in responding I have been away working with our guys in China. This is a common issue we come across with our clients. It re-iterates to me how important having a culture of innovation is, innovating your people is as crucial as innovation your products and services. Creating this kind of culture takes years and is no easy task. While I did face some nervousness, the team here had recognised the need for specialist management skills like HR, Marketing, Finance, to take us to the next stage of growth, so they were ready for it by the time I joined. This was matched with an existing culture of adaptability and open feedback. Clearly as a company grows you need to join things up, we use the philosophy of tight – loose, no-one wants too much process and structure so you need to decide what needs to be tight and what needs to be loose – so that it works to strengths of the variety of people you have in any one organisation. Creative people need structures and boundaries within which their creativity can flourish – we call this freedom within a gilded cage. What we do is constantly look at our gilded cage and make sure it is working for everyone and for the business.

Your company says “we don’t do HR” - right? But you are an HR person? I wonder where you sit, who you connect with the most in your week? My advice (not that you asked!) is to get very close to a member in the management team and figure out how some small wins could make a difference. I’m left wondering a lot – like do you tell stories about projects together? Do you actively reward cross team working? Could you actually demonstrate (even roughly) how much time and energy is being wasted? And what that could be used for instead?
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