{"id":930,"date":"2008-07-21T01:00:38","date_gmt":"2008-07-21T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=930"},"modified":"2008-07-21T01:01:53","modified_gmt":"2008-07-21T09:01:53","slug":"innovation-is-an-hr-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=930","title":{"rendered":"Innovation is an HR Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was reading an article<\/a> in a recent McKinsey Quarterly on innovation.\u00a0 The Quarterly was interviewing Brad Bird from Pixar, and I was surprised how often employee engagement came up.\u00a0 Sure, Brad talked about collaboration and all the rest, but the engagement of the employee teams surprised me.\u00a0 In HR, we all know that employee engagement is critical, but we don\u2019t always expect our leaders to phrase it in the same way, using those words.\u00a0 Perhaps the message is starting to sink in.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s quite obvious to us in HR that an engaged employee is one who will contribute better to our organization\u2019s future.\u00a0 They will be more productive and put in more of the personal discretionary time.\u00a0 But cutting to the chase, they care about success more and will try harder.\u00a0 When it comes to innovation, put into the context of engaged and unengaged employees, you simply can\u2019t innovate unless you\u2019re engaged.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost contrary to the definition of engagement.<\/p>\n

The problem is that it\u2019s clear that employee engagement is an HR issue.\u00a0 But if engagement is low, innovation is also low, and this seems to be one of the global prime directives of business at the moment.\u00a0 \u201cInnovate or die\u201d is something I\u2019ve heard often recently, and while not a nice through, global competitive forces may make it true.\u00a0 Well if \u201cinnovate or die\u201d is correct, and innovation cannot exist without engagement, then perhaps \u201cengage or die\u201d should be HR\u2019s slogan.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a couple of snippets from the McKinsey interview.<\/p>\n

The Quarterly: Do angry people\u2014malcontents, in your words\u2014make for better innovation? Can you be innovative and also happy?<\/p>\n

Brad Bird: I would say that involved people make for better innovation. Passionate involvement can make you happy, sometimes, and miserable other times. You want people to be involved and engaged. Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between\u2014what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: \u201cI want to get to the problem. There\u2019s something I want to do.\u201d If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.<\/p>\n

The Quarterly: It sounds like you spend a fair amount of time thinking about the morale of your teams.<\/p>\n

Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie\u2019s budget\u2014but never shows up in a budget\u2014is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.\u00a0 ((Hayagreeva Rao, Robert Sutton, and Allen P. Webb, April, 2008.\u00a0 \u201cInnovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird.\u201d\u00a0 Retrieved from McKinsey Quarterly on July 13, 2008.))<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was reading an article in a recent McKinsey Quarterly on innovation.\u00a0 The Quarterly was interviewing Brad Bird from Pixar, and I was surprised how often employee engagement came up.\u00a0 Sure, Brad talked about collaboration and all the rest, but…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8,44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engagement","category-strategies","category-innovation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}