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Nurturing Innovation

Creating a welcoming environment that encourages different perspectives and new ideas, building a culture of curiosity, openness, and creativity across the organization and the wider community.
Level 1 Encourages the team to identify improvements.

BEHAVIORS

  • Expands on the thinking or solutions proposed by others.
  • Challenges others to provide explanations that account for several aspects of a situation or problem.
  • Questions others about their assumptions, reasons, and evidence.
  • Engages others to discuss different perspectives and question conventional practices.
  • Makes a deliberate effort to explore new ideas with others.
  • Gives constructive feedback when a new idea is not usable while recognizing its merit.
  • Researches best practices within or outside the industry to spark innovative changes.

QUESTIONS

  • Tell us about a time when you sent a product back to your team and asked them to consider a new solution.

Probing Questions

* What instructions did you give them?

* How did they react to your request?

* What was the result?

* What was the impact on the team?

  • Describe a project or work assignment where you knew the current business process identified by your team would not be successful.

Probing Questions

* What feedback did you provide to the team?

* What approach did you use to challenge the team to come up with a better solution?

* Was the approach readily adopted by the team?

* What made it a successful undertaking?

Level 2 Encourages others to think beyond the conventional.

BEHAVIORS

  • Coaches team members to identify problems based on a broad range of factors, many of which are ambiguous or difficult to define.
  • Encourages team members to look at longer-term implications of recommendations and approaches that are not readily apparent.
  • Dedicates time to meet with the team for the discussion of new ideas.
  • Facilitates the integration of new ideas into products, services, and business processes.
  • Assesses new ideas to determine how they add value, identifying ideas that have merits but need further development.
  • Prioritizes the implementation of innovative ideas based on a long-term perspective.
  • Discontinues pursuing ideas that have become infeasible, reallocating resources towards other opportunities.
  • Gives team members opportunities to test innovative ideas through trial and error.

QUESTIONS

  • Tell us when you had to decide on a novel approach to a business process, product, or service put forward by one of your teams?

Probing Questions

* What made the proposal innovative?

* What factors were important to you in evaluating the option or approach being put forward?

* How did you communicate your decision to the team?

* Were you satisfied with the outcome?

  • Describe what actions you have taken to give your team the freedom to consider creative or novel approaches to solving problems.

Probing Questions

* How did you assess your staff's readiness to accept this freedom?

* What checks and balances were necessary?

* How did you get this message across?

* What was the impact on performance?

Level 3 Encourages innovation across teams.

BEHAVIORS

  • Provides frameworks and approaches to assist teams in thinking “outside the box” and come up with new solutions.
  • Assembles innovation teams that include members from different teams in the organization.
  • Facilitates cross-functional engagements to help organization members broaden their experiences.
  • Promotes communications and knowledge sharing across departmental boundaries.
  • Implement changes in the work environment or processes to maximize the potential for innovation.

QUESTIONS

  • Describe a situation where you put together a cross-functional team to address a new challenge to the organization.

Probing Questions

* How did you select the team members?

* What was the biggest challenge they faced?

* How did you assist them to meet their goals?

* What was the result?

  • Describe a time when you had to build bridges across teams to pursue a ground-breaking initiative.

Probing Questions

* How did you communicate the need across the teams?

* What actions did you take to encourage cross-team communication and innovation?

* What were some of the challenges / barriers encountered, and how did you address these?

* What were the outcomes?

Level 4 Nurtures an organizational culture of innovation.

BEHAVIORS

  • Emphasizes the need for creativity and innovation in the communication within the organization.
  • Gives recognition and rewards to innovative solutions.
  • Ensures training are available to help organization members develop a technique for innovative thinking.
  • Develops systems and processes to channel organization members’ creative ideas into meaningful implementation.
  • Invites organization members to share their innovative ideas with the senior leadership and across the organization.
  • Measures management performance on their ability to engage teams in creating value-added products, services, and ideas.
  • Identifies barriers to innovation in the organization’s culture and processes and how to remove those barriers.

QUESTIONS

  • Talk about a time when you were concerned that the organizational culture was creating a barrier to creativity and innovation?

Probing Questions

* Describe the situation or cultural environment?

* Why was this causing a problem or challenge?

* What action did you take to address the situation?

* What was the outcome?

  • Describe a scenario where you championed the introduction of a rewards or recognition program for implementing creative solutions.

Probing Questions

* How did you engage others in this process?

* What challenges did you encounter?

* Describe some of the measures you used to access the success of this initiative?

* Taking into consideration these measures, describe the level of success of this initiative?

Level 5 Engages the broader community in creative solutions.

BEHAVIORS

  • Engages the support of internal and external stakeholders to identify solutions/approaches that address significant organizational / wider industry challenges.
  • Sponsors initiatives that bring together diverse talents to address broad-ranging issues.
  • Facilitates networks with outside businesses and organizations to promote innovative ideas and practices.
  • Engages with educational institutions to build alliances and foster innovation.

QUESTIONS

  • Describe a situation where you engaged both internal and external stakeholders to come up with an innovative solution to a significant problem or challenge.

Probing Questions

* What did you do to elicit support within your own organization?

* How did you ensure the outside voices were heard?

* Which stakeholder group brought the biggest challenge and why?

* What was the outcome?

  • Describe a time when you brought together a diverse set of talents to address a challenge that extended beyond organizational boundaries.

Probing Questions

* How did you go about identifying the talent needed to address the situation?

* What structure or processes did you put in place to support them in coming up with an innovative solution?

* How did you monitor progress?

* What was the outcome – both short and long term?