Creating moments of Innovation during Pandemic

Organizations have begun to face the brunt of the lockdown with huge revenue drops and are now looking at ways and means to support their stakeholders financially as well emotionally. Amid all this, instead of going by the "needs", if organizations are driven by "purpose", it would keep the employees engaged despite the downturn, which eventually would transform a company. Companies that are agile, proactive to the market response, and amend their products or their channels accordingly will strive during this pandemic.

Driving innovation would help organizations to differentiate themselves from the competition. Most businesses have a formal methodology for product innovation, and many have R&D groups that explore the frontiers of science. Virtually every organization on the planet has in recent years worked systematically to reinvent its business processes for the sake of speed and efficiency. A case in point is Visa, the world's first near-virtual company that owes its success to organizational innovation. When Visa's founder banks formed a consortium in the United States in the early 1970s, they laid the groundwork for one of the world's most ubiquitous brands. Today, Visa is a global financial web that links more than 21,000 financial institutions and more than 1.3 billion cardholders.

Organizations can enable their employees to identify their "light bulb" moments by using the following Ten Commandments to Innovation:

1. Emphasizing the importance of investing in self-development
2. By building an organizational culture that will give space for creativity
3. By making employees feel "heard"
4. By allocating compulsory time for "Knowledge Sharing" sessions during a work-week
5. With WFH being the normal, it is important for managers to understand personal burden and to allocate work accordingly
6. Leverage innovative thinking that your employees have and relate the same organizational objectives
7. Problem solving at the heart
8. Uniting around the purpose of the organization
9. Seeing the system differently
10. Make sure that the learning and development team plays an important role

When leaders verbalize organizational beliefs and values to positively influence employees to create a productive and innovative work culture, it forms the founding stone for the organizational growth in the Post Covid era.

UMASANKER KANDASWAMY