Can your organization be innovative?

While American healthcare has been a leader in developing new technologies and pharmaceutical agents to cure disease, reduce disabilities, and improve the quality of life, numerous indicators suggest that the same innovative approaches have not been applied to the delivery of healthcare. It seems that every day the media is reporting on the high cost of healthcare and inconsistencies in the quality of care. Coupled with new reimbursement models, it’s obvious that healthcare organizations need delivery system innovation. What does it take to encourage innovation? Is the culture of your organization compatible with encouraging innovation?

Hill, Brandeau, Truelove, and Lineback ( tinyurl.com/n9sm3yg) studied organizations known for their high level of innovation over a 10 year period. From their research, they identified three activities that these organizations do well. These activities - creative abrasion, creative agility and creative resolution - describe how these organizations encourage people to find innovative opportunities and solutions. The authors don’t claim that these organizations are the only ones that do these activities, but that these organizations did these activities well.

Creative abrasion is an emotional, conflict-laden discussion among people of different perspectives to identify differences that lead to new insights and destabilizing closely held beliefs. Yet, this interaction is essential for accepting the comfort of the status quo and seeing the new realm of the possible. The term itself reflects the discomfort associated with this activity.

Creative agility refers to the relentless problem solving efforts to test ideas in hopes that an unforeseen solution can be identified. The very nature of innovation is that it is not an obvious solution. But every idea is not “gold” so each must be tested, reevaluated, and refined before final conclusions can be reached. Being good at creative agility means having the resources to try different things that sometimes seem counterintuitive, after all, most of these experiments will fail. Another unexpected implication is that innovation requires more flexibility and relaxation of the traditional business-like planning mode. Goals and timetables cannot be accurately predicted.

Creative resolution means the ability to integrate different options. It’s not a choice between competing options, but a synthesis of competing options. It’s not a political competition but a team effort to jointly produce a new, better performing option than either existing option.

While resource constraints may limit how much creative agility healthcare organizations can afford, the biggest challenge for most healthcare organizations is that they don’t promote or tolerate creative abrasion due to fear of internal conflict. But conflict can be positive or negative depending on whether relationship conflict overwhelms task or cognitive conflict. Unmanaged, conflict frequently turns ugly, but organizations that shape conflict toward task or cognitive conflict and intercept relationship or affective conflict can uncover new insights that enable innovation and improve operational performance.

Another deviation from “normal”, management is used to choosing the best option from existing options. Conflict resolution requires learning to think in terms of adding, rather than choosing. It requires learning the viewpoint of other people so you can understand the things they appreciate that might not be appreciated by you. It means putting aside political and personal disagreements in favor of the issues. This new approach is actually a skill that requires time and may be uncomfortable until it becomes second nature.

As a leader who wants a more innovative organization, you cannot achieve your vision by exhorting staff to be more innovative. Instead, ask yourself these four questions:

• Do we interact in a way that safely move people out of their comfort zone and encourages them to learn from people who see things differently than they do?
• Do we provide the resources to encourage risk-taking innovative behaviors?
• Do we have an environment that makes it safe to take the risks necessary to be innovative?
• Are we able to resolve differences in a way that puts politics aside in favor of constructive collaboration?