By Ivan Seselj
Providing Needed Structure
Charles Araujo, principal analyst at Intellyx, expressed a similar sentiment in a recent whitepaper entitled The Innovation Map: How to Create Disruptive Innovation in a Complex Digital World. 
In it he notes, “It’s not a lack of creativity that stifles innovation, but rather fear, vagueness and ambiguity. When team members are unsure of how things work, they hesitate to take risks or suggest new ideas.”
In fact, organizations actually need to provide a certain level of structure for teams in order to promote and encourage innovation, as counterintuitive as that might sound. After all, how can teams improve the ways they do things if they are unsure what the existing process is, where to find that information, how to suggest improvements and where they should direct their improvement suggestions?
Discipline Creates Clarity
Araujo went on to say, “Many people erroneously associate discipline with rigidity. Focusing on process for the sake of process, they fail to stay focused on the desired outcomes, resulting in rigid, bureaucratic processes. Adopted properly, however, discipline creates consistency and clarity — two key, albeit underrated, enablers of creativity.”
Ideally then, processes should be dynamic, easily accessible and integrated into an employee’s day-to-day activities to make it easier for teams to collaborate around process improvement and constantly innovate.
Read the entire article at http://www.cmswire.com/digital-workplace/tame-the-anarchy-of-innovation-with-a-process-driven-culture/
