Innovation culture in mature organizations – how to shake the immovable?

Why change something that has worked well for many years? This is often the reasoning of organizations that count more than one decade of successful activity. However, they run the risk of falling into the trap of such an approach and missing the moment when previously well-functioning processes become an anchor threatening to sink the company in the competitive struggle, Zuzana Matonienė, head of the Yara business center, is convinced.

“Having a habit is very natural. People are afraid of uncertainty, they are afraid of making mistakes when trying new things, of appearing unprofessional. Often they do not understand what is the point of changing something, what will that change bring? But today there is constant change around us, so a company that doesn’t change at all is doomed to fail. We have embedded this understanding in our organization at all levels. Thinking about how to do ordinary things better, how to operate more efficiently and implement improvements that help the company get closer to its strategic goals is a natural daily activity for our employees,” says Z. Matonienė.

“Yara” is a mature, 120-year-old company. A company uniting 18,000 professionals worldwide in 2018. European service center was established in Lithuania. Today, Yara Lietuva employs 500 people, whose average age is 34 years – seven years younger than the corporation. From the very beginning, the energetic company has set itself the goal of fostering a culture of innovation and creating added value by improving organizational processes. Over the course of four years, 1,401 ideas were born in the Yara business center, of which 1,020 were implemented, some of which improved the operations of other company departments.

Enable and to desire

Z. Matonienė is convinced: in order to achieve that creating innovations is not an activity after daily work, but a daily way of working, it is important not only to empower employees, but also to show them meaning. “Yara Lietuva” evaluates innovative ideas through the prism of business goals, and supports an ecosystem in the organization that promotes creativity, provides platforms and tools for the implementation of ideas. A culture of high tolerance for mistakes is also important – it allows people to feel safe when initiating and implementing change.

Yara’s business center has a dedicated team responsible for the methodology and structure of continuous improvement. Its task is to enable the people of the organization to come up with, propose and implement improvements that bring value to the company by themselves or with help. This team plays the role of a kind of catalyst, but not a center of ideas, because the creation of innovations and their implementation is the prerogative of all employees of the organization. “We believe that the person working with a specific task knows best what is worth changing, which activities that take a lot of time but create little value can be abandoned,” says Z. Matonienė.

Divisional teams meet weekly to discuss potential ideas. Employees can provide the organization with ideas on what and how it could be improved through a dedicated platform. All of them are registered, and every quarter the company organizes presentations of already implemented improvements. They reward the best authors, and the winners are chosen not by managers or members of the development team, but by the entire organization. The company’s employees regularly participate in trainings covering a wide range of competencies, from “soft” powers to technical skills. The company has also identified improvement ambassadors, enthusiasts who actively support the culture of innovation, help, advise and inspire colleagues.

“Structure and routines are important, but we must not forget to inspire people, to “encourage” them to create ideas. A critical component of success is publicity: public recognition, employee appreciation, incentive awards, and appropriate management attention. In this way, the whole organization gets involved, and the heroes who implemented the change become visible to everyone and inspire others by their example”, – the manager of Yara Lietuva emphasizes the importance of inclusion.

She is convinced that limiting the freedom of action and turning a person into a hostage of habits can also cause fear to go wrong. Therefore, the belief that mistakes are a natural part of the process plays a significant role in fostering proactiveness and initiative. At Yara, even managers do not shy away from talking about the mistakes they have made, because they always provide an opportunity to learn a lesson for the future.

Improvement that leads to strategic goals

Most of the ideas implemented by Yara Lietuva are related to unifying processes in different departments or even countries, creating unified reports, as well as automation and robotization. Z. Matonienė emphasizes that innovation is not necessarily only a fundamental improvement that fundamentally changes everything – often many small but important changes lead to significant changes.

For example, creating templates for customer orders significantly reduced the number of errors in manual input and made the process much faster. Having noticed that the transport delivering the ordered products often has to go to the same place twice, because the customer was not working at that time, the customers filling the order were asked to enter their working hours as well. A big change in the organization was also brought about by the system of unified reports, thanks to which disaggregated information became available in a uniform format.

No improvement, whether related to saving time or optimizing resources, can be an end in itself. If improvement does not contribute to the goals of the strategy, it is not improvement, but a waste of time, says the manager. Improvement culture when linked to business goals, it is easier for employees to see a broader vision: how their improvement efforts will benefit the entire organization, how it will make their own work easier, what more interesting tasks they will be able to take on after getting rid of tedious repetitive and low-value-added functions. Therefore, all improvements are recorded, measured, not forgetting to measure and demonstrate the impact of the change on the rest of the organization. In this way, a dialogue is created and the scope of improved processes gradually increases.

Z. Matonienė emphasizes that innovations are born where a culture focused on the cultivation of people is nurtured. It is very important to focus on the employee – training, encouraging, encouraging, allowing him to make mistakes – and constantly communicate how he contributes to the business vision.

“Our goal is for Yara employees to feel like leaders in their role. We have included the opportunity to work innovatively in the employer’s value proposition. We enable our people to change processes, provide tools, opportunities for growth and recognition. The employee feels that he can shape his own workplace, abandon routine functions and find more time for higher value-creating activities. All this allows us to take a critical look at the conventional function and question what has worked for decades, but has long ceased to be relevant. And finally – to move the unmovable,” says the head of the Yara business center.