It's not always easy to think about what we mean when we talk about a culture. A culture is composed of many different things, and a company culture is difficult to describe. The traditional definition of culture outside the setting of a company refers to the arts and humanities of a society. The best way I've come to describe a company culture is through its values, and most specifically through the behaviors the people do regularly that embody those values.

Innovation itself isn't a behavior, which makes it more difficult to just assume everyone knows what I mean when I say a culture of innovation. Innovation is a little bit like "executive presence" - where people say they know it when they see it, but they can't actually give meaningful feedback to help you get there. Maddening! As someone who wants to encourage the creation of this culture I can't leave it to chance that we won't give very specific examples and feedback on the behaviors that I think embody a culture of innovation.

I believe innovation can be captured by some of the following behaviors: experimenting, trying, failing, proposing an idea, operating outside the normal channels. Experiments are something that I believe innovative organizations do all the time. Experiments require a hypothesis to test and a lab to test them in; this can be all sorts of settings. Process change, technology, seating configuration, anything. It doesn't have to be formal, I do think that having a hypothesis helps distinguish experiments from simply messing around.

Trying (and sometimes failing) is a really important aspect of innovation. You want people to try things all the time; and if they fail you want there to be a positive reinforcement. The trying is important and you want people to keep trying, so there cannot be any negative flavor attached to the outcome. Detach from the results of these experiments and realize that any outcome is knowledge and celebrate.

Operating outside the normal channels is also an important aspect of innovation. Ideas for improving a process can come from anywhere. Ideas for new products don't have to come from the "new product group" - they can come from anywhere. In a technical organization, there must be the ability for a technical team to surface new capabilities from new technology that can turn out completely unexpected products. An innovative team can say "let's do this new thing" even if nobody thought it was possible even six months ago.

The big benefit includes a more engaged and happy team, more productivity from your team, better ideas, more ideas and better results. Your team will work on these things with the passion of commitment energy; not just the energy of compliance for doing what they're told if they have a say and contribution to what's being done. And that's a culture of innovation.

Next up: Creating a Culture of innovation, Part 3: Take Action!