Team innovation

Edmondson often asks teams (a) to estimate what percentage of the failures in their organisations might be caused by blameworthy actions. Usually, they pick a number that is less than 5 percent. Then she asks them (b) how often failures in their company are actually treated as blameworthy. After a pause (or an uncomfortable laugh), they come up with a much higher number, say 70 to 90 percent, which, if accurate is guaranteed not only to stifle innovation but also to crush learning in a team.

You might like to look at the lists above and ask yourselves the same questions. (For more details see the Exercises tab at the top of the page).

A team that easily shifts to blaming will be more likely to block the flow of creative ideas:

Safe team learning

Learning as a team requires an environment where every team member feels psychologically safe. This means team members feel confident that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish them for speaking up, as people tend to act in ways that prevent learning when they face possible threat or embarrassment⁴.

Team psychological safety doesn’t mean lack of accountability or standards. It is possible to work in an environment that is neither safe nor properly accountable; it is also possible to work in a psychologically safe environment that encourages every team member to feel accountable to the team as a whole⁵.

Research has shown that ‘cross-training’ (a process involving team members spending time to become more familiar with each other’s roles) is a very effective way to build trust and increase understanding, communication, and coordination between team members⁷ . A variety of ways of approaching this is shown in the Exercises.

For many teams, improving team learning means a significant culture change – a change that the evidence shows is worth the time and effort.

Agile innovation

With the fundamentals in place – a culture where people feel safe to contribute, where there can be healthy discussion, resolution of disagreement and where ‘failure’ does not automatically lead to someone getting blamed – we can now look at a team model for innovating in a systematic and speedy manner. It builds on, indeed requires, a culture of transparency and straightforward discussion of all and any issues.

The Agile Manifesto⁸ was published in 2001 as a better way of developing software at a time when IT projects were often delivered late, were bug-ridden and didn’t meet customer requirements. Since that time Agile, and its sister frameworks of Scrum and Kanban have spread outside IT and software development⁹ and represent a culture and way of thinking that enable but de-risk innovation by fully empowering development teams and encouraging continuous adaptability alongside scrupulously honest discussion of what’s working, what isn’t and what needs to be done to improve.

The Agile Manifesto and The Scrum Guide¹⁰ contain useful specifics and principles of their approaches. To generalise, they consist of:

• A focus on staying close to what the ‘customer’ of the innovation requires – by building tangible improvements in small increments and receiving frequent feedback from the customer. (‘Customer’ is used as a broad term here to include stakeholders, colleagues, patients etc).
• Self-organising, autonomous teams.
• Regular and frequent ‘review and improve’ team meetings (known as ‘Daily Scrums’ but this can be tweaked to fit the project rhythm) based on open, honest discussions about what the team needs to continue with, adapt or stop to deliver successfully. These are based on feedback and adaptation cycles derived from process control methodology.
• Continuous improvement driven by a constant learning culture.

For example, Scrum is built on three pillars of:

• Transparency – requiring a shared understanding of the aim of “Done” (what it means for a piece of work to be complete).
• Inspection – frequent monitoring and collective discussion of progress.
• Adaptation – adjustment to minimise deviation from the team’s agreed workplan.

The Sprints themselves have a time-boxed rhythm to them with:

• An initial Sprint Planning session.
• Short ‘Daily’ (ie regular & frequent) Scrums that inspect progress and re-prioritise work.
• Sprint Reviews that inspect outcomes at the end of the sprint.
• A Sprint Retrospective that inspects team processes and agrees improvements.

These Agile / Scrum processes promote team learning and improve team innovation. They are consistent with the self-regulated learning and guided mastery models that are known to improve learning and enhance feelings of self-efficacy in adults. The focus on autonomy rather than external control is better for us as individuals, better for us in teams and better for the organisations we work in.

1. Edmondson A., 2013, Teaming to innovate, John Wiley and Sons

2. Kelley, T. and Kelley, D. 2012, Reclaim your creative confidence Harvard Business Review, December 115 - 118

3. see Edmondson A., 1999, Psychological safety and learning behaviour in teams, Administrative Science Quarterly 44(2) 350 - 383

4. ibid

5. Edmondson, A., 2019, The fearless organization: creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth, John Wiley and Sons.

6. Edmondson, 2013 op. cit.

7. Marks, M et al 2002, The Impact of Cross-Training on Team Effectiveness, Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 1, 3 - 13

8. See agilemanifesto.org

9. See https://www.scrumalliance.org/learn-about-scrum/state-of-scrum

10. Schwaber, K and Sutherland, J , 2017, The Scrum Guide

11. ibid