Ep. 275 - Karin Hurt, Co-Author of Courageous Cultures on Valuing Innovation, Curiosity & Productivity

On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Karin Hurt, Co-author of the new book, Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates. Karin and I talk about the difficulties and opportunities with creating a culture that values innovation and curiosity, and how companies can develop productive micro innovators. Let's get started.

Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger, founder of InsideOutside.IO. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat to what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.

Interview Transcript with Karin Hurt, Co-Author of Courageous Cultures

Brian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today, we have Karin Hurt. She's co-author of the new book, Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates. Welcome to the show, Karen. 

Karin Hurt: Thank you so much for having me. 

Brian Ardinger: Karen, I am excited to have you on the show. I just got a chance to read through a preview copy of the book and excited to dig into that. Tell me a little bit about how you got interested in this particular topic.

Karin Hurt: Yeah. So, I run a company called Let's Grow Leaders. And we work with human centered leaders all over the world with practical tools and techniques. So we were noticing a consistent pattern. As we were going into organizations, we'd be working at the very senior levels of organizations. And we would hear things like why don't more people speak up. Why don't people share ideas? Why do I stumble upon a best practice? Why are people sharing them with one another? 

And then we would go into do leadership training at the supervisor level. And we would hear things like nobody really wants my ideas. Last time I spoke up, I got in trouble. You know, why bother nothing ever happens anyway. 

We thought, are you all working for the same company? So, you know, most leaders really do want ideas and employees have great ideas to share. So why was there this disconnect? 

So, we partnered with the university of North Colorado on an extensive research study to answer that question. When people were holding back ideas, what kinds of ideas were they holding back and what was preventing them from speaking up and sharing ideas to improve the customer experience, the employee experience, or productivity in a process. That's a little bit about why we got so excited about this research. 

Brian Ardinger: So, let's dig into it. What makes a culture courageous? 

Karin Hurt: You know, our favorite definition of culture comes from Seth Godin, the marketing guru, who just says culture is simply people like us do things like this. And so, when you're talking about a courageous culture, people like us speak up. They share ideas. The default is to contribute. People are coming to work every day saying, huh, how can I make this better. And managers are proactively going out and asking for those ideas and responding well when people share them. 

Brian Ardinger: So clearly that is not the case in a lot of organizations, at least the ones that I've worked with and have been around. It's not always courageous. What do you think makes it so difficult for people to speak their truth or overcome that particular fear? 

Karin Hurt: Yeah. So, Dr. Amy Edmondson of Harvard who wrote the Fearless Organization, you know, she's really a pioneer of psychological safety. And she talks about people are more likely to hold onto a negative experience than a positive experience. And that really played out in our research as well. 

We would ask people; we did a whole qualitative set of interviews in addition to the quantitative study. And we would say, okay, if you're holding back an idea, you know why? And they would say, well, because you know, something bad happened in the past. Was okay, how long ago was that?

And you wouldn't believe it. Sometimes people say, well about 10 years ago. And then we would say, well, was it at this company? Oh, no, no, no. I was away at some place completely different. But it was enough to teach them that speaking up is scary. So that's one piece of it. And then, you know, other things that came out in our research, 49% said, I'm not regularly asked for my ideas. Something as simple as that.

And when we got underneath that binding, the managers are saying, well, I told them I have an open door. And the problem with an open door is it's passive. And for some people, especially if they've had a bad experience in the past, it still takes some level of courage to walk through that open door. 

And another thing that people said, which the most surprising finding quite frankly for me was 56% said, they're not sharing ideas because of fear they will not get the credit. And, you know, as fascinating. As I've been sharing that statistic people like aha. Yeah, well that happened to me too. And  so, I think that really resonates with folks. And then another statistic that I thought was really interesting was 50% said nothing will ever happen. So why bother?

And sometimes that nothing will ever happen. Isn't actually true. Something has happened, but the loop isn't closed. Right? So, people think their idea went into this black hole, you know, and because we're not circling back. So, whether it's an employee survey, it's a suggestion box. It's in a one-on-one meeting. Are we closing the loop and what we call responding with regard to the ideas that are coming forward? 

Brian Ardinger: That's a fascinating insight, because I see that a lot when we talk with corporations and what are their innovation efforts. And a lot of them say, well, we're doing these hackathons. Or challenges and asking for employee feedback.

And that's great to do that, but what they fail to do is put the process in place and what to do with those ideas after they come through the funnel. And like you said, be able to either close the loop or have a process that moves those particular ideas forward. So, you don't have this environment where people throw things in and, and again, like you say, the black hole of nothingness. And they get discouraged to do it again.

In the book, you talk a lot about this loop between clarity and curiosity, kind of back and forth. Can you talk a little bit about that and why that's so important? 

Karin Hurt: Yes. So, when you're building a courageous culture, it really does start with clarity. And that's clarity around two things. One clarity that you really do want people's ideas. And we found this to be really, really critical as we were testing the different tools and techniques. Clarity about where you need a great idea. 

So, you know, not just going out and saying, hey, do you have any ideas to improve the business? Or what do you think we could do to improve productivity? Tha...