From Automated Defensive Behaviour to Innovation Resilience Behaviour: A Tool for Resilient Teamwork as an Example of Workplace Innovation

Abstract

This contribution introduces the Innovation Resilience Behaviour tool (IRB-tool), developed for teams working on innovation projects. As such, the tool is an example of a workplace innovation intervention. The purpose of the IRB-tool is to help teams stay on track during innovation projects. The IRB-tool focuses on team processes, such as resilience, psychological safety, learning, voice, and leadership. Applying the IRB-tool helps teams become more aware of organisational defensiveness that hampers risk-taking that is crucial to innovation. The tool can also be used by other types of teams to improve the effectiveness of their team processes.

This chapter is partly based on Oeij, P.R.A. (2016). From automated defensive behaviour to innovation resilience behaviour: Improving the management of R&D and innovation projects. Invited paper for IOSH 2016 Annual Conference “Influential leadership: delivering impact—sustaining change”. IOSH, Institution of Occupational Safety and Health , ICC ExCel London, London, United Kingdom and Oeij, P.R.A. Oeij, Preenen, P.T.Y., & Van der Meulen, F.A. (December 2014). From unnatural behaviour to Innovation Resilience Behaviour: Prototype of a change tool. [ETP Behaviour and Innovation]. Leiden: TNO Healthy Living. Both sources will be forwarded free of charge upon request to the author.

Annex Innovation Resilience Behaviour Tool/IRB Tool

Source: Oeij et al. (2014) (Extended summary).

By applying this tool, a user will obtain:

• Insight into the presence of defensiveness, and, thus, insight into possible causes for risk-avoidance;

• Insight into the degree of the presence of mindful infrastructure , that is, into the presence of characteristics that facilitate IRB;

• Insight into the presence of IRB, that is, into the presence of behaviours and competences to keep an innovation team on track and to get an innovation team back on track;

• A guide with which to develop simple and applicable team meeting tools for own use.

The tool contains 3 steps:

Steps:

Step 1: Assess your present state

Exercise 1: Assess defensiveness (two-column model)

Step 2: Move and go about it

Exercise 2: Assess mindful infrastructure

• Team safety and team learning

• Leadership

• Team voice and influence

Exercise 3: Assess Innovation Resilience Behaviour

• Acting mindfully and alertly

Step 3: Wrap Up

Exercise 4: Assess whether you are going to do it

Exercise 5: Assess which competencies to improve

Exercise 6: Develop your own tools

Step 1: Assess your present state

Explain the step

The purpose is to assess the presence of defensiveness. Defensiveness can be understood as risk-averse behaviour, and risk-averse behaviour can negatively affect the innovation process. Making risk-averse behaviour discussable will help the team to become transparent and better able to identify bottlenecks in communication and collaboration.

Exercise 1: Assess defensiveness

Execute

First: Write down what was said in the right column as literally (verbatim) as you can remember. Write down everything said by you and your conversation partner in the sequence of that talk. Take a good look at what you have written, reread it, and assess whether it is complete according to your own memory.

Second: Now for each part of the dialogue, write in the left column what you were thinking, but did not say (exactly at the level of your own turns). These were probably thoughts that were emotionally-laden and it is likely that these thoughts could have had a strong impact on the conversation if you had spoken them.

Third: Now please look at the following questions:

• Why did you not say what you were thinking?

• What might the consequences have been if you had spoken your thoughts?

• What is the deeper reason behind why you did not say what you were thinking?

Fourth: Look at the defence mechanisms in Table 22.1.

• In hindsight, did you, your conversation partners, or others who were present, undertake any of these defensive practices? If so, which one(s)?

• If so, can you explain why this/these defensive behaviours(s) were used? What was the effect of their usage?

Fifth: Take a step back from this concrete example, and reflect on the following question: to what extent could applying this/these defensive behaviours(s) affect the effectiveness of team work, especially with regard to performing an innovation project?

The same procedure can be used with your team as a whole, if it is safe to do so.

It could be helpful to collect all the team’s experiences with defensive behaviours. Then you could discuss questions like these:

• Do we see a pattern in how we communicate or miscommunicate?

• Are we moving in circles from which we do not seem able to escape?

• Is defensiveness related to certain issues, problems, persons, situations?

• What does it say about our own ability to critically but constructively reflect on what happens?

• Are we self-critical or are we scapegoating our environment or ‘others’?

• Are we addressing issues we can influence ourselves or are we addressing issues that lie outside our sphere of influence?

• Is there a group bias to favour conformity which excludes deviant thinking and thinking out-of-the box?

• Is this a way to keep mixed messages unresolved?

Result

The result of this exercise should be personal or team awareness regarding your own defensiveness and how that possibly affects the process of the innovation project and/or the team. The fundamental question is: are you prepared to do something about it? If so, please continue reading.

Step 2: Move and go for it

Innovative behaviour is not only a matter of characteristics of the behaviour of individuals but also a matter of organisational design and the design of jobs (i.e., active jobs; Karasek & Theorell, 1990). At the team level, a facilitating factor is the presence of a mindful infrastructure (Fig. 22.1). Once this is in place, there is greater potential for the emergence of IRB (Fig. 22.1).

Explain the step

The purpose of this step is to assess whether a mindful infrastructure is present in your team. With this insight you can determine whether your team is well situated to be resilient in the innovation process. If that is not the case, you can decide what to improve.

Exercise 2: Assess mindful infrastructure

Execute

• Team psychological safety & learning.

Answer the following questions for your team/department/organisation Do you agree or disagree with the following statements about team safety and team learning?	Agree = 1 Disagree = 0
If you make a mistake on this team, it is never held against you
Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues
People on this team never reject others for being different
It is safe to take a risk in this team
It is easy to ask other members of this team for help
No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts
Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilised
We regularly take time to work out ways to improve our team’s work processes
This team tends to handle differences of opinion privately or off-line, rather than addressing them directly as a group
Team members go out and get all the information they possibly can from others, such as customers, or other parts of the organisation
This team frequently seeks new information that leads us to make important changes
In this team, someone always makes sure that we stop to reflect on the team’s work process
People in this team often speak up to test assumptions about issues under discussion
We invite people from outside the team to present information or have discussions with us
Team safety and team learning Score: 10–14 = Present; 1–5 = Absent; 6–9 = Present to a limited degree

If your score is 6 or lower, consider improvement.

Results

• Draw your conclusions, based on data and discussion.

• Define future actions to take.

Execute

• Leadership

Answer the following questions for your team/department/organisation Do you agree or disagree with the following statements about leadership? (Remember: leadership can be performed by one individual but also by professionals and by the group as a whole)	Agree = 1 Disagree = 0
Leadership concerning collaboration is:
Making it legitimate to contribute opinions
Maintaining an open climate for discussion
Employing participative decision making
Leadership concerning creativity is …
Launching important new efforts
Getting unit members to exceed traditional performance patterns
Encouraging direct reports to try new things
Leadership concerning control is …
Keeping projects under control
Ensuring that corporate procedures are understood
Expecting people to get the details of their work right
Leadership concerning competition is …
Demonstrating full efforts on the job
Getting work done quicker in the unit
Providing fast responses to emerging issues
Leadership concerning tough issues is …
Ability to provide clear directions
Ability to serve compatible needs in the organisation
Ability to rule out ambiguity
Leadership of the leader and the team: Score: 10–15 = Present; 1–5 = Absent; 6–9 = Present to a limited degree

If your score is 6 or lower, consider improvement.

Results

• Draw your conclusions based on data and discussion.

• Define future actions to take.

Execute

• Team voice and influence.

Answer the following questions for your team/department/organisation Do you agree or disagree with the following statements about team voice and influence?	Agree = 1 Disagree = 0
Here each (team) member:
Develops and makes recommendations concerning issues that affect this work group
Speaks up and encourages others in this group to get involved in issues that affect the group
Communicates their opinions about work issues to others in this group even if their opinion is different and others in the group disagree with them
Keeps well informed about issues where their opinion might be useful to this work group
Gets involved in issues that affect the quality of work life here in this group
Speaks up in this group with ideas for new projects or changes in procedures
Here in this organisation:
We have a “we are together” attitude
There are real attempts to share information throughout the project team
We decide many issues together, or at least have influence on matters that concern us
Team voice and team participative decision making: Score: 7–9 = present; 1–4 = absent; 5–6 = present to a limited degree

If your score is 5 or lower, consider improvement.

Results

• Draw your conclusions based on data and discussion.

• Define future actions to take.

Based on these completed checklists and questions you should have a fair picture of the mindful infrastructure of your team. If you decide to improve the mindful infrastructure: make a list of your actions.

Explain the step

The purpose of this step is to assess whether Team IRB is present in your team. This step helps you gain insight into whether the team operates in a mindful and alert manner.

Exercise 3: Assess Innovation Resilience Behaviour (Team IRB)

Execute

• Team IRB.

Answer the following questions for your team/department/organisation Do you agree or disagree with the following statements about acting mindfully and alertly?	Agree = 1 Disagree = 0
Preoccupation with failure
We actively look for risks and try to understand them
We are keen for cues to understand why our expectations are not met
When members spot potential risks we discuss them extensively
Reluctance to simplify
Members of this team never take things for granted
Team members listen carefully, and it is rare that someone’s view goes unheard
We actively seek more explanations and viewpoints before taking a decision
Sensitivity to operations
Team members put effort into building a clear picture of the current situation of the project
We constantly monitor the progress of the project in a profound manner
The team has discretion to resolve unexpected problems as they arise
Commitment to resilience
We always learn from every mistake made
Most members have the skills to act on unexpected problems that arise
This team is extremely resourceful
Deference to expertise
Team members typically “own” a problem until it is resolved
In this organisation expertise is valued over hierarchical rank in most decisions
Instead of muddling through, the team quickly obtains any external expertise if needed
Our innovation resilience behaviour: Score: 11–15 = present; 1–5 = absent; 6–9 = present to a limited degree

If your score is 6 or lower, consider improvement.

Results

• Draw your conclusions based on data and discussion.

• Define future actions to take.

The challenge here is to make a list of IRB-behaviours that could be improved by discussing them within teams or departments. The purpose of the discussion is to create a common awareness of what is needed. This could lead to an action list.

Step 3: Wrap up

Explain the step

By now you should have a good idea of the defensiveness, mindful infrastructure and Team IRB of your team/department or organisation. You may also have some suggestions about how to move forward. This step links back to the ‘espoused model’ and will help you design your own tools.

The ‘espoused model’ will help you combat defensiveness in your team. It tries to make defensiveness discussible. There is no easy guide for this: you and the team must be prepared to do this and find your own way in how to do it.

Exercise 4: Assess whether you are going to do it

Execute

Are you prepared to apply the values of the ‘espoused theory’? For example, in the situation of taking decisions during team meetings:

• Will you make the effort to gather valid information (evidence)?

• Will you make your decisions fact-based?

• Will you seek internal commitment?

• Will you monitor the effectiveness of actions?

Results

• Draw your conclusions based on your answers and discussion.

• Define future actions to take.

This exercise should help you to come to a conclusion about what to do next.

Exercise 5: Assess the competences that need to be improved

Results

• Draw your conclusions.

• Define future actions to take (think of what competencies are needed to fulfil tasks and how these competencies can be acquired).

Exercise 6: Develop your own tools

Explanation

HRO teams try to automate unnatural behaviour by creating procedures such as briefing and debriefing, and continuously improving processes and behaviours. Teams working on innovation could develop such tools as well (see the example of the checklist for decisions from the client’s perspective in the text; see page 386).

Prepare

• Choose domains of teamwork for which IRB-tools are helpful. For example: decision-making, stakeholder management, requirements for end-result, future market opportunities, development of a pilot to test the results.

Execute

• Apply the five IRB-competencies to the tasks of the team/team members in relation to the selected domain(s): make a list that you can consult/walk through during a team meeting.