RISK OF FAILUREEncouraging or reawakening creativityamong employees has become vital to acompany’s competitive advantage. Just takea look at the Creativity Index measure,developed by management consultantsMcKinsey. Businesses that score highlyin the Creativity Index outperform theircompetitors in two areas – an appetite andaptitude for innovation and shareholderreturn – in other words, growth and profit.Despite this, there is a perception thata culture of innovation is hard to instil intraditional accounting and finance firms.Bureaucracy and a methodical approachconducive to compliance-based work aresometimes seen as roadblocks to creativity.At professional services firm EY, Darren Chualeads innovation for the Oceania region. Therisk‑taking that accompanies experimentation canbe much harder to swallow in large organisations,he says, exacerbated by the focus on short-termperformance and individuals’ fear of failure.“In finance and accountancy, we are, bynature, very precise individuals. So, beingallowed the ‘right to fail’ is typically incongruouswith the way business is organised and run.If you are trying to hit your quarterly goal,how lenient can you be about failure?”Chua’s advice is to be smart and deliberatein how companies frame innovation. “I canafford to fail fast, if I have a clear vision, abroad innovation portfolio and a mix of short,medium and long-term goals. In that context,if we fail fast and have some space to shoulderoccasional losses, we can then learn andmove on quickly to the next opportunity.”SUPPORT FROM THE TOPNo enterprise is going to get creativewithout buy-in and support from the CEO– that is the consensus among experts.“At a level or two removed from theCEO, it never really gets any traction, andorganisations including EY and the big bankshave struggled with that,” says Chua.Any budget and resources ring-fenced forinnovation should also have a clear agenda.Chua recalls a major client who invested morethan A$2 million in a state-of-the-art innovationhub that, within a couple of years, became aplace for good coffee meetings but little else.“There wasn’t true ownership of why theyneeded the space and how innovation would beingrained into the core business. The question –about whether this was a place for brainstormingor was it a fundamental way of changing thebusiness model and processes – wasn’t askedor key leaders weren’t fully sold on it.”61DEC 2022JAN 2023intheblack.cpaaustralia.com.au
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