Are You In? The Question Innovation Asks Every Leader

By Cheria Young, Culture Strategist and Founder of Grow There

Are you in?

It’s three words, but it’s a question that changed the trajectory of my career and how I think about innovation.

Years ago, I was working for a nearly 60-year-old nonprofit when our visionary CEO made a bold announcement. We were going to invest heavily in innovation, and this wasn’t going to be another line in our values statement. We were going to build a team dedicated to making it happen.

My boss was one of the first to raise her hand. She applied to join the new team, leaving me to step into her role. But while she was interviewing, she said something I didn’t expect: “I think you should apply for this.”

Me? Absolutely not.

“I’m an ideator, not an innovator,” I told her.

It took me years to see what was hiding in that answer. I loved questioning the familiar and imagining what could be, but somehow I didn’t believe that qualified me. Innovator felt like a title someone else had to give you, a club you had to be invited into. And I wasn’t convinced I belonged.

The new team understood something I hadn’t considered: You can’t build a culture of innovation if people don’t believe they have a place in it.

So they launched their first culture transformation initiative with a question. Are you in? It showed up in emails, town halls and workshops until it became a rallying cry across the organization. Every employee was invited to answer it, whatever their title or background. The message underneath was simple. Innovation belongs to all of us. You just have to answer the call.

And it worked on me.

I applied. And eventually, the woman who insisted she wasn’t an innovator was leading the Innovation Team and the culture transformation work that helped the organization earn the No. 1 spot on Fast Company’s Best Workplaces for Innovators list. Somewhere along the way, I realized that the line between ideator and innovator was never handed to me. I had drawn it myself.

I think about that often, because whether I’m on a keynote stage or in a room with a leadership team, I meet people who sound a lot like I did in that conversation with my boss. They’re the ones asking why we’ve always done it this way, or quietly sketching a better process in the margins of a meeting agenda. Most have never been told that those instincts are where innovation starts, much less that they’re innovators.

And the irony is, nearly every one of their organizations says it wants to be innovative. It’s written into strategic plans and raised at board retreats. But there’s a difference between wanting innovation and being willing to do what it requires. Ideas are rarely the problem. The hardest part is building a culture that can actually do something with them.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about those three little words. “Are you in?” isn’t just an invitation to participate. It’s a test of willingness, and it means very little until leaders answer it first.

So here are the questions every leader has to ask themselves:

• Are you willing to question the way things have always been done, even when you’re the one who built them?
• Are you willing to hear “Why do we do it this way?” as a gift instead of a challenge to your authority?
• Are you willing to let your team watch you fail, so they believe it’s safe to try?
• Are you willing to take a risk with no guaranteed outcome, and stand behind the people who take it with you?

And perhaps the hardest one: Are you willing to lead differently? Asking your people to adapt isn’t enough. You have to change how you lead, so you can meet disruption with curiosity instead of control.

Because we can’t expect our people to embrace change if we aren’t willing to change ourselves.

That’s the conversation I’ll be bringing to ACCE's Small Chamber Virtual Summit on December 3. It’s the same work I do with everyone from start-ups to iconic brands, nonprofits to for-profits, and it isn’t a pep talk about thinking outside the box. It’s an honest look at how innovation actually works and what it takes to build a culture around it, whatever your size or budget.

I believe far more people are capable of extraordinary innovation than our workplaces give them room to show. Maybe that includes you. And if you’ve been waiting for someone to call you an innovator, maybe it’s time to claim it for yourself.

So I’ll leave you with the same question that started my journey.

Are you in?