Not all organizations need to innovate, though all need the ability to be nimble and to be ready to make significant changes. What is not often realized by CEOs and others is that often what is needed is rapid adoption of innovation—the taking up and applying the ideas of others rather than concentrating on innovation itself. What corporations and firms need to do is to quickly apply innovations, whether their own or other people’s. In order to institute any change—whether it is encouraging innovation, rapid adoption or a major strategic change—it is important to get the culture right. Without that, no transformation is possible. With it goes having the right leadership and sufficient trust—colleague of colleague, employee of manager (and vice versa), and in the organization as a whole.

Almost every organization that my firm and I work with claims to prize innovation. I hear the same thing from law firms seeking new ways to develop business, insurance companies, mining giants, builders and not-for-profits. They all want a ‘culture of innovation.’

Personally, I think that there is no such thing. What is really needed is a culture which enables innovation, or rapid adoption of innovation, to take place. Such a culture is what I call a ‘culture for innovation.’ And yet few of the leaders I speak to are prepared to do what is necessary to create such a culture. The kind of management style favored by the leaders of most companies would have to be unlearned to permit a real culture for innovation to take root. The other problem is the amount of sheer denial, even now, around the need for real change. If you think that the times we are living through are an aberration and that the world will soon revert to a pre-2008 ‘normal,’ there is less reason to look carefully at the processes and leadership styles which prevent innovation from taking place.

I spoke to a group of Australia’s top lawyers the other day and they tried to convince me that the present, rather painfully slow, situation is purely cyclical and that things will soon return to ‘business as usual.’ This was an exercise in wishful thinking. In the business world as it is today, even lawyers have to innovate. Their clients can get advice from online law sites (for example, My Law Firm in Australia or Free Advice in the US) and save thousands of dollars.

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