Many companies are struggling to understand how to deliver top-line growth and true innovation in today's business climate.  The challenge that I see for leaders today is two-fold - talent management and innovation.  It's easy to become stymied by the curve balls thrown by our global economy, but true innovation-driven growth can be delivered with the right leadership team and a roadmap that aligns key priorities and capabilities.  The growth of your company is at risk if it cannot accomplish these goals. 

Talent Management
Organizations today continue to have an urgent need to improve workforce productivity, retain high performers and weed out low performers.  What that really means is that leaders and managers at all levels are under pressure to perform in order to maintain effective talent management practices.

Your first priority should be to look at the people in your organization.  A recent Deloitte survey found that one of the most significant challenges for business is the shortage, motivation and retention of qualified talent.  This held true across all business sizes and industries from finance and health care to manufacturing and service.  

Take stock of the talent you have in your organization and make sure that employees at all levels are aligned with your business strategies.  Identify existing employees that have the specific experience that best matches key priorities and strategy. Characteristics of these individuals may include sound decision making and judgment, influential leadership, business savvy, strategic insight, ability to translate technical information into sensible business cases, proven innovation capability and a willingness to take calculated risks.  

It’s also important to identify the skills that you will need as an organization in the next 3-5 years and use it as a guide to develop and grow your talent.  Hire people that mesh with the company culture and complement skill sets and values.  Find the candidates that display energy, passion and creativity.  For existing employees, diversify their experiences and roles.  This may include rotation of employees across divisions and geographic regions or rounding out their experiences by moving them out of their comfort zone into new responsibilities. 

Keep in mind that generous pay is no longer enough to attract and retain the best talent.  Company environment, brand and reputation are factors that are just as important.  The best approach to attracting and retaining talent includes providing ample and exciting opportunities to be a part of the team, as well as providing monetary and psychological rewards – all under authentic leadership.  Authentic leaders are able to articulate a clear vision of the corporation’s strategy and goals to employees, shareholders and the marketplace.

That being said, the labor force is getting older and many of today’s leaders are retiring.  The number of employees who are 55 and older is growing anywhere between 3 and 6 percent.  At the same time, the annual growth rates of age groups younger than 44 are generally level or dropping in comparison.  These older workers won’t be around to help forever, which makes it all the more important to transition that knowledge and experience and concurrently bring in talented team members that will integrate well with your organization. 

Don’t wait until your talent retires or leaves the company to learn the hard way how valuable experience and intellectual assets are.  Have vehicles in place to facilitate the transition of information built by experienced professionals during their tenure.  This should include formal processes of intellectual asset protection and informal vehicles such as conferences, forums, workshops and lunch seminars.  It’s also crucial to continue to encourage a culture of networking and collaboration between groups and individuals. 

To determine if your company has a good hiring and retention strategy for both employees and company intellectual assets, take quantitative measurements of elements such as productivity, efficiency and turnover.  Although not of the same precision (or reliability), it can also be beneficial to collect qualitative measurements of your business including employee engagement, motivation and company morale.  Engagement translates into individual alignment with the goals of the organization. 

Innovation
Once you have the right employees in place, you can turn your attention to innovation.  We all understand that demand for innovation originates with the consumer, and consumer lifestyles and expectations are constantly changing.  As mentioned earlier, we are seeing demographic shifts as the baby boomer generation retires.  Along with this comes trends that are paving the way for exciting new opportunities.  One notable example is “Crowd-Sourcing” brought about by social networking and the instant communication capabilities of the internet.  The internet enables consumers to have a “multi-channel” relationship with the branded products they purchase, and as a result, thought leaders, consumers and marketers are all coming together to ideate new solutions.

The aforementioned examples are just a few of the challenges that impact how companies innovate and deliver market value-added solutions, not just in products but in customer experience.  But even for those who understand these challenges, making innovation a part of the corporate culture takes effort and the implementation of new processes.  Many executives wrongly believe that innovation is a formula or a program they need to follow.  In reality, there is no one-size-fits-all innovation plan.  With a comprehensive roadmap, leaders can identify the best pathway to pursue for their business, such as which segments of the market and which distribution channels to target, which partner companies to work with, and in what order. 

Given the challenges associated with innovation, the “what” and “how” of implementing innovation need to be infused into the business.  Let’s start with the “what.”  Innovation has to be about creating and delivering new and more effective products and services to customers faster and better than your competitors.  It should ultimately make your business more cost-effective and resilient.  As for the “how,” I believe that the driver of innovation is discovery and design.  True innovation affects people by changing their habits through filling unmet needs, and can create new industries or categories.  Above all, innovation creates value to society.  Once you discover and design, you deliver.

It’s essential to realize that innovation shouldn’t be a one-time event.  Continuous innovation allows leaders to adapt to constantly-changing conditions and trends, whether those are positive or negative.  Only after discovering these new insights are they able to design and deliver solutions that make our lives better.  Forward-thinking companies are doing that now.  Many Fortune 100 corporations are gathering insights from their shoppers and users to learn not only habits but desires, wants and needs.  Companies are beginning to place a premium value on finding new ways to gain insights into how customers think and feel in a world that isn’t always logical. 

In addition to continuous innovation, finding the right partners will help you achieve your objectives for making your innovation a reality.  Internally, the "not invented here" syndrome can kill great opportunities originating not just from outside the company, but often from outside one's own team in an organization.  Few businesses have the skills, knowledge and connections to make it happen on their own.  This “Open Innovation” process of discovering and developing outside partners with unique and complimentary capabilities makes innovation a win-win for everyone.  

The most successful companies today don’t merely hand off their work to strangers.  They develop strategic relationships with their providers, just as they do with their employees. Corporate leaders are moving from a mostly cost-driven, customer-supplier model toward a full-fledged partnership.  This includes regular communication and the dedication of management to the relationship.  Only then can companies better leverage and maximize the value of their provider’s (or employee’s) capabilities.  I firmly believe that it’s no longer just a competitive advantage to nurture these partnerships, but a competitive necessity.

Cheryl Perkins is Founder and President of Innovationedge, an innovation consultancy that drives creativity and growth by transforming products, brands and businesses.  Cheryl has more than 25 years of expertise in leading companies to identify and transform insights, designs, technologies and capabilities into total solutions and innovations.