Author: Samory Araújo, Head of Solutions Mapping, UNDP Cabo Verde Accelerator Lab
Effective communication is one of the highest priorities in an organizational culture, it is one of the essential drivers for growth and the culture of innovation. Communication and innovation go hand in hand.
An organizational culture that is intended to be effective connects people and paves the way for innovation. And if there are barriers, new practices are needed to provide excellent communication skills for greater efficiency. Innovation is the result of a combination that starts at the base, through good internal communication and the freedom of contribution of employees.
Finally, technology accompanied by its metrics and indicators, collaborates with data that improves internal communication, making it more assertive and personalized. Empathy is very important in this.
The first step of innovation: Communication
Good internal communication includes four pillars: Transparency, Coherence between discourse and attitudes, Speed and Credibility.
One of the greatest tools in institutional communication is to maintain its quality, balance, and ethics. And in this case, it is also necessary to innovate, either through the numerous tools available in the market or even through simple and free strategies, such as the proximity of the internal communication sector with all sectors of the institution, especially with the Human Resources sector.
Internal communication should encourage collaboration, conversations aligned with the institution's vision, strategies and objectives and inclusion among employees, seeking to encourage them to present their ideas and views. It is necessary to invest in technology, as well as in new media, as a way of promoting and valuing the principles of collective intelligence, which allows sharing with greater speed and ease of information and knowledge.
In the strategic planning of internal communication it is necessary to consider new tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, among others not only as official media of the institution, as well as encourage employees to make use of these tools through, of course a good strategy to empower them (even if it is in small groups), making clear to institutional expectations about their performance in social networks. Only in this way will there be transformation, and the existence of an environment deeply conducive to the exchange of knowledge and ideas.
Innovation in communication
Innovation in communication is one of the areas that has benefited the most from the digital revolution of recent years. New practices and conceptions emerged, and everything turned into a short time. This new way of seeing the world can be termed as an age of digital information or an era of virtual communication. It can be said that information is, for contemporary society, the basis of knowledge, economic, political, social life, and relationships. Therefore, the exchange of information is essential to the global population, and it is natural that technologies follow the trend of improving this communication, even making it more dynamic and much faster. Technologies are changing the way people communicate. However, despite the numerous tools that facilitate communication, interaction often becomes more effective when there is contact with each other, face to face. In certain situations, and or important decisions, in which communication is crucial becomes necessary, and or face-to-face interaction is essential.
Communication challenges in the age of innovation
Innovation is surrounded by uncertainty and if there is no clarity in how an organization communicates the importance of innovation, the method used, the people directly involved, the desired and obtained results, people will feel uncomfortable and threatened with a situation in which they need to build new ideas for strategic challenges. However, conducting specific training, and or workshops on the subject, makes people better understand the process and what the organization expects of them when it asks them to be more creative and innovative.
Organizations must develop innovation skills in leaders and employees, and build a culture favorable to creativity and innovation, which is certainly connected to the following fundamentals: shared will to be innovative; support structure on the part of the leaders; constant inspirations to stimulate creativity, time to innovate; autonomy and tolerance to error. Yes, every organization must have a margin of tolerance for error, for the learning opportunities it provides as well as the enriching lessons.
Taking into account, that innovation is an organizational competence derived from people's creativity, the method used to transform new ideas into projects that can be developed and tested in the fastest, easiest way and the ability to manage the portfolio of innovative projects to make the best decisions related to the area; an organizational approach is needed that feed the narrative that people are the main resource for making innovation happen, and that any prospects of future change in the organization require the engagement of its employees.
Humanity is currently undergoing great transformations, which has been changing society over time. To understand this process, it is necessary to understand the changes of society itself, in its way of thinking, relating and communicating, as well as the evolution of the devices that caused part of these changes.
It is perceived, then, that social transformations are linked to the technological transformations that society appropriates to develop and maintain. Communication has become faster, more dynamic and more interesting, but technological innovations if not inclusive and contextualized can create fragments of information and weaken communication and automatically knowledge
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