Innovative power development with the power triangle

If you read through the relevant literature, you will always come across the same three core requirements, which at the same time form the pillars of the “triangle of forces for innovative capacity” tool.

These three core prerequisites are:

• people’s willingness to change,
• the people’s competence to change,
• the opportunities for change that people are given.

If one of the pillars is missing, or if there are no accompanying measures for at least one pillar, the increase in innovative capacity will be negatively affected in the long term and the development of a lively culture of innovation will become a distant prospect.

Let us now take a closer look at the three pillars. First of all, there is the willingness of the people involved to change, the “WILL”. Only if the people involved see a sense in the generation and implementation of new ideas will they be open to the implicit changes that follow.

Certainly the most fundamental measure to create a willingness to change is: information, information and more information. With transparency and a good communication policy alone, you take people along on the innovation journey.

Beyond this basis, everything – from individual discussions to team-building measures – is conceivable to support this.

If we now have a team that is ready for change, then we should immediately work on pillar 2, change competence. This is fundamentally about providing people with cognitive knowledge, tools and methods for finding ideas and innovations.

But: even a team that is ready for change will not bring the innovation horsepower to the road without a good knowledge foundation.

Let’s assume that pillars 1 and 2 are in place. Now people still have to be given the opportunity to become concrete. This means that the third pillar is quite banally about time for brainstorming and innovation work as well as places and spaces where this can take place.

In an actually existing and lively innovation culture, the people of a company have both free space for creative work and appropriately equipped spaces.

The triangle of forces is a reflection tool for teams and individuals. This means that it must be visible whenever I want to actively reflect on the status of a team’s or individual’s capacity for innovation.

It has proven useful to hang the triangle of forces prominently on the wall of one’s office or team workspace as a printout at least A3 in size or – even better – as a flipchart graphic. This way it can always be accessed immediately.

If you now want to analyse and develop the capacity for innovation in relation to a team or a project, ask yourself the following helpful questions in the face of the triangle of forces:

• What can I say about the team’s readiness for change?
• How do I determine the team’s readiness for change?
• What have I actively done recently to increase the team’s readiness for change?
• What could I do in the near future to increase the team’s readiness for change?
• What can I say about the team’s change competence?
• How can I tell if the team has good change competence?
• What have I actively done recently to increase the team’s change competence?
• What could I do in the near future to increase the team’s change competence?
• How could I tell that the change competence has developed further?
• How could I determine that the readiness for change has developed further?
• What can I say about the team’s capacity for change?
• What do I consider to be good and helpful opportunities for change for the team?
• What opportunities for change have I given my team recently?
• What opportunities for change should I give to my team in the near future?
• Another recommendation is to plan and repeat this reflection process cyclically.

With inspiring greetings,
Benno van Aerssen