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“Innovation” is a guiding principle among tech teams, and that doesn’t just apply to the products they create for the marketplace. Experienced tech leaders pride themselves on introducing smart innovations to their organizations’ culture, processes and practices as well.
Below, 20 experienced leaders from Forbes Technology Council each discuss the innovation they’ve introduced that they’re most proud of and why they feel it’s made a positive difference. Leaders of all stripes may be inspired to take a closer look to see what could be done better in their own workplaces.
1. Creating A Culture Focused On Customers And Employees
Embracing a culture of “for the customer” has propelled my organization forward. This is a struggle for many—how do you go from looking at what your teams are doing from an innovation standpoint to focusing on how their work makes life better for customers? We’ve also created an “employee-first” culture. Even in our global, remote workforce, every person understands how critical they are to our success. – Jim Barkdoll, Axiomatics
2. Driving The Shift To Agile Methodology
I drove our adoption of Agile methods. The organization (business and IT) selected about 300 people to go through the Safe Agile Certification Workshop. Once the training was complete, we changed the methodology for every new project. This has changed the way our IT and business teams work together. The business has become more connected to each project and program. – Bhushan Parikh, Get Digital Velocity, LLC
3. Establishing Robust Internal Communication Channels
I wanted to ensure we had solid internal communication channels. We have been conducting regular all-hands and ad hoc meetings to ensure everyone can express opinions, ask questions and is aware of the progress of our programs and their context within our industry. Leaders and managers fill in any gaps in one-to-ones with clear and concise directives around our mission and vision. – Oscar Segurado, ASC Therapeutics
4. Implementing A Thorough Shift-Left Mentality
As a CISO, one of the most impactful changes I’ve overseen is the true implementation of a shift-left mentality within our organization—meaning all teams consider security in the early phases of their initiatives. Developers scan code earlier, go-to-market teams solicit advice from security team professionals before key meetings, and product teams ask for subject matter experts’ feedback during the discovery phase. – David Stapleton, CyberGRX
5. Bringing Scrum Methods To The Entire Business
We’ve applied some of the fundamentals of Scrum methodology to the rest of the business, including creating small pods to work on problems and daily standups to review what is “hot” for the day and to wrap up the day. This has increased issue resolution and teamwork and created a very positive culture. – Anna Frazzetto, Airswift
6. Fostering A Culture Of Curiosity
I am most proud of enabling a culture of curiosity, which includes challenging each other as well as our leaders and their reasoning and decisions. I encourage team members to learn what’s happening outside the development world, see what competitors are doing, stay curious and avoid falling in love with an idea. Instead, we strive to constantly challenge ideas in terms of the realities of the market and technology and pivot for a better solution if needed. – Kaitki Agarwal, A5G Networks, Inc.
7. Embracing Remote Work
We have taken a remote work approach since day one in 2009. While it’s a widespread practice now, it was a game-changer at that time, allowing us to recruit the best tech talent in the world without limiting ourselves to a particular geographical area. After 14 years, we’ve learned a thing or two about how to conduct thousands of successful projects with remote teams. – Nacho De Marco, BairesDev
8. Encouraging True Out-Of-The-Box Thinking
We have a lot of team brainstorming sessions. To encourage out-of-the-box thinking, I give out gift cards for the worst idea. It’s turned into an inside joke: When someone suggests something really “out there,” we joke that it’s a “Red Lobster idea” (because it might win them a gift card to the Red Lobster near our offices). – Gentry Lane, ANOVA Intelligence
9. Providing Developers With Dedicated Tools
Every developer can have their own, completely dedicated instance of our product in AWS to work with. We operate a fault-tolerant, highly available, multitenant software as a service platform with hundreds of services and infrastructure components. No other organization can quickly and effectively spin AWS resources up and down the way we can, and our team loves us for it. – James Beecham, ALTR
10. Prioritizing Continuous Learning
I’m particularly proud of fostering a culture that prioritizes continuous learning. We’ve made a concerted effort to regularly update our team’s skills in line with emerging technologies and methodologies in Web scraping. This investment ensures our services remain efficient and up to date, delivering reliable results for our clients. – Sandro Shubladze, Datamam
11. Empowering Ownership Of Roles And Responsibilities
I’ve pushed ownership as far down the organizational chart as possible. I think an “imperial CEO” quickly becomes a bottleneck; the people closest to the problem can drive the most effective solutions. By ensuring all my employees feel empowered to take ownership of their roles and responsibilities, we’ve cultivated a workplace of continuous innovation and growth. – Gary Sangha, LexCheck
12. Seeking And Implementing Employee Feedback
We send out an engagement survey to our staff every year. While this in itself is not an innovative concept, the feedback and new ideas generated through these surveys has been staggering. Many new programs, career paths and organizational developments have happened as a result of these surveys. I’m proud of the culture of collaboration and open-mindedness created through this feedback. – Tal Frankfurt, Cloud for Good
13. Supporting The ‘Ecosystem Of Technologies’
My team is responsible for delivering highly valued solutions to our customers and the market in general. One of the key success criteria we’ve recognized is that every technical solution operates as part of an “ecosystem of technologies.” Everything we produce is built with a keen understanding of how well it will work with other technologies in a customer’s ecosystem. – Russ Kennedy, Nasuni
14. Introducing AI-Driven Automation
As a tech leader, I take immense pride in introducing AI-driven automation to our organization. This innovation has streamlined processes, increased efficiency and empowered our teams to focus on higher-value tasks, ultimately driving growth and success across the company. – Johan Nilsson, Convolo
15. Enabling The Easy Sharing Of Best Practices
We have many teams using the same technology, but in separate code bases, so we needed a way for best practices to spread quickly. I introduced “Code & Tell” as a weekly meeting where everyone from the same discipline gets together to show something they’ve been working on or a new component they’ve come across. The best ideas rise to the top, and the team builds camaraderie as well. – Luke Wallace, Bottle Rocket
16. Providing Team Members With Flexibility
The change I brought to my company years ago was a flexible work schedule and remote work—way before it became mainstream. I found that people work best when they are free to choose their most productive hours and can easily weave hobbies, sports and quality time with friends and family into their schedules. When businesses enforce return-to-office policies, they step on that same outdated rake. – Konstantin Klyagin, Redwerk
17. Keeping The Same Product Development Team For More Than Two Decades
As the CTO, I’m tasked with guiding the direction of our product. Our Manufacturing Execution System consists of a large, complex code base. I and a few other players have been evolving the product for around 23 years. In the age of outsourcing, mergers and acquisitions, and general career hopping, I am proud the same core team has guided our product development for this long. – Bill Rokos, Parsec Automation
18. Spearheading Scalability
As a tech leader, I take immense pride in spearheading scalability in the midst of our startup’s marked user growth. Guiding a key project, we’ve bolstered system stability while refining the user experience. As we traverse this growth phase, our robust ecosystem, built meticulously over time, enables the launch of new user features. – Alex Oakley, Triumph Labs
19. Changing To An ‘Outcomes Delivery’ Focus
When I took over as CEO of a software services business, I worked with the existing leadership to evolve training, processes and culture, taking the company from delivering to predefined milestones to delivering true business outcomes for clients. Growth accelerated significantly, as clients invited us to work on new and innovative initiatives. – Andres Angelani, Speedcast
20. Modeling A Teamwork And Growth Mindset
I’m proud to be the kind of person who washes the dishes after a work event, and I’ve tried to encourage my colleagues to never be above doing work that’s outside of their job description in order to get the job done. As a small organization, it’s important we all go outside of our comfort zones from time to time, not only to ensure things get done, but also to learn new skills. – Lewis Wynne-Jones, ThinkData Works
