It’s engineered. It’s practiced. It’s disciplined. And it starts with people. The truth is that while organizations create the conditions for creativity, people do the original thinking. It’s their ideas and passions that challenge business preconceptions and propel exploration into new industries. People create original value. In the Audacious Era, companies will take calculated steps to encourage creativity in their people and grow new ideas.
As we know, big companies are built for efficiency. Driving strategy through culture, however, can soften this rigidity. Leadership must encourage sensible risk taking and set a strategic ‘true north’ as a guide for employees to follow and aspire to. The audacious investments in our growth platforms establish this vision while allowing us to remain agile and responsive to our clients’ needs, and our people’s brightest ideas.
“We believe that our people should work on tough problems that excite them. ”
We believe that our people should work on tough problems that excite them. Smart people need the oxygen of a new challenge to stay engaged, which is why our people programs invite employees to develop careers around meaningful opportunities, persistent learning, and ‘tours of duty’ within different parts of our business. As consultants, it strikes at our core to wrestle with a new challenge. Once we’ve solved it we want the next one, so we encourage our employees to engage.
With incentives like our iTime initiative, we’re recognizing and investing in the self-directed time our employees spend beyond their day jobs tinkering on ideas that have original business value. And we inspire them to think differently about these problems with a calendar full of ideation events to engage them in discussions about disruptive technology, global challenges, and groundbreaking thought leadership.
It’s typical for employees to gain exposure to multiple markets and clients during their careers with Booz Allen. Their need for an entangled network of inputs is as much an internal mandate as an external one, which is why we integrate our virtual tools with in-person Functional Communities that apply our problem solving across multiple industries. In order to facilitate these cross-capability discussions, we’re establishing Innovation Labs across our regional offices where staff can access new technology, and work in an environment that challenges their ways of thinking.
These physical spaces and digital tools allow our management consultants to mingle with our engineers, our scientists, and our technologists. While we can’t always predict the output of their interactions, it increases the chances for attractive ideas to collide in unexpected ways. It’s through these communities and forums that our people can let their ideas breathe with their colleagues, and learn new techniques to solve old problems.
