FROM NOVEMBER'S RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Don’t get wedded to your own brilliance if you want to create an innovative high performance culture in your company.

That advice was given by Justin Hughes (right), managing director of business consultancy Mission Excellence, at Recruiter’s ‘Executive Briefing: Inspiring an Innovation Culture’.

“We all get wedded to our own brilliance, but the competition has got a different opinion, and can see through it and jump all over it,” said Hughes, a former Red Arrows pilot.

Based on his own experiences in the military, Hughes outlined a number of ways that businesses could embed a high performance culture:

Look at yourself in the mirror. “Otherwise you are on your way to mediocrity and average”

Be objective. “Analyse yourself in the way an outsider would”

Set up a team to stress test your own assumptions, and to avoid confirmation bias, the tendency for people “to see what they want to see”

Use debriefs to learn from your mistakes and avoid making them again

  Allow people to be open and honest and to admit their mistakes

  Make people accountable for what goes wrong, no matter their level of seniority

 “Ask yourself how badly do you want to get better – that is the killer question,” said Hughes. However, “it’s not going to happen over night. It’s a long burn”, he warned

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