Hiring for openness in innovation: Is it possible? Can you spot it? Can you train it?

Are open people really what we need?

Innovation requires openness. We can all say that out loud. Innovators need to look at the new and novel and think ‘that’s interesting’ and ‘that’s possible’, even if whatever it is, is very different from the now. That’s not always straightforward because, as we know, humans like familiarity. And our organisations don’t always help us. We’re rewarded, often, for our knowledge and expertise, which is sometimes considered a static and specific thing.

Imagine the case of a senior science or technical leader, who has world-leading expertise in a product category. That person is extremely valuable to a company selling stuff in that category and chances are, their organisation will prize them for it. That can embed familiarity and consistency on a theme.

So, what do we do when we want to build something completely new? Do we ask that person to pivot, in which case we may need to support them. Do we hire new people? Or, do we challenge the perception that deep expertise is what we need?  Probably a mixture of all those things.

What is openness?

The Big Five personality traits are the result of cumulative empirical work of many researchers over the years. The initial model was built in the 1960s but the term ‘Big Five’ was coined in the 1980s. Paul Costa and Robert McCrae developed an inventory for assessing Big Five characteristics in 1985.

Unlike many commonly used models of personality the Big Five has greater scientific validity and can better predict outcomes. It also uses a continuum of each trait and does not allocate individuals to fixed categories (everyone has a potentially unpleasant story of being labelled a ‘something’). 

According to the Big Five, openness is a measurable personality trait (along with conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism). Openness is defined, very loosely, as intellectual curiosity, willingness to try new things and comfort with ambiguity. It has key facets of imagination, aesthetics, introspection, preferences for variety, intellectualism and challenging authority. Importantly, it does not immediately equal unstructured thinking or lack of rigor. Open individuals can still be structured and rigorous. This might be especially true for people who have trained as scientists and engineers, who have learned process.

Openness in innovation

So, we can see how openness, as an individual or organisational characteristic could be useful. In innovation, science and technology, openness shows up as curiosity, receptiveness to new ideas and willingness to challenge norms.

Can we reliably identify openness? 

Can we use it in recruitment?

Can we train or nurture it?

Can you hire for openness?

A shift in the way organisations hire has been recorded, with a movement towards hiring for personality and character and away from traditional criteria such as work experience.

Much of the literature suggests that personality traits are relatively stable, that we are born a certain way and often choose a lifestyle that reinforces our personality.  If that is true, we could use teh Big Five inventory to measure an individual’s openness and get what we expect when we hire.

Personality drives and informs behaviour. An open person may be more likely to seek conversation with someone working in a different discipline, for example. In interview or assessment we could therefore ask questions to draw out information on a person’s open behaviours. We could aim to discuss how people talk about failure, feedback, and learning.  Or, what their responses to novel scenarios or cross-disciplinary questions.

However, we do risk misinterpreting extroversion for openness.  The more talkative or enthusiastic candidate is not necessarily the most open. 

What about training for openness?

Although personality traits are generally considered stable, they are not entirely fixed and can be influenced by environment and intentional efforts to change.

Practical things organisations can do to foster openness include role modelling by leaders.  Interestingly, there is a body of research which specifically looks at the openness of CEOs and whether this impacts the innovative capability of organisations.  Short summary is, it does, and CEO’s should recruit open people if they do not score well in that trait. 

We can educate and encourage reflective practise both before and after events.  As part of this process, we can build in facilitation to think creatively about our options. We can also adjust our rewards to recognise constructive challenge, curiosity and communication.

But what really is the issue here?

In writing this a few things come to mind:

We can hire for openness if we so choose, by measuring it and interviewing in a way which draws attention to it. For example, the age old question ‘Tell me about a time when you changed your mind about something important at work’.  That’s potentially a great question, but are we really listening to, and interrogating, the answer?  Or do we just accept a bland answer and tick the box for openness?  Perhaps better would be to follow up with a second question such as ‘what did you learn about yourself?’ or ‘How did it lead to a shift in your behaviour?’ 

I have also noticed open people being perceived as a bit wild.   We say we want openness but when we’re actually faced with it we don’t know what to do with those people. Now we've hired them, ‘How do we control them?’, is a question that is often asked.  We want them to be open, but not THAT open.   Where should we put them so that they have great ideas but don’t derail anyone? It’s not really satisfactory and certainly doesn’t embed the change we’re looking for.

Lastly, if openness is key for innovation and we can hire or train for it, a risk would be that we end up with a whole load of similar people.  I think we probably know that isn’t good.  A key theme of the literature in this area is that diversity in teams correlates to an organisation’s openness.

So perhaps, the change we need is in our organisations.  In our hiring behaviours and our environments. How do we properly assess and train openness and then what environmental conditions do we set up to accept open people as part of diverse groups? 

Some useful questions to ask within an organisation:

• What evidence do we have that our hiring process is truly open in itself, before we decide if it can assess openness?

  
  

• What aspects of our environment mean that openness is safe and valued?

  
  

• How do our processes help or hinder getting the most from open people?

  
  

• Do our leaders actively seek out dissenting or creative views and respond constructively when they hear them?

  
  

• What processes do we have to encourage diversity of thought in our organisation?

What is your experience in this area? As ever, questions and comments welcome, and I can always direct to resources and literature used to write this piece.

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