Fostering Innovation Across Your Team
If speed to market and quality are water, innovation is air. Your business cannot live for long without it. Even a slight shortage will reflect in your performance. With that in mind, take steps to keep your team devising new ways to tackle problems, learning from each other and creating the best possible output.
Innovation is one part culture and one part the culmination of efforts to stretch your team and create an environment in which innovation is possible. Done well, you can break down barriers to teamwork and communication to encourage staff to reach their full potential.
Use these tips to build your team's innovation capacity.
Allow for Innovative Ideas
Many company cultures squelch innovation by discouraging ideas that go against
current operating procedures. A sustained approach of this nature will quickly
sap the innovation from an organization and do potential long-term damage to
a team's output. To counter this, create a culture in which ideas can be accepted
and implemented even if they challenge long-standing beliefs. One way to put
this into place is to document why ideas get rejected in meetings or other
cooperative discussions. Make it "off limits" to decline any ideas
simply because they require scrubbing an endeavor already under way or because
they go against long-held tenets.
Create a Culture of Patience
Only by changing the automatic reactions to new ideas can you give them a chance. Often, an innovation approach or idea is dismissed before someone has a chance to explain its value. Although it may sound contrived, implement a standard that allows for ideas to be fully aired. For example, quickly apply three positives to each idea presented in a meeting before the innovation-squelching negatives are allowed to begin. Whether in a written or oral presentation, new ideas could be presented in a template that creates a framework for exposing each idea's full potential.
Involve Senior Management
Management may be required to change its ways for innovation to take place across your organization. Key to the success of innovation is the commitment on the part of management to do three things. One, encourage disagreement. Company leaders need to ask for input and genuinely welcome ideas that run counter to current approaches. They can communicate their commitment to this by requesting input and disagreement when they aren't receiving it. Two, management needs to redefine its concept of productivity. Leaders who look at the success solely as moving projects forward quickly according to established standards will not foster innovation. Encourage managers to recognize that the pursuit of innovation will ultimately make the team more productive. Three, focus on morale. People who are rewarded for raising problems and who have input into their projects are productive. Those who execute only according to others typically are not. Leverage this by encouraging input at all levels.
Feed the Innovation Beast
Keep innovation flowing in your organization by continually training your team. Provide staff members with the opportunity to choose their own educational directions, within a broadly defined universe of training possibilities. Complement your team's growth with a broad spectrum of ideas by tapping external resources on a regular basis. Create a board of directors that includes industry players with their fingers on the pulse of trends and future growth opportunities.
Proactively Design an Innovation Culture
Add innovation to your company's guiding principles. Undertaking the tangible steps of rewriting company tenets, vision and other goals to reflect a commitment to innovation will send an important message to your team members that they work for a company that plans to take a path less traveled. Encourage employees to commit to innovation by encouraging them to think of themselves as the customer. Knowing the customer mindset is essential to innovation because it allows your team to think as the customer would and, therefore, strive to create the best possible solution.
