Innovation is at the core of every sustainable business. It helps businesses to stay ahead of the competition and keep up with the ever-increasing pace of change. But the responsibility of generating new ideas and processes to exploit shouldn’t fall solely to senior management – harnessing the collective knowledge of your whole team is far more effective. Here I offer 9 ways of how to foster this culture throughout your entire workforce.
Risk Experimentation
An article by Forbes suggests we should all ‘have the courage to accelerate through failure by building momentum’. It also suggests teams should spend ‘at least 15% of their time exploring and prototyping’. Experimentation gives us the permission to fail while on a wider journey to our solution, and so making sure we are not limiting ourselves by creating barriers to this is vital for innovation.
Challenge Engrained Beliefs
Question everything – including why you are doing something – while being curious and open-minded to learning new ideas. It can often be the case that tasks and projects that aren’t in-keeping with our mission and purpose can edge their way into our everyday processes.
Reflect and Synthesise
Set aside time to take stock of your week and where you are at. Lay out the various pieces and tasks you have been working on and identify the best way to work through the clutter in order to gain a clearer focus and perspective. Leadership over your workload can create clarity out of chaos.
Encourage Generativity
Take the time to connect with your team. Ensure they are being stretched to reach their potential and be able to envision alternative scenarios and outcomes. Be a sounding board for new ideas, challenge their thinking where appropriate, and create a space in which employees can grow.
Don’t Accept the First Solution as the Only One
There are always many possible solutions to every problem. Rather than sticking with the first, most plausible one that arrives, seek out the value in finding solutions that have required a deeper level of thinking, as these are often more effective long-term.
Have Fun
Ensure the environment in which to create is comfortable and encourages people to be relaxed and share. Generating new ideas on how to systemise time-consuming processes with the resources available to you should be fun, so try out new ways to create the right environment in which to undertake this. Things that are fun to do get done more often!
Be Authentic
Embody the innovate spirit of your team. By being genuinely passionate about their innovation potential – and encouraging collaboration throughout – you will encourage creative mindsets.
Charge Your Subconscious
Read more. And more. Continually learning fires up new pathways in our brains, and challenges us to new ways of thinking. Give your mind something to chew over while you sleep by thinking of a process you want to improve, then forget about it just before bed. This allows your subconscious to work away at new ideas.
Live In the Possibility
Believe and you will achieve. Remember that every problem you face also has a multitude of solutions. Move to practising constant and never-ending improvement to allow yourself to continually flourish.
If you need further support in implementing these ideas or finding new ways to encourage innovation, please don’t hesitate to contact me at tomhosking@actioncoach.co.uk where we can arrange a chat.
