Foster a Culture of Innovation and Creativity

One of the tap areas within any business is the people. Your people will be a rich source of innovation, inspiration and collective motivation. In all likelihood, you may not see it because you’ve never asked and haven’t set the condition for a culture of innovation and creativity to flourish. 

Here are 10 strategies you can introduce:

  1. Live in the possibility. Know that every problem has many possible solutions. Stand in the belief that you and your team can find a better way to do anything you put your minds too.  Practice ‘CAN I’, Constant and Never-Ending Improvement.
  1. Always ask a learning question in regards to what you do and why you do it. All too often tasks and projects creep into our processes that aren’t necessarily in keeping with our mission and purpose.  Make sure everything you do is in alignment and produces the results intended.
  1. Challenge long-held beliefs. Just because something’s always been done a certain way doesn’t mean that it’s still the best way.
  1. Don’t accept the first solution right away. There are many possible solutions to every problem.  Most people go with the first plausible one that comes up and they miss the value of thinking longer and finding more effective and elegant answers.
  1. You can’t learn less. The more you know about something, the more you find that you DON’T know.  By adding to your knowledge base, you find more and more associations.  And making associations is where seemingly magical things happen.
  1. Have fun. Coming up with ideas on how to do things faster, easier, with fewer resources really is fun. And things that are fun to do get done more often.  Schedule regular brainstorming sessions and practice green-light thinking.  Order pizza for lunch and focus on a problem or process and generate as many ideas as you can.
  1. Get around people in different industries. By stepping out of your familiar territory, you open the door to new and different viewpoints you can use to your advantage.
  1. Challenge your team to look deeper. Take Henry Ford, he asked his engineers to design the V-8 engine, they said it couldn’t be done.  He said it WILL be done—and eventually, they did it.
  1. Make sure you have adequate ‘moodling’ time—time to do nothing. When we’re constantly engaged in DOING things, we don’t provide the fertile ground for ideas to take root.
  1. Charge your subconscious. Give your mind something to work on while you sleep. Select a problem you want solving, a process you would like improved or a new product you would like to create before going to bed and then forget about it.  Tell yourself you want at least three elegant ideas by the next day and then expect to receive them. Trust that it works.

Over the next 10 weeks introduce one of these strategies per week and have the team really focus on doing it well. At the beginning of each week introduce the next idea. By the 11th week, I think you’ll find you have the real makings of a culture of innovation and creativity. Oh and this works in any industry so don’t make excuses, go on give it a go.

Now there’s a challenging idea!