Engaging Your Employees in Innovation (part 2)

Innovate alone and in teams:

People don’t have to innovate on their own. You can introduce both individual and team innovation practices. Help your teams innovate by engaging them in team projects. Every team can be empowered and coached to innovate.

Ideas from everyone & everywhere:

Many people think being creative is a personal trait, and that you either have it or you don’t. This is not true. There is a certain amount of innovation going on in all perceiving, thinking, speaking, and acting. Check out Rollo May’s book The Courage to Create. He argues beautifully that creativity is an essential element of human existence—part of who we are. Not recognizing your natural creativity makes it very difficult to be creative. People who think they are not creative don’t even try to create.

If extensive training in creativity isn’t possible, the best way to develop your team is to get them involved in helping you make improvements. People learn by doing, and getting them involved will build confidence, skill, and a track record of success.

If you feel you are not highly creative, or are nervous about creating new ideas out of the blue (it rarely happens that way anyway), get started by borrowing ideas from everyone and everywhere, e.g.,

• Look for ideas in articles, books, social media, conferences, other industries…
• Interview customers—and analyze customer data
• Interview internal customers and other stakeholders—and analyze that data
• Ask for input from your employees; empower them to go out and look for ideas
• Collaborate with your supply chain partners

The collaboration piece is key. Many innovations are emergent and result from having the right people at the table, in a great space for collaboration, with supportive facilitation.

Tap into everyone’s unique strengths:

You don’t need a fancy assessment to figure out what people are good at. Look at their track record. Who excels in what areas? Everyone is different. Help employees leverage their unique interests and strengths, e.g.,

• Strategists can analyze changing trends in the marketplace
• Idea junkies can look for good ideas from other businesses and industries
• Process junkies can help improve process
• Collaborators can build trust and bring out the best in people
• Change agents can drive continuous improvement and help execution

But don’t pre-judge, typecast, or stereotype people. Many people can learn to contribute in more than one way. And most people don’t even know what they are capable of. Keep the door open. Give people chances. Invite them to the table.

Ask people for their help in a variety of improvement projects and pay attention to when they light up and what they do best.

What about you?

• What kind of improvements do you make most often?
• What are the biggest innovations you have ever made?
• Where do you get your best ideas?
• What are your unique skills & strengths in terms of innovation?
• Who has helped you innovate?
• What do you need from your boss and your organization to innovate more?
• Who can you help innovate?
• How are you going to drive innovation on your team?

Culture of innovation:

If you say innovation is important but don’t spend time talking about innovation with your team, if you don’t spend time helping your employees innovate, if you don’t give them time to innovate…it’s not going to happen.

In my next blog on this topic (to be published soon at Incrementa Consulting) I will write about fostering a culture of innovation so that innovation becomes part of the way you do business, part of the DNA of your team and organization.

This blog was published in full at Incrementa Consulting.

Joel Shapiro brings strategic rigor to leadership and culture, and is always striving to find that perfect balance between humanity and business performance. Follow Joel on the Incrementa website and on Twitter.

Copyright ? 2015 Joel Shapiro, Ph.D., all rights reserved.

Image: “21 Swings” by Daily Tous Les Jours.