I is for Innovation

This article is number eight in a series of nine. In article one, Work in a Rainforest, I outlined the ways in which your office functions as an ecosystem and laid out how to use the acronyms T.E.M.P and R.A.I.N. to impact your team's satisfaction and engagement levels. To read that full article click here.

Article 8 of 9

This article will discuss the I in R.A.I.N. - INNOVATION

The American author William S. Burroughs is credited with saying, “When you stop growing, you start dying.” This quote holds true in life and in business. 

Fostering innovation is key to driving long term business growth and success.  It is also key to deepening your employees’ engagement within their job and the company. Often, the most impactful innovation comes from the people on the front lines of the company’s day-to-day business. To foster innovation, leadership must proactively seek new and diverse ideas from their employees.  Managers must hone their skills in generating and receiving new ideas from their team members. Even the most out-of-the-box ideas should be received with an open mind because they could contain the essence of a new path forward for the business. Failing to support innovation will almost certainly keep a company operating at status quo and stifle the growth and change necessary to evolve.  Below are three ways a manager can more effectively foster innovation within their team.

Don’t have all the answers

The next time one of your associates discusses a challenge they are facing with a workplace process, procedure or policy, just listen. Allow them to talk through their challenges and frustrations rather than telling them the reason a process was put in place. Avoid sharing your ideas about what could solve the issue and ask lots of questions. Dig for what they think could be done to make improvements. And then, encourage them to go off and develop their ideas. Set a timeline by asking them when they could have something ready to present to you. After they have presented their ideas, give them feedback on what they did well, and which ideas could use some tweaking. This is a fantastic way to get your team to be innovative in their thinking.

Form committees

By utilizing the engagement skill of providing autonomy in tandem with innovation, encourage your associates to form their own committees to work towards new solutions to current workplace challenges. Ask them to focus first on brainstorming ideas. Allowing enough time for brainstorming is a critical element to fostering innovation. This freedom to ideate with fellow associates provides a platform for creative thinkers to discuss, develop, and share solutions that could ultimately lead to a more efficient and productive work environment. Once every idea has been spoken aloud, then and only then should the debate and editing process begin.

Proactively ask for solutions

There will be procedure, policy and performance issues that only you can see from your 30,000 foot view as a manager. Bring these challenges to your team and ask for ideas on how to solve them. When teams are asked for their input, they feel valued. And when people feel valued, they tend to contribute and engage more at work. Also, by being a part of creating solutions, people will own those solutions more deeply and inevitably work harder to ensure they succeed.

Everyone of your associates has ideas about how to improve business processes, procedures and policies. The easiest way to hear about those ideas is to ask. As a leader, your job is not to solve every problem by yourself. Your job is to harness the collective innovation of your team to grow and evolve your business.  How will foster innovation within your team today?

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Check out other articles on how to drive satisfaction and foster engagement as a leader by influencing your office ecosystem's Tone, Enthusiasm, Motivation, Pay, Reason, and Autonomy.