Teams get stale from time to time for all sorts of reasons. After all, everyone is “seeing the same data, interacting with the same people, and having the same conversations, so it’s no surprise that the ideas coming out feel as though they’ve all been done before ” says Scott Anthony, the managing partner of Innosight and the author of The First Mile. But you can get your people back into the groove with a little work, says Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg, a partner at The Innovation Architects, the advisory firm, and the coauthor of Innovation as Usual. “Sometimes you need to rethink what you’re doing.” Here are some ways to get your team’s creative juices flowing.
- Diagnose And Fix Any Obvious Problems
The first step is to “take a step back and diagnose the problem,” suggests Wedell-Wedellsborg. “Observe what’s going on and ask other people’s opinions.” Think about when, where, and how your team has been most innovative in the past. Can you recreate that environment or group dynamic? “Figure out how people share ideas, and how open others are to those ideas,” he says. Also look at ideas that were generated in the past and see if any are worth resuscitating. - Focus Your Team’s Attention
Open brainstorming sessions with lofty goals like generating “500 New Ideas” are fine in theory, but in practice they are often ineffective and inefficient. “You end up with a lot of stuff that’s not relevant,” says Wedell-Wedellsborg. Instead, direct your team’s attention toward solving a narrow problem — for example, ways to fix a specific customer issue or to generate 2% cost savings in your division. - Bring In Different Points Of View
Most of us tend to live in filtered worlds — we read the same papers and magazines, listen to the same newscasts, get our daily updates from the same RSS and Twitter feeds, and have lunch with the same people. “But great ideas come from people who are immersed in more worlds than just their own,” says Wedell-Wedellsborg. Create opportunities to expose your team to different perspectives and points of view. - Share Relatable Examples Of Success
The Steve Jobs-Mark Zuckerberg-Richard Branson “genius” innovation narrative is omnipresent in business blogs, books, and magazines. But to most work-a-day folks, those figures are “not as inspirational as you might think,” according to Wedell-Wedellsborg. “If you have a normal job — like most of us do — these examples can seem terribly ambitious and too remote.” For relatable inspiration, offer success stories that are closer to home. - Conquer Your Team’s Fear Of Failure
One of the most common reasons for stagnation is not your team’s lack of ideas but their fear that the ones they have aren’t any good. This fear of failure is so pervasive that many employees choose not to voice or champion their opinions, which, of course, hinders innovation. Leaders must therefore “manage the politics” around brainstorming, says Wedell-Wedellsborg. “Make sure there’s room for people to share ideas in a way that’s under the corporate radar. - Create Avenues For Ideas To Have An Impact
Ideas only matter if you act on them. “People get cynical fast after they have a fun and empowering brainstorming session and then nothing happens,” says Anthony. As a manager, you need to commit to moving innovation forward. He suggests setting aside a small budget to create rough prototypes and simulations, or relieving workers of some duties to free up their time for new projects. Wedell-Wedellsborg also recommends testing ideas on a small scale.
