3 ways to ramp up your innovation management
Everybody seems to be looking for more innovative people these days. Innovative people offer a certain energy and dynamic to a company as they are full of ideas and are able to present them well.
A lot of us think of people like Steve Jobs when we are looking for people for building innovation management but as it turns out, a lot of the greatest innovators are not much like the stereotype. Many are soft-spoken, generous, kind and modest, making it unlikely for them to stand out in a crowded room.
To find more innovative people, the best way is to look to the people already involved in your organization. Create an environment where your workers can prosper. Below are a few principles you can apply to make a difference and build innovation management within your organization.
Hire People Interested in Solving Your Problems
Innovation is about more than ideas – it is about problem solving. Researchers have determined that intrinsic motivation is a major player when it comes to bringing the creativity out of people. If you want to build an innovative team, hire people who are interested in your mission.
Encourage Players to Safely Share Ideas
Google started a massive research project in 2012, code-named “Project Aristotle.” The goal of the mission was to determine what made successful teams successful. Sifting through every aspect of how teams worked together, how often they met, the way in which they were led and even personality types of team players, they still did not find anything that seemed to predict performance. What they did find, however, was that the importance of psychological safety within an organization is huge. Ensure that your team members are able to share their ideas without fear of rebuke.
Harvard professor, Amy Edmondson, further unveiled the importance of psychological safety in the workplace. She determined that it promotes a better atmosphere and also reduces the tendency to get off track.
Generate Diversity
Many managers set out to hire new employees with a certain mold or type of person in mind. In many cases, they look for someone who is most like themselves. Although this may be ideal for companionship and comfort, it is not the most ideal for fostering an environment suitable for solving problems. Many studies have shown that diverse teams are able to examine facts better and are also more creative and even smarter.
Strive to stray away from narrowing down the experiences, backgrounds and outlooks of who is or will be on your team as this will only limit you to the number of solution areas that you can explore. You will only wind up with fewer ideas, potentially generating an echo chamber where biased ideas are merely reinforced.
By creating a team fluent in diversity, you will nearly guarantee that the best answers will eventually be landed upon, sourced somewhere outside of your personal general realm of capability. Rather than looking for what seems safe or comfortable, strive to create an environment where perspectives can be challenged by people who talk and think differently.