In my previous article, Cross Training an Innovative Team, I shared the story of how I helped my team transition from saying "That won't work" to becoming a group of innovative thought leaders. I also introduced the distinct roles of creativity and innovation. You might remember reading:
Sometimes in our quest for innovation, we forget the foundation of creativity.
When that happens, we try to solve specific challenges (innovation) before we've cultivated the ability to think about things differently (creativity).
In this article, I'll dive deeper into creativity and innovation as separate practices, and will share exercises I used to cross train my own team.
Let’s jump in…
Creativity is the act of thinking about solutions, data, experiences, risks, opportunities, and objectives differently than other people have in the past.
Creativity is cognitive discipline that requires practice. Many leaders expect teams to alternate seamlessly between task lists and brainstorming; however, these activities rely on different parts of the brain and jumping between them can be slow and ineffective. It can also demoralize your team, who struggle to perform either task as well as they'd like.
Condition your team to access their creative brains quickly. Cross train your team to switch back and forth between their task brains and creative brains by posing weekly or daily creative challenges. You might receive a lot of blank stares and silence at first – that’s normal. Let the silence hang until someone throws out the first idea. If that doesn’t work, have an example ready to demonstrate your expectations. Remember, give the team a month or so of slowly wrestling through creative challenges before expecting their creative response times to improve. This is about practice.
Integrate creativity into team projects. Prompt the team to creatively apply principles from other contexts. For example, with my learning & development team, I might ask:
What would happen if we applied traffic pattern concepts to this program design?
How could it look if we applied social media principles to this instructor led session?
What if this eLearning were more like an art museum – what could that look like?
It's OK to laugh. I know these prompts sound silly; and as I wrote in the previous article:
Innovative teams must get comfortable being a little weird and suggesting or engaging with oddball ideas -- just for the sake of practicing creativity.
Remember, if your team is more comfortable dismissing ideas than engaging with them, they aren't going to get very far in being creative.
Innovation is applying creativity to solve a specific challenge or improve a system in smaller increments.
Group innovation is social discipline that requires collaboration. Brainstorming creative solutions to specific issues requires substantial team trust. The best innovation happens when ego is removed and everyone is comfortable with her or his work undergoing scrutiny. In trusting teams, everyone shares a common goal and celebrates the success of the team as their own. Unlike personal creativity, group innovation requires a suite of other complimentary skills like the ability to give constructive feedback and pushback, resiliency to productively process criticism, and conflict resolution. If any of these skillsets aren't embedded in your team, you'll need to strengthen them before innovation can take root.
Condition your team to creatively approach challenges. Once your team feels comfortable shifting quickly into creative thinking, stoke innovation by creating opportunities to focus on a specific problem or challenge. Encourage the team to think about the problem from many angles, including emotional, logistical, and analytical. Prompt them to map out and weigh the risks against the opportunities. By systematically viewing the problem through a series of lenses, the team will activate their brain in different ways, setting the stage for innovation.
Integrate innovation into team meetings. Reserve time to research industry case studies and set aside 20 minutes of a team meeting for creative role-play. Pose challenges from the case study, and then prompt your team to walk through the six hats method and decide how they might respond. For example, with my learning & development team, I might ask:
A business is launching a remote working policy and expects 250 employees to transition to online training in the next 3 months. At this time, the company has design tools and an LMS, but no online content. How would you continue meeting regular business needs while ensuring that online training is ready for employees to access in 3 months? What are the most likely risks and opportunities for your plan?
A global corporation is launching a new platform that requires technical training for employees around the world. The company wants to start by flying subject matter experts to all global locations to deliver training in person; however there is no plan to ensure that the in-person training is effective or to train future hires to use the platform. How might you ensure learning transfer for the in-person training? How would you train future hires around the globe? What resources would your plan(s) require?
Review the infographic, Cross Training Creativity & Innovation: A Guide For Teams, and ask yourself:
How does your team flex the cognitive discipline of creativity? Does this happen weekly? If not, how could you create a weekly practice?
How does your team flex the social discipline of innovation? Does this happen weekly? If not, how could you create a weekly practice?
Does your team have the necessary collaboration skills to innovate together? If not, how could you infuse that into the team culture?
How does your team give feedback or pushback on ideas? Do their methods reward creative ideas or shut them down?
How does your team resolve internal conflict? Do their methods reward creative ideas or shut them down?
In Cultivating a Culture of Innovation, I look at three practices I embedded into my team culture to cultivate creativity and innovation. I also include thoughts from members of my team so you can hear firsthand about their experience working in the cultural environment we created together.
This article is the second in a three part series:
Cross Training Innovative Teams
Flexing Team Creativity and Innovation: A Practical Guide
Cultivating a Culture of Innovation