Recruitment and a solid selection method is key when it comes to creating an innovative team. We’ll be sharing five key points that you can incorporate into your strategy to start building the team of your dreams!
Finding the right members to build an innovative team is not only up to your HR representatives, pretty much all your top executives and leaders have to be involved in the process.
“Innovation is a process than any organization can use to find solutions and stay ahead of competition” – Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership
Let’s get right into it…
- Promote a growth mindset
Innovation won’t happen if your managers’ time is taken up by small details and tasks. Encourage your leaders to do what they’re there to do – lead. An innovative team leader doesn’t lead by controlling every aspect of the task at hand, instead, they are goal driven and promote empowerment, honesty, and community; when things don’t go as planned, they need to provide the tools, resources, and abilities to guide the team to be a leader in ambiguous times. Teach your team how to act quickly so they are prepared to disregard bad ideas or work on the good ones! Remember, leading by example will also show that growth is possible for each member of your innovative team. They’ll bring more ideas to the table and become more creative when doing so! All they need is the right mindset.
- Identify essential skills
Innovation comes from creative spaces and action. You’ll need to recruit employees who have good communication and collaboration skills. You’ll need creative team members who are also proactive when it comes to execution. Critical thinking, curiosity and hard skills!
- Build a team that shares your company values
This falls under the category of building community, it is essential for an innovative team to share similar beliefs and motivations. A sense of community stimulates people to work on different levels, which at the same time, increases employee learning curves by sharing successes and failures and bringing many minds together to grow and perfect new and old ideas. Employees look to their leaders to know how to behave. Start from the top and encourage your leaders to innovate and work on different levels and ideas. This will build a strong sense of community… so strong that it will even reach your consumer.
- Set goals that are demanding
If you’re looking for big innovation, you can’t expect that to happen when goals are easily accessible. By setting clear goals that demand more from your team members, they’ll have to step out of their comfort zone and aspire to reach those goals. It’s a lot like when an athlete has to push themselves out of that comfort zone in order to reach the goal in mind. Once your team discovers how great innovation feels, they’ll want to get there with more excitement!
- Be honest when things fail
Empowering your team doesn’t mean you need to allow for bad ideas and projects to continue. We call these “zombie projects”, they tend to be projects that never die simply because. It happens when no one makes the decision to end it there and accept that it failed.
Pro tip: every 30 to 90 days, take the time to examine all projects closely and determine which ones aren’t working. Be honest when it comes to failure despite where the idea came from. This opens up the space for new projects and ideas to come in.
Most leaders constantly wonder how to unlock all the potential for innovation in their teams, but finding the right answer isn’t always easy. Mixing up strategy, leadership approaches, resources and practices is the way to go. It’s also true that sometimes we need to look for answers in a new and innovative place.
The good news is that there’s a place to do that!
At TrippleUp we offer a place for open innovation, where you can share and receive ideas, solutions, feedback and so much more. Untap the potential of open innovation, visit our website and learn more about what this can do for you. It’s time to let go of old habits and think outside the box!
Together, we can generate ideas that achieve positive results.
Tripple, made with ❤️