Originally posted on Linkedin Pulse

Innovation has been a buzzword in the office and amongst CEO’s for a while now. Innovation has become the key to all our business, career and development problems and if we create the right culture in the workplace we can encourage it to flourish and make all our business aspirations come true! Or so we’re told. 

As a manager, how can you foster an innovative environment for your team? How is this different from any other creative process in which we look for ‘outside the box’ answers to daily trivial office issues? Here are my top tips on how to foster innovation in the workplace: 

People

As someone who prides themselves on investing in people with passion, I truly believe that it all starts with the people you have around you. Hiring talented people is only the first step in cultivating an innovative and creative environment. A lot of businesses fail to hire creative and innovative team members because their hiring process fails to make allowances for these types of candidates. I’ve seen hiring processes that are so structured that they almost seem to punish individuals who attempt to be creative and act differently during the process. The same can be said for the hiring process itself, if you do not provide an opportunity for candidates to express their creative side, what chance do you have of identifying your innovative team members?  It’s important to factor this into your hiring process if it’s important for the development of your business. Equally, I can’t think of anything more demoralising for an innovative thinker than being hired as a creative member of the team and then being micro managed out of their ability to foster new and fun ideas for the business to benefit from.

Make time to think clearly and set some personal goals

It’s never easy to find the time or the headspace to let the creative juices flow and just think. However, it’s important to do so in order for innovative ideas to flourish. Start to set aside a short amount of time every day or week to let your mind wander or do something which inspires you, this could be meditation or a walk outside, whatever gets your mind wandering. Set aside some time to help your head get the space it needs to think creatively and encourage your team to do the same. Get out of your typical routine and normal working environment to think about ideas you have and set your team or yourself targets to come up with one idea a week for each team meeting.  This really helps to foster an environment where ingenuity and change are embraced and valued.

Communication and collaboration

Use every conversation you have as a means of tapping your most valuable resources and contacts for creative ideas. An open and welcoming dialogue around ideas generation will effectively motivate and engage employees. Allow employees to present their ideas before important decisions are made. Provide feedback to employees, even when their ideas are not used, so that they know that they are not being dismissed. Encourage communication between departments: collaboration between members of different departments often results in creative solutions for problems, rather than blame when things don’t go to plan.

The people you work with – colleagues, clients and suppliers – are your most valuable resources so bounce ideas off them.  

Embrace failure

I always encourage my staff to ask for forgiveness rather than permission and although this can sound a little risky for managers to consider, it really is true that the fastest way to kill creativity is to institutionalise a corporate culture that punishes failure. You need to give yourself space to fail because it’s inevitably going to happen at some stage. This isn’t me being a pessimist, the most successful people in the world have one thing in common: they all failed and learnt from their mistakes. When an idea hasn’t worked out, understand why and expand and develop it. Then tell the whole team to try again and come back with more ideas.

Training:

Not everyone is automatically wired to be innovative in the workplace, and so it’s important to invest in your people and offer training in this area for your staff, as well as factoring this into objectives too. If you want to encourage your whole team to think creatively and be innovative in how they approach their day to day roles this has to be a factored into a detailed development plan. For the past year I’ve been building a training platform for recruitment professionals. Recruitment Guide will be the world’s first recruitment training application and I’m really excited by the prospect of the careers and professions it will help build and the businesses that will benefit from a more motivated and upskilled work force. Because the key learn I’ve made over the years is that businesses that do not invest in their people suffer in the long run.

Working environments that welcome brave decisions and unusual thinking, whether it works first-time around or not, are the key to the success of nurturing innovation. Thinking innovatively at work is not just about engaging the creative few, it should become the new normal across all departments and areas of the business.  By embedding innovation, creative thinking, and collaboration into the core of your business, and adding it to you and your team’s daily work activities, you will ensure that you’re seen as being someone who adds value to your company – as well as making it much easier to complete tasks, execute projects successfully, and reach your own professional milestones and objectives.