Inspire Creativity and Innovation in Your Workplace

Here’s the rub: People (all people) are creatures of habit. Yet today’s quickly evolving business environment demands agility, innovation and employees who easily adapt to change.

How can organizations encourage the creativity they need?

Innovation expert, Lorinda Lewis and I recently discussed this topic in a short podcast, considering both the barriers to workplace creativity and ways leaders can nurture it. Here are highlights of our discussion.
 

How to encourage creativity in your team

Markey: What does it mean to think creatively in the workplace of today?

Lewis: It means employees aren’t making decisions on autopilot, but rather are quick to spot and embrace better ways of doing things and finding hidden opportunities.

To ensure this, first, we’ve got to give people time and encourage them to question answers instead of answering questions. When people turn things upside down by asking, “What would happen if I did this?” or “What would happen if I didn’t do this?” or “What could I do to make the problem worse?” they generate new ideas.

Then, instead of just moving on to the next thing after we implement a project, we need to stop to understand what we’ve learned. Get the people involved together and ask, “What are one to three things we did well, didn’t do well, or can learn and apply in the future?” By grabbing those lessons learned along the way, organizations collect intellectual property (which has a side benefit of helping with succession planning).

And companies must follow through. If you’re going to ask employees to ideate and be creative, you’ve got to let them know why you went one direction instead of another or why you modified their idea. If you do this, they’ll continue to be inspired to use those creative juices.
 

Make it safe to ask questions

Markey: I like what you’re saying: “Question answers instead of answering questions.” But I think when a lot of people come into the workplace, they’re afraid to question things. It’s risky. What if their creative idea is wrong or doesn’t work?

Lewis: Absolutely. Leaders have to provide that security and make it okay to take the risk, maybe not do it perfectly the first time, but in the process, learn.
 

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Markey: Do you think it’s possible to be creative in areas that might not traditionally be thought of as creative, such as accounting, HR or legal?

Lewis: Yes, there are always shortcuts or new ways of doing things. Leadership just needs to give people time and space to practice creativity, let them know they might not use every idea but challenge and reward them for being part of the innovative process. A behavior rewarded is a behavior repeated.
 

Barriers to creativity at work

Markey: What sort of things get in the way of creative thinking?

Lewis: Intelligence. In a meeting, everyone often acquiesces to a person with a long list of academic credentials, and in fact, that person can be way off.

Not stopping and evaluating what you did well, what you didn’t do well. When we just move on to the next thing, we don’t grab those lessons learned.

Crisis management. Instead of trying to be creative at the root cause of the problem, we treat everything as though it’s urgent and important and we just put bandages over things.

Not being open to weirdness. A lot of products and services we use now seemed wacky to someone in our past. Don’t dismiss outlandish ideas without taking time to consider them.

Groupthink. We’ve got to relish new ideas. When people bring fresh ideas and we as a team, or as leaders, are dismissive, people can either burn out, become disruptive or go away.
 

Markey: I think avoiding groupthink is so important. Can you elaborate?

Lewis: Newer generations in the workforce want to be able to contribute quickly. And sometimes, when we’re working in an existing group where everyone’s on the same page, a new person comes in and questions something and offers another idea and we give him the stink eye. “Wow, you just came on board and you’re offering that?”

Groupthink also happens when leaders unknowingly self-promote by offering their opinions up front. “Let’s talk about creative solutions to this problem we have and here’s what I think will be the best way to solve it. What do you think?” Disagreeing with the boss’s opinion can make people uncomfortable.

And some leaders are just flat out intimidating with kind of an it’s-my-way-or-the-highway thinking, and then suddenly want everybody to participate in creative brainstorming. And nobody wants to play.

It also helps when you’re brainstorming or using creativity, to always make sure you have a lot of options so you can talk about benefits and risks and make comparisons between them.
 

How leaders break down barriers to creativity

Markey: What are things leaders can do to break down some of these other barriers to creativity?

Lewis: The biggest one is to reward curiosity. Tell people, “My expectation is that you are curious … that you look for shortcuts.” There’s an interesting story about a man named Randy Wagner who was living in Houston right before hurricane Harvey. Residents were being told and given lots of time to evacuate, but Wagner said, “I’m not comfortable leaving my property and livestock.” So he began to explore and ordered some water dykes from a company in Louisiana. He encircled his entire home, brought his livestock inside and kept it all dry. The company now markets these to protect your property. Wagner became famous overnight because he gave himself permission to be curious.

I’m always looking for new and better ways to do things that aren’t working well. We’ve all got to do this—start getting curious in bite size pieces.

Begin to explore and look at options, invite questions, play devil’s advocate. Or, Ed de Bono has a great book on assigning roles (thinking hats) when you’re in an environment where people aren’t comfortable or they’re introverts and they’re not saying much. You give them permission and make it easier for them up front by assigning them one of six (hats) roles. Another idea would be to invite outside experts to come in with a new perspective.
 

Markey: What else can an organization’s leaders do to create a culture of innovation?

Lewis: There’s philosophy and there’s environment—sum up your vision or values in three words. You’ve also got to be open to possibilities, even the possibility you could be wrong and somebody else could have a better idea. It’s a mindset.

Another thing that can help, when you’ve got people working together, you can also purposely pair those with different perspectives forcing them to stretch.