Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:
Lean Tip #3601 – Create Energy by Thanking All
Recognizing employees for their efforts, not just their outcomes, doesn’t dilute the idea. Instead, it acts as a fertilizer. It energizes individuals and the entire organization. And encourages people to keep contributing. The enthusiasm around trying to make things better is infectious and fun. And that is itself a catalyst for creativity.
Lean Tip #3602 – Empower Your Employees to Think About Tough Problems
As Apple’s Steve Jobs said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
This is a key technique to encourage workplace innovation: empower your employees to think about the tough problems and reward staff for working towards solutions.
People are as innovative as you allow them to be. If you empower your staff to chase their “aha moments”, you’ll soon find yourself with a more dynamic and innovative workplace.
Lean Tip #3603 – Give Your Staff a Reason to Care
To be truly innovative, your employees need some skin in the game. They shouldn’t think about innovation as something for senior management to think about - instead, innovation should be part of everyone’s job description.
Look for ways to incentivize staff to think about innovation, and bring them along the journey by developing a company-wide innovation strategy.
Lean Tip #3604 – Encourage Your People to Think About Innovation on a Daily Basis
Innovation shouldn’t be something people think about only during retreats and workshops. If thinking about new ways of doing things is seen only as an occasional exercise, you’ll never be able to access the full potential of your employees’ creativity and imagination.
Instead, make room for your staff to consider innovation as part of their daily tasks. For example, manufacturing giant 3M is famous for giving its employees a 15% time allowance every day for constructive daydreaming.
Of course, this doesn’t mean handing out a 15% buffer for employees to just snooze at their desks. You should ask your people to demonstrate the results of these innovation sessions.
Lean Tip #3605 – Accept Failure and Make it the Norm
It’s an unavoidable fact that innovation carries the risk of failure. For every example of world-changing innovation, there’s a whole trash heap of failed ideas.
Rather than running from this fact, companies need to come to peace with it. Acknowledge the possibility of failure, dedramatize it and encourage risky initiatives to help employees approach innovation in a more open and inventive way.
Lean Tip #3606 – Develop an Innovation Strategy - and Use It
An innovation strategy sets out guiding principles for how your company will grow its market share through product and service innovation. A good strategy helps to clarify what is expected of employees at every level of your company when it comes to problem-solving.
By developing an innovation strategy, leadership provides employees with certainty about the core role of innovation and reinforces the idea that innovation is everyone’s responsibility.
Developing an innovation strategy also forces senior management to think about what innovation means to them, and to state in clear terms how their employees should contribute new ideas for products, systems, and services.
Lean Tip #3607 – Ensure Staff Psychological Safety
This is a crucial element to get right. After all, employees don’t want to feel like attempts at innovation could threaten their jobs if it goes wrong.
Your staff members need to be able to be honest and forthright about new product and systems suggestions, without fear of recrimination or adverse effects on their jobs.
So, one of the first things you should do when encouraging innovation is to set clear ground rules and let people know that their positions won’t be at risk if the innovation exercise isn’t a success.
Lean Tip #3608 – Be Open to Change
The first step in becoming more innovative is to develop a mindset that is open to change. Innovation involves coming up with new ideas or new systems for completing tasks. Being overly connected to the way things are done presently may limit your creativity. You can practice being open to change by participating in newly implemented processes or by attending a new work event or professional outing. You can also improve your mindset by telling yourself that change is good and that you can adjust to new circumstances.
Lean Tip #3609 – Seek Out Positivity
After
developing an open mindset, you should work to establish a sense of positivity
in your personal and professional life. Having a positive outlook allows you to
maintain your openness to change, and it can help you be more confident about
your ideas or decisions.
This outlook can also help you be more receptive to ideas that your colleagues or co-workers may have, and is likely to encourage collaboration and team brainstorming. You can find this positivity internally and externally by connecting with colleagues or a mentor who has a cheerful or hopeful disposition and making positive affirmations at the start of each day.
Lean Tip #3610 – Have Confidence in Your Ideas
To be more innovative at work develop your confidence in your ideas. Emulate the characteristics and traits of innovative thinkers that you learned during your research, and brainstorm ideas for change. If you notice room for improvement, reach out to the appropriate person and let them know how you feel. If you believe you have a good idea, express your thoughts and take action to make a positive change.
Lean Tip
#3611 – Pick Small Projects for Big Wins
We often think that ideas must always be big, transformative, and game-changing. But often, it’s lots of small, novel things that add up to make a huge difference. The benefits to small-scale innovation are huge. Not only do they happen quickly and (most often) without a lot of fuss, they also garner the interest and attention of both your team and organization; thus paving the way for bigger, meatier innovation projects to follow. Try changing lots of small things.
Lean Tip #3612 – Flip Your Assumptions and Change the Status Quo
We all have things we do with our eyes shut. It’s part of what makes us excel at our jobs, but also part of what blinds us to opportunities. Over the course of the day, identify all the tasks you do without thinking. Take a moment to talk about how you could do them differently. Sometimes it won’t work (spell check might always be the best way to proofread your work). However, it will often lead you to find a new way of doing the same old thing.
Lean Tip #3613 – Break Dwon Siloed Thinking to Promote Cross-Functional Thinking
Siloed thinking occurs when departments or teams become too focused on their own goals and objectives, leading to a lack of collaboration and communication across the company.
One way of dealing with this issue is to create a culture of transparency by sharing information about the organization's goals, strategies, and initiatives across different departments and teams. This can help to break down barriers and promote collaboration. Also, encourage cross-functional collaboration by creating opportunities for employees from different teams and departments to work together on projects and initiatives. This can help to break down silos and promote cross-functional thinking.
Lean Tip
#3614 – Overcome the Resistance to Change
People are often resistant to change, even when it is for the better. Resistance to change can manifest in many ways, including reluctance to try new things or fear of losing control over established processes.
You can deal with resistance by clearly communicating the need for change and its benefits to the company. This can help employees to understand why the change is necessary and how it will benefit them.
Consider involving your employees in the change process by soliciting their feedback and ideas. This can help to build buy-in and ownership of the change process.
Another idea is to provide training and support to help employees adapt to the change. This can help to reduce anxiety and increase confidence in the new process or system.
Lean Tip #3615 – Remove Unnecessary Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy can stifle innovation in two significant ways. Bureaucratic processes can create long lag times, which can result in missed opportunities for innovation. For example, a lengthy approval process can delay the implementation of a new idea, making it irrelevant by the time it is finally approved.
What's more, bureaucracy often reinforces the status quo and resists change, making it difficult for new and innovative ideas to gain traction. This can be especially true in large organizations, where established processes and procedures can be difficult to change.
Bureaucratic processes can also lead to a lack of ownership over innovation, with decision-making and implementation often spread across multiple departments and teams. This can make it challenging to take risks and experiment with new ideas.
One way
of removing unnecessary bureaucracy is by implementing a flatter hierarchy.
Flatter hierarchies reduce layers of management to create a more agile and
responsive company. This can be achieved by eliminating unnecessary levels of
management, empowering teams to make decisions, and promoting a culture of
collaboration and teamwork.
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