3 tools to benefit from the creativity of your employees and colleagues.
During my career, I had the opportunity to work in different industries and countries. And even though I had fantastic people as colleagues and managers, often there were barriers, which made companies underutilize employees’ creative potential. “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do,” Steve Jobs famously said. And yet, even today, companies across the board manage to squander the most precious resource of our time — the human mind and ingenuity.
Here are three ways we can start tapping into this reserve.
1. Listen
One of the fundamental things we can employ as founders and managers are to listen to our employees and colleagues. Sounds obvious, but it is not an easy task to accomplish. According to the international coach federation*, we can engage in several levels of listening. We might find ourselves thinking about some other problems, or perhaps we are already thinking about what we will tell in response… at that moment we are not completely open to new ideas or solutions. A deep level of listening requires our full attention and understanding of where the person is coming from — their true intentions. People often dismiss what is said to them based on their expertise, experience, seniority, or simply inertia. However, a new perspective or change of external circumstances can bring a new answer to an old problem.
2. Plan
When we have a tight and planned work pipeline, it is easy to dismiss new input, as our systems are already overloaded with work, and there might be simply no capacity to evaluate new ideas. We might even find someone’s idea smart and useful, but we just don’t see how to fit it in today. We can still plan and put it into the pipeline and set clear objectives and goals down the line. We should strive that ideas do not get forgotten or ignored. Come back to them regularly and check how new circumstances or people can take it to the actionable phase, and delegate!
3. Empower
More often than not, the extra passion and desire for the ideas to come through can give these additional resources we might lack to accomplish it. Giving people responsibility and mandate to run with their idea is a strong motivation. Examples of Google’s and Atlassian’s experiments, where employees could use 20%* of their time for projects they deem worthy, can prove that one can accomplish a lot if they have a clear goal and passion. Here, the important thing is to celebrate and be genuinely interested in progress and success and even failures. Create a culture where people are not afraid to take risks, ready to innovate, and open to be proven wrong.
There are many ways and processes one can employ to get valuable ideas from people. We at Kurultai think tools can be helpful to encourage employees to share ideas. At www.kurult.ai, you can easily set up a topic you would like to get your employees’ input on. Other employees can comment and vote on suggestions. This way you can get valuable feedback in distributed teams and have a common repository for ideas to inspire each other.
In the end, a fundamental role of the leader is to show the way forward. We are in this position because we have a clear vision towards some goal, and our job is to make sure everyone is on board with us. It can take much effort to ensure team alignment. At the same time, it is never wrong to listen to other opinions and enrich our understanding of others. We might learn something new and find better ways towards our goals. There are no obstacles for a team where people listen, plan, and empower each other, thus harnessing their creative potential.
