We are constantly urged to to meet the challenge of inadequate resources, budget pressures and ambitious performance targets by being creative and innovative. To come up with new ways of working that will solve existing problems without creating new ones. Think out side the box, come up with fresh ideas, think the unthinkable. Easier said than done. Where do you start. In the past you might have tried “ brain storming “ with the team. But all those post it stickers are better at cataloging the problems than identifying new solutions.
Where and when do you do your best thinking? Taking a shower? Walking the dog? Driving? Exercising at the gym? But not at work. So rather than forcing the team to sit down and come up with fresh ideas we instead need to encourage curiosity, get people to identify the problem that keeps coming up. It maybe a problem only they encounter or one the whole team regularly comes across. Since they have identified the problem and not senior management they are much more likely to be invested in finding a solution. This recurring problem then become the Killer Question. How do we solve it? Thinking about the Killer Question is not a group activity it something you do when your doing something else. For me it was often when I was washing up the dishes after the evening meal( before we got a dish washer).
Although anyone can come up with an unconventional idea in my experience it’s not usually senior management but people closer to the action. I write as a former Director who was far more innovative as a Team manager because I was closer to the action and I worked in a large organisation where I could operate below the radar. Senior managers tend to revert to the tried and tested like a reorganisation which diverts energy and distracts people and often creates as many problems as it solves. The real value of senior managers is to encourage teams to take risks and tolerate failure in the spirit of trying something new and different and spotting when an idea could be adapted and adopted across the organisation.
Blair Mcpherson former Director author and blogger www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
