So far, we’ve looked at large-scale approaches to innovation, and these have an important place in how organizations innovate. How- ever, teams also innovate on a smaller scale, and much of this is done through brainstorming.
Managed well, brainstorming is a highly effective tool for gener- ating and developing ideas as a team. It can deliver exciting ideas individuals are unlikely to come up with on their own, and at the same time, it helps the team bond and move forward with everyone feeling like they’ve played a part.
But when run poorly, brainstorming sessions are unhappy affairs that sow division and fail to achieve any worthwhile outputs. You need to set them up with care and manage them in a way that elim- inates the problems that come with poor group dynamics (#37).
k k It is important to understand the difference between individual
brainstorming and group brainstorming. Individuals brainstorming on their own often produce a wider range of ideas than groups, whereas groups often develop ideas in a richer way. You usually get the best results by combining the two. Here is a step-by-step guide:
1. Bring together a team with diverse but relevant experience.
You want a wide range of knowledge and experience to draw on during the brainstorming session. And you need open-minded people who are willing contributors.
2. Present the problem, and define the ground rules. Define the problem you want to solve, and explain the format of the meeting. In particular, make it clear that there should be no criticism of ideas, “wild” ideas will be welcomed, and every- one is expected to contribute.
3. Give people time to come up with ideas on their own. This ensures a good level of diversity in terms of “raw” ideas and helps people develop confidence in them. If you leap straight to group discussion, you risk getting “stuck in a rut” by fixat- ing on a small set of ideas.
4. Get everyone to share their ideas, and then start the discus- sion. Encourage people to share ideas generously. Pay careful attention to what others are saying, and get people to build on one another’s ideas by using their personal knowledge and experiences.
5. Guide the meeting to develop plenty of ideas. Spend long enough on each idea to develop it; then quickly move on to the next. As you’re doing this, keep an eye out for any problems of poor group dynamics – these can seriously undermine a healthy brainstorming process.
6. Bring ideas together at the end of the session. You can use affinity diagrams (see the link below) to organize ideas into common themes. Then bring judgment back into the process, and use appropriate decision-making techniques to choose between them. (You may want to do this in a separate session to preserve the upbeat mood of a successful brainstorming session.)
k k Find out more about brainstorming here, along with
learning about different types of brainstorming that can
help you in specific situations: http://mnd.tools/48-1
Learn how to use affinity diagrams to group information
into common themes: http://mnd.tools/48-2
Other Techniques for Fostering Creativity and Innovation
There are two important innovation processes that didn’t make the cut in our survey: The Stage-Gate®idea-to-launch process and Eric Ries’s build-measure-learn process. It’s important to know about these; you can find out more athttp://mnd.tools/c8c.
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Part III
Work with and Manage Other People
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Chapter 9
Understand and Motivate Other People
An increasingly popular way of defining management is “enabling people to do their best work.” According to this worldview, a good boss is someone who creates a work environment where people feel highly motivated and contribute to the best of their ability.
How do you create this type of positive, high-energy work envi- ronment? The starting point is to put yourself in the shoes of your employees – so that you can understand their fears and concerns, their interests and needs. Most people want to do a good job in the workplace, and to a large extent, your role as their boss is to take obstacles out of the way and give them the space they need. Of course, as a boss, you also have to manage poor performance and bad behavior, but managing these types of difficult situations is the focus of a later chapter. In this chapter, we emphasize the positive – and even inspiring – ways you can help your people to do their best work.
Unfortunately, it’s quite hard to create this type of positive work- ing environment. Managers often find it difficult to get their team members to open up about their challenges and concerns. Often, they are so overwhelmed with tasks and with trying to keep their own bosses happy that they struggle to give their own people the attention they need. Another mistake is to adopt a “one-size-fits-all”
approach to managing people, which works well for some but not for others.
k k This chapter provides several techniques and frameworks that
help you overcome these challenges, so that you can understand your employees better and create an environment where they can do their best work.
We start with two specific techniques. Leading by example, also known as role modeling (#49), is a way of consciously exhibiting the behaviors and actions that you would like others to adopt. Mindful listening (#50) is a technique to help you make the most of discus- sions with people in your team – so that you properly understand what they are saying and respond in a thoughtful way.
Then we describe techniques designed to help you understand others better. First, we look at individual motivation. This is a large and complex topic, which we can only scratch the surface of here.
We describe one classic framework, Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory (#51), which provides practical insights into the things that motivate, and demotivate, your employees, and we provide references to several other approaches to motivation you might find useful. We also consider different generational characteristics (#52) to help you understand why generation Y employees (people born after 1980) have such different expectations and demands in the workplace than generation X and baby boomers.
Finally, we describe two broader frameworks that cut across these specific techniques. One is the notion of emotional intelligence (#53), which is an individual’s capacity to make sense of and respond effec- tively to whatever is happening in his or her social environment.
Emotional intelligence is a good thing for anyone to have, but it is particularly useful for someone who is trying to manage others. The other is the concept of transformational leadership (#54), which is an umbrella concept for how leaders inspire and help their employees to grow.