Skip to main content

Tag: creative thinking

a group of men and women sitting around a table working on their computers

5 Tips to Help Your Team Be More Creative

Written by Mark Miller on . Posted in Creative Thinking, Execution, Teams. No Comments on 5 Tips to Help Your Team Be More Creative

In today’s challenging economic times, creative thinking is more valuable than ever. Not creative for creativity’s sake – creativity to solve real business problems. Many of the ideas of the past are no longer relevant. As a seasoned leader once shared with me, “The half-life of ideas is decreasing rapidly.” So what’s our response?

We need more and better ideas. The good news: Creating new, value-added ideas is what teams do best. However, creativity in a team environment is not automatic. There are some things that leaders can do to increase the creative output of their team. Here are a few ideas to get you started…

Expect Your Team to Be Creative – When you establish the role of your team, be sure to highlight the expectation that the team will create fresh, new solutions to the problems you face.

Teach Them How to Be Creative – The skills of creativity can be learned. To learn them, they must be taught. Schedule time to conduct training for your team. This can take many forms. It can be anything from a brief micro-session on effective brainstorming (before your next brainstorming session) to multi-day training sessions and everything in between. The point is simple – train your team on the skills of creativity.

Give Them Opportunities to Practice – Creative thinking and problem solving are skills – just like golf, tennis, or a foreign language. Like any skill, you get better with practice. Look for opportunities for your team to practice the skills you’ve learned. Practice builds competence and competence builds confidence.

Celebrate Creativity When You See It – The actions that you reward will be repeated. That’s human nature. That’s one reason you need to recognize not just the successes but the effort as well. Not every creative endeavor will be successful. That’s normal. If you’ve been operating in a culture in which creativity has not been valued, recognizing creative effort will be even more critical. People are paying attention. They want to know if it’s really safe to voice new ideas.

You, the Leader Must Set the Pace – People always watch the leader – whether we want them to or not. Do your people see you embracing creative ideas? Do they see you engaged in the process of creating new ideas? You can accelerate the adoption of creative thinking as a skill if you personally get in the game. If you don’t, you’ll need to temper your expectations of groundbreaking new ideas from your team.

Teams are probably at their best when they’re engaged in the creative process. They are leveraging their collective wisdom and experience to create what previously did not exist. One of the most satisfying and productive things leaders can do is create the conditions to harness this creative potential. Start today and get ready to be amazed at what your team will do!

 

a set of train tracks that split as they go off in the distance a set of train tracks that split as they go off in the distance

Got Problems?

Written by Mark Miller on . Posted in Communication, Creative Thinking, Teams. No Comments on Got Problems?

Every team has problems – even if things are going well, your new problem is how to sustain the gains and go to the next level. Teams, when working well, are GREAT at solving problems. They harness the experience, wisdom, and creativity of the entire group. Together, the team is smarter than any of the individual team members. Does this sound like your team? Tragically, many teams never realize their full problem-solving potential. One way to help your team in this arena is to provide a clear process for problem solving.

Here are six steps that my friend and consultant, Jennifer Howard, taught me more than 20 years ago. It still works! You may want to experiment with it the next time your team faces a significant or complex problem.

Step 1: Identify the Problem. This is perhaps the most obvious of the steps, but you could argue that it is the most critical. There’s an old saying I love, “A problem well-defined is half solved.”

Step 2: Review the data. This serves several purposes. It may help you refine your problem statement. The data may give you clues regarding the root cause of the problem or perhaps the solution itself.

Step 3: Brainstorm Potential Causes. Now that your team has reviewed the data, it is essential that they agree on the most probable cause(s) of the problem. The outcome of this step will be the focus of step 4.

Step 4: Brainstorm Potential Solutions. This is where many teams BEGIN their problem solving. However, without the pre-work of steps 1 – 3, this is often misplaced energy.

Step 5: Create Your Action Plan. Based on the work of step 4, select the solutions you believe will have the greatest impact; decide who will do what by when and begin to deploy your solution.

Step 6: Monitor Your Progress. This is essential. Did your intervention work? Did your action plan solve the problem? If not, you’ll need to retrace your steps and repeat steps 3 – 6.

Using a process for solving problems is like providing tracks for a locomotive. Without them, the train can’t move. If you provide the tracks for your team, they will amaze you with their ability to solve even the most difficult problems.

What problem, if solved, would accelerate your team’s success?