You’ve sparked a single transformative idea and now you want to use it as the basis for jump-starting a new innovation journey.
When it comes to business innovation breakthroughs, it’s clear that you can’t do it alone. The days of the ‘lone genius’ are over and assembling the right team is the key to bringing that initial spark that will shape the future of your business to life. But here’s the thing, it’s not just about building any innovation team. A breakthrough doesn’t just happen all of a sudden because you have a few great minds together. It needs to be the right mix of people with the right kind of guidance and leadership.
Apart from forming the innovation dream team, it’s also important to set up an innovation war room, or the ‘Innovation HQ’ I prefer to call it — a place to always turn to for the magic to unfold. And to really drive success every innovation process will need a dedicated guide that will act as the composer of an innovation and strategy ‘symphony’.
In this post, we’ll dive into not only the art of building the right team but also crafting the ideal environment, plus understanding the pivotal role of a facilitator in driving innovation forward.
Key Article Takeaways
- Build a diverse team with various skills and mindsets for innovation.
- Include individuals who challenge the status quo to propel innovation.
- Establish an environment that nurtures creativity and collaboration.
- Employ a facilitator to guide and maintain the innovation process.
- Prioritize actionable steps to effectively assemble the team and environment.
Building the Team
I like the analogy of innovation development being like a symphony. They have a lot in common: in both you’ll need to assemble the right members in their designated roles to create a beautiful harmony and maintain the perfect rhythm in your innovation journey. Each member, like a musician with their instrument of choice, contributes their expertise, skill, and creativity to the whole performance. And like most great musical groups you don’t need too many members to make a great sound.
When putting together the innovation team, a sweet spot typically falls between 3 to 7 members. Fewer than that, and you risk missing out on a variety of ideas and skills. Go beyond this range and you’ll have too many thoughts, feedback, and discussions, which can be quite hard to manage effectively resulting in missed outcomes. So, keep your innovation squad tight, but diverse, to strike the right balance.
Secondly, great bands are diverse in instruments. Having everyone play the same instrument would end up with a monotonous and uninspiring sound. Each member must be unique in their set of skills and mindset. They must be passionate about the overall vision but also open to challenge each other. These different skills, perspectives, and roles are essential for creating a rich and dynamic innovation process.
Recruiting the Movers and Shakers
Starting an innovation journey based on a new perspective, a hunch or an intuitive insight can be scary. Most of us are unwilling to take that first leap of faith and test out our new found ideas. You will need ‘rebels’ and ‘ambassadors’ to join you on the journey.
Rebels are the type of people who are willing to take a stand against the status quo and encourage it’s time for a new approach.
Ambassadors play a crucial role in getting the word out, gathering resources, and getting the buy-in necessary to make sure that this new venture not only gets off the ground but also doesn’t fizzle or get sidelined.
Rebels and ambassadors are the ‘movers and shakers’ that keep the momentum going for realising the breakthrough.
In my last post I covered the right kind of mindset needed for innovation development, but what are the most important skills and expertise needed on an innovation team? Identify champions of innovative approaches to different fields. What’s written on someone’s email signature doesn’t matter. What matters is their approach to challenges and assumptions. Look for people who not only understand the new perspective you’ve formed about your breakthrough, but are also the champions of Design-Thinking methodologies, have an entrepreneurial spirit, startup mindsets, apply lean methods to product development, and advocate for the best customer experiences.
Remember: titles don’t matter; what counts is their unyielding passion for innovative problem-solving approaches.
Creating the Ideal Environment
Breakthroughs also don’t happen while sitting and talking in meetings with your team. It takes a significant shift in thinking to switch from day-to-day work to the business of transformation and change.
Research has shown that offering a variety of work environments within a single office space, such as collaborative areas can improve overall innovation by 20%. Innovation requires a different kind of environment – one that sparks creativity and encourages thinking outside the box. So, attempting to foster innovative thinking in a standard room or workspace simply won’t cut it. Your innovation space needs to encourage the movement of energy, exchanging of ideas and collaboration. It requires a space to move around, to test and play with the new concept. This space becomes your “Innovation HQ”.
Setting up your Innovation Headquarters
Incorporating tools like design-thinking canvases, strategy frameworks and using technology like interactive whiteboards or touchscreens enables team members to explore solutions in real time and capture them for future sharing, enhancing collaboration and problem-solving.
Your Innovation HQ should establish a subconscious link to the innovative project your team is working on. It should effectively transition each individual’s mindset from who they were before entering the room to their role within the innovative project. This mental shift is crucial for fostering a focused and creative atmosphere.
However you design your Innovation HQ, it should be the same place the dream team gather to meet, be creative and track the progress that’s been made by observing the design artefacts remaining as they were left from the last gathering.
The great thing is that today these rooms can be virtual, with platforms like Miro that provide features that would be harder to replicate in real world.
The Facilitator’s Role
Innovation is a purposeful yet organic journey that demands a dedicated guide to channel the dynamic energy toward a future state. The process of developing a breakthrough can easily become chaotic and stray off course so a dedicated Facilitator or “workshopper” is essential.
A facilitator’s job is to provide a disciplined structure, manage the energy, guiding the team and maintaining momentum. The most successful facilitators are actually outsiders to the team. Their impartial viewpoint ensures they neither prematurely validate nor dismiss any assumptions and ideas. This neutral perspective acts as a safeguard, keeping the innovation process on a clear and dependable path to success.
Guiding the Symphony of Innovation
A good facilitator’s main job is to design workshops and get everyone thinking productively, helping them come up with important ideas, ask key questions, figure out solutions, and identify useful actions. Contrary to what many believe, they’re not there to solve the team’s problem for them, but guide the team to the underlying solution that needs to be brought out.
Going back to our symphony analogy, a skilled conductor guides a diverse group of musicians to create a harmonious piece of music, the facilitator orchestrates a diverse team, ensuring that each member plays their part in creating a masterpiece of innovation. They set the tempo, cue the various sections, and maintain the rhythm of the process, ultimately leading the team to a harmonious and successful outcome So whether you have an in-house or external facilitator, having a good facilitator is vital to the success of the innovation journey.
In this post, we’ve learned that turning an initial spark of inspiration into a full-fledged innovation is a team effort. The idea of the “lone genius” is outdated; instead, assembling the right team is the key to success.
1. Building the Team: Like a symphony, a good innovation team needs the right mix of members, typically between 3 to 7. Try the Team Charter canvas to make the formation run more smoothly.
2. Recruiting for the Dream Team: Seek rebels who challenge the status quo and ambassadors who gather resources and buy-in. Titles don’t matter; passion for innovative problem-solving does.
3. Creating the Ideal Environment: Design an “Innovation HQ” that encourages brainstorming, collaboration, and experimentation, shifting everyone’s mindset toward innovation. Use the checklist to help you better prepare this space.
4. The Facilitator’s Role: A facilitator provides structure, manages energy, and guides the team but doesn’t solve problems. They orchestrate the innovation journey, much like a conductor leads a symphony.
Now, it’s time to take action. Build the right team, create the right environment, and consider an external facilitator.
Whether in-person or virtually, these principles are vital for successful innovation. Start your journey and turn that spark into a roaring fire of innovation.