The business landscape as we know it has grown in leaps and bounds. With the advancement in technology, customers are highly informed and expect businesses to serve them innovatively, be it through their services or products.
Businesses today have to change and adapt to the current scenario in order to survive and thrive. For a long time, businesses have upheld creativity as the center of their endeavors. But unfortunately, not many prioritized it.
According to Statista, from 2020, there was an increased demand for tech innovations across various organizations. That resulted in many organizations phasing out the old days of stuffy cubicle workplaces.
As a result, most of them prioritize the spirit of invention and creativity to boost their productivity. This helps to revitalize approaches to how their staff works.
Unfortunately, breaking free of old routines and allowing creativity to thrive genuinely can be challenging.
Also, risk-averse companies with deadlines to meet may find it a bit challenging to incorporate innovation.
However, if your organization tends to play safe, it’s advisable to inculcate some creativity and innovative ideas.
An effective way to introduce these is by introducing innovation workshops to your organization. This will help to increase productivity and make workdays more fun and less hard work.
But it might be challenging to break free of old routines and let this creativity genuinely thrive when we’re so entrenched in our ways.
If you want to strengthen your creative muscles, you should put more time into practice. And with much-needed practice, you’ll become better at it over time.
Here are some activities you can leverage at your workplace to boost your capacity for innovation. The tips will also help to stimulate creativity throughout the day and increase productivity:
Leverage Brainstorming Methods
The fact is fostering creativity at work can be an uphill task. This is because most people shy away from contributing and sharing their thoughts.
The best way to break the ice here would be to introduce brainstorming sessions among employees. Start by encouraging them to come up with new ideas and motivate your employees to be more imaginative and focused.
It is important that you focus on communication, strategy, leadership, and problem solving skills when you encourage your employees to share and discuss ideas.
You can leverage the help of an innovation coach during these brainstorming sessions. These experts understand the best ways to make each person come out with their best ideas during brainstorming.
Moreover, these sessions are crucial as they will encourage communication among your staff. Naturally, when everyone needs to be given an opportunity, they will always seek clarity among each other. Now show me a sure way to produce some innovative solutions to unchecked problems than this one.
Naturally, people shy away from opening up due to several reasons. For instance, they are more concerned with being right and people recognizing their genius thoughts. It’s usually the ego play at the moment, and it wants to identify itself with only being right and not wrong.
But innovation workshops help, and brainstorming sessions teach your team to foster a culture of creative risk-taking. While recognizing innovative ideas, you need to appreciate the risk-takers. This helps to prevent your team from opening up.
Start By Optimizing Your Office Atmosphere
Naturally, you will need a more conducive atmosphere for your creative juices to flow. The same analogy applies to your employees and their work environment.
There are two options viable for you. You can either tweak and improve the design of the office or start from scratch to change the atmosphere of your office. With a conducive environment, it’s easier to introduce innovation training as it gives you confidence knowing that your team will fully participate.
You can start by considering the volume levels at your office. Different people prefer different volume levels. Quiet settings are essential in every office space as they help to boost staff concentration, while well-controlled background noise can influence creativity.
Quiet places or rooms can benefit some of your staff who need concentration to function. But also, you can leverage these spaces in case of innovation training to increase employee participation and concentration.
Also, consider the colors in your office space. You should consider using inspiring colors that can boost innovation. Tan, beige, white, and grey colors are less inspiring as they feel antiseptic and lifeless, a sure way to stifle innovation.
But you can never go wrong with soft blues and greens, as they are gentle on the eyes. They also contribute to a more tranquil atmosphere.
An innovative coach will advise on having natural elements in office spaces. Adding some natural plants also plays a crucial role in boosting creativity. Natural elements help to increase well-being, productivity and creativity.
Moreover, you can add brighter hues like orange and red for brain stimulation. However, these colors are vital as they bring a little life to meetings, debates, and innovation workshops.
Room temperature is also vital when it comes to overall productivity. It’s advisable to have your office temperatures at optimal levels. Anything too hot or cold may be oppressive and affect creativity and innovation.
Appreciate Individual Contribution
Think of a time when you shared something very basic, but they commended you for such an excellent idea. It felt nice and encouraging, right?
The same analogy applies to everyone. When you let your employees feel appreciated, however minimal the encouragement is, it will motivate them to excel.
Therefore, for this strategy to be effective, you should constantly communicate to your team members how much you cherish their individuality.
During innovation coaching, you will notice that most experts don’t shoot down any idea, but they encourage the team to build upon it.
This is a great opportunity for your staff members to think outside the box to make their ideas viable. It may seem like a small gesture, but such encouraging words mean a lot to people.
Everyone has unique attributes, skills, and qualities. So ensure you constantly acknowledge this fact and treat them as individual beings. And as a result, you’ll experience their creative imagination and increased productivity at work.
Implement Suggestions
Encouraging individuality and participation is incredible. But what’s more meaningful is accepting their suggestions and implementing their ideas. This allows your employees to think more creatively and innovatively.
Tell them when you adopt some of their innovative ideas other than rewarding them with a token of gesture to their thoughts.
Most startup coaches understand this strategy, and they often use it to ensure the organizations they’re working with can keep winning.
When you don’t implement the fresh ideas they float during the brainstorming sessions, they translate them as if they’re not worthwhile.
And there is a greater possibility of them not sharing their ideas with you, and if they do, the ideas won’t be as innovative and creative as before.
So when you identify a concept that can work, it’s prudent to let the team know. You can even go ahead and acknowledge the bearer of the idea if the results seem promising.
This is a sure way of encouraging your staff members to offer ideas in the future. To be honest, this is so important to them as it adds to their portfolio, and they can always have a reference of how brilliant they are when they’re in doubt.
Final Thoughts
The beauty of creativity and innovation is a skill that can be learned as it is not a talent. People become more powerful by giving their innate skills more strength, which enhances collaboration and production.
It takes much more than bright presentations and attractive notice boards to be innovative at work. Employers must keep an eye out for novel approaches to meet the demands and preferences of their varied workforce.
Leverage innovation training and coaches during your brainstorming sessions. Doing this sets your organization up for success and ahead of your competitors.
