Management Level 3

Management Level 3

Encourage Innovation

Creativity and innovation are long-established benefits of team working in businesses. To bring out the best in your team in terms of creativity and innovation, you need to harness the processes involved and develop a team culture where members proactively contribute their ideas and suggestions.

In this you will investigate methods of developing the creativity of your team as well as identifying ways in which these ideas can be recorded for future evaluation. You will examine methods of assessing the viability of ideas and look at how you can analyse the benefits and risks associated with ideas for change.

Providing support to your team in submitting formal project proposals form approval will be a key part of your role and you will examine ways in which you can best support your team in this respect.

In the final part of this unit you will look at the process of implementing team ideas. In particular, you will examine ways of monitoring implementation of ideas by your team, as well as methods of communicating progress on implementation to the management team.

What you will learn:

• Be able to develop team ideas and develop the creativity of team members
• Be able to assess the viability of team members’ ideas
• Be able to support team members to implement ideas
• Be able to implement team ideas

Be able to develop team ideas and develop the creativity of team members

To get the best out of your team, ideas and creativity need to flow freely. Team members need to feel able to voice their ideas and opinions and know that they will be listened to. In this section you will investigate some of the methods that you can implement to both encourage and harness this creativity within your team.

Encourage team members to identify ideas

As a manager, you cannot simply order your team to be creative! Instead, you have to take a facilitating approach, which includes protecting your team from the usual constraints, pressures and bureaucracy of the organisation and actively supporting them by allowing them the freedom necessary to be creative.

Protecting your team from organisational pressures can mean giving them a separate physical space in which to be creative and may include allowing them flexibility in working hours and location. You might also need to defend our team to other managers to keep their workload at a level that allows the creative process to flourish. Urgent deadlines and heavy workloads will ruin the creative flow of even the most talented and motivated individuals.

You will need to employ excellent leadership skills to find the most appropriate support that you can give to your team. You will have to inspire them, provide a constant source of challenge and stimulation, allow mistakes and, above all, encourage experimentation. This will allow you to tap into your team’s creative energy.

Innovation

Innovation has long been recognised as a vital ingredient in organisational success – it can even make the difference between business survival and collapse, especially where competition is high and new developments are emerging quickly into the market.

Innovation can come about from a variety of sources such as:

• In response to customers’ needs – often identified by customer feedback
• By accident – famous examples include Blue-Tack, which was being researched as a possible new sealant that didn’t work as intended
• By research and development – most large organisations have their own dedicated research and development departments. Pharmaceutical companies, such as GlaxoSmithKline, and technology companies, such as Apple, are known for their ground-breaking research and development work.

According to leading economist Joseph Schumpeter, innovation can be concerned with:

• The introduction of a new product or a new quality of product
• The introduction of a new method of production
• The creation of a new market
• The development of a new source of supply
• The recognition of an industry

Some examples of innovations that fall under these categories include:

• The development of wireless technology for computers and laptops
• The development of biofuels as an alternative to fossil fuels
• Hybrid electric cars, such as the Peugeot 3008 Hybrid4, which is capable of running on both diesel and electricity
• The production of electricity using wind power instead of burning fossil fuels
• Satellite navigation technology
• Tablets such as the Apple iPad, the Motorola Xoom tablet and the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Creativity

Creativity is the generation of original thoughts and ideas. This originality comes from our imagination and allows us to design new and better ways of doing things, such as solving a particular work-based problem, addressing a certain customer need or designing a completely new technology. Creativity can equally arise from combining existing ideas in new ways to produce something better, smarter, quicker or more streamlined. This is why many creativity initiatives in business involve encouraging the generation of as many alternative ideas as possible and not just one or two.

As a team leader or manager, you must understand the immense power that lies in developing and nurturing creativity in your team. Entirely new businesses have even been founded on the results of creativity.

The Wand Company Ltd is an excellent example of creativity and innovation in practice. The company was formed in 2009 by two inventors who came up with an innovative take on remote controls by designing a buttonless, gesture-based control in the form of a wand. This wand can be used to operate various home media, such as TVs, DVD players and stereos, and uses movement to activate and change settings. The two founders of the company achieved fame by appearing on the TV programme Dragons’ Den and the business has since gone on to achieve huge international business success and multi-million pound turnover. You can find out more about this company by visiting their website at or watch their business pitch to the Dragons by visiting

Factors affecting idea generation in teams

Anderson and West developed a theory of group innovation, which states that high levels of creative and innovative performance depend on:

• A shared vision and clear objectives – so that everyone knows the goals of the business as well as what is expected of them individually
• Feeling safe within the team – so that there is no fear of negative consequences
• Task orientation – commitment from everyone in the team to achieving the highest standards when completing a task
• Support and recognition for trying to be innovative.

Your role as team leader is central in building up each of these factors within your team. Think about how you might go about developing creativity and innovation in your team by completing the following activity.

Barriers to idea creation

In many organisations, the free expression of ideas is hampered by issues such as:

• Existing work demands and pressures preventing individuals and teams from having the time and freedom to be creative
• The existing culture of the organisation discouraging individuals from expressing their ideas openly, especially where there is an old-fashioned management style of command and control
• Politics within the team, such as rivalry and personality and power clashes, preventing individuals from bringing their best creative ideas to the table.

As team leader or manager, you can help to reduce the impact of each of these issues mentioned above and thus encourage your team to identify ideas. For example, you can help to manage workflow peaks and troughs to avoid excessive work pressures building up. You can also give team members time out away from their normal workplace to research new ideas.

You can encourage an honest, open and trusting climate among your team by asserting your own values and leadership skills, even if this is at odds with the culture in other parts of the organisation.

You can avoid, or at least reduce, the impact of individuals who are at odds with each other by finding ways to make the goals of the team more important than individual successes. In addition, you can arrange the work tasks of the team in such a way as to minimise contact between team members who are at risk of constant clashes with one another. In the long term, where no other solution is possible, a change of team may be the most sensible solution for this type of situation.

You may not yet have specific experience f developing innovation and creativity in your team, but as you gain more experience in your role, you will discover the methods that work best for you and your particular team.

Lateral thinking

Lateral thinking is a term applied to unusual methods of problem solving and idea generation. The basic idea behind lateral thinking is to approach a problem or situation from a different angle or a fresh perspective, in order to produce innovative solutions that would not be possible using traditional problem-solving techniques. In fact, the very basis of lateral thinking is to break out of the old habits and patterns created by traditional problem-solving approaches. Often, these very habits create a blinkered view of both the problem and the available solutions and people get stuck in an ideas rut!

Here are a couple of examples of such lateral thinking puzzles. See if you can work out the answers.

1. Coin in the bottle

Put a coin in a bottle and then plug the opening with a cork. How can you get the coin out the bottle without pulling out the cork or breaking the bottle?

Answer:

Push the cork into the bottle, then shake the coin out.

2. Doctor

A man and his son were in a car accident. The man was killed but the son was rushed to the emergency ward. The doctor on call took one look at the boy and claimed ‘I can’t operate on this boy. He’s my son’. How could this be?

Answer:

The doctor was the boy’s mother.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a group technique where team members try to come up with as many ideas as possible on a certain topic. Quantity, not quality, of ideas is the goal of brainstorming sessions, so it does not matter how extreme or unfeasible the ideas put forward turn out to be. The ideas generated in brainstorming sessions will later be categorised and assessed. Unworkable ones will be discarded during this process.

Brainstorming generally works best in small groups of no more than about eight. It also requires active participation from everyone in order to work well, so there is no room for sitting back quietly in these sessions. All team members must be willing to contribute. They also need to understand that their ideas will not be judged in any way during the brainstorming process.

Brainstorming can be used in many different situations, such as new product development, where creative solutions are essential to the business.

Mind mapping

Mind mapping is a process where situations or ideas are mapped onto a diagram, beginning with a main subject in the centre, with branches and sub-branches added around it as more links and associated ideas are generated. Mind mapping is generally carried out individually and is used to create as many ideas as possible on a given theme. Colours and images can also be used in mind mapping diagrams to emphasise the different elements and ideas within them.

Record team members’ ideas

How can you ensure that you effectively record all the ideas that your team members produce so they are not lost among the huge amounts of information and paperwork generated by day-to-day requirements of the business?

In order to capture and record team members’ ideas, you need to establish documentation procedures in just the same way as for other areas of your job, and preferably keep a log of ideas put forward in date order. This need not be a complicated procedure and can be easily and simply set up. Whatever the format of the notes, they need a central place where they can be filed for later reference. Remember too, t file notes taken during brainstorming sessions, copies of mind maps and minutes of relevant meetings.

Project proposal forms

One approach might be to create a master template of a new project proposal form, which your team can use to explain their ideas, detailing all of the resources needed to be put them into practise. There are many free versions of such forms available on the internet for you to download. You can find examples of these by searching for ‘new project proposal form’ in a search engine. By using new project proposal forms, all of the ideas suggested by the team will be presented in a standard format and will be easy to store on a shared network drive or intranet. Tis way, they are easy to retrieve at a later date for assessment and evaluation. Using such a standard form also helps to make sure people complete all of the necessary information.

Staff suggestion schemes

Not all of your team’s ideas may be about new projects. Some may be concerned with the smallest of details that could be changed within existing processes to improve some aspect of work. Better tea and coffee facilities, new hand dryers, a new printer or better computer monitors – these types of ideas do not necessarily warrant a full project specification, but do need to be recorded somehow. A staff suggestion scheme could be manual, like a box held on reception, or they could be conducted electronically, via an email address such as .

Suggestions schemes administered by email are very quick and easy to manage. Suggestions received can be categorised, prioritised and filed simply by using your existing email program to create folders and sub-folders off the main inbox. Suggestions received by email can also be auto-forwarded to more than one individual if required.

Team meeting agendas and minutes

Team meeting agendas and minutes are effective in documenting ideas put forward by team members. Standard agenda items could be subjects such as ‘New ideas and suggestions’ and ‘News from our industry’, as below:

The agenda needs to be circulated to all of the team prior to the team meeting, to allow people time to prepare information to present for these agenda items.

Details of ideas generated from team meetings, as well as actions and deadlines, could then be easily documented using the existing team meeting minutes. This a very effective way of using an existing system to develop new information. As we have seen, ideas and suggestions can come from a variety of sources. It is your job to find a way of storing the information received in a central file, either electronically or manually, so that you can easily access this at a later date to:

• Review the ideas received
• Ask for further information from your team
• Select ideas for further assessment and development.

Be able to assess the viability of team members’ ideas

Once you have begun receiving ideas and suggestions for improvements from your team, your next task is to assess whether or not they are viable. This involves looking at both the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed new idea and making a decision as to whether the advantages of implementation and the benefits it might bring outweigh any negative issues and costs that may arise.

A viability assessment is an essential stage in the idea evaluation process. No idea should ever be implemented without a detailed and thorough assessment of its relative advantages, disadvantages, costs and resource requirements, all of which should be backed up by a fully costed and scheduled plan.

Remember, too, that viability should be reassessed even after a project gets under way, especially if it is a long-term project. There are many factors that can change along the way which may make a once fully viable project untenable. This can happen where, for example:

• Costs spiral way beyond original estimates, making completion of the project too expensive
• New technology becomes available on the market which can provide a better solution for the business much more cheaply
• The needs of the business change, perhaps due to a strategic change in direction, such as a takeover or a merger.

Assess with team members the potential benefits and risks associated with an idea and the resources required

A good approach to assessing new ideas is to involve your team as far as possible in the process. Remember that your team members may make suggestions for new processes and initiatives based on previous experience gained in other companies. This means that they will have valuable experience of seeing the idea work in practice.

This type of experience can be of huge benefit as learning from rea experience is better than stepping into the unknown. In this section, we’ll use the example of a retail clothing store where the sales team are considering implementing a new process of cross-selling their products to customers with the aim of increasing sales per employee.

Analysing benefits and risks

The main benefits of implementing a policy of cross-selling include:

• Increased overall revenue for the business
• Increased sales per employee – therefore increasing productivity for the sales team
• Increased customer service levels – as customers are given additional individual attention in the store
• Increased customer satisfaction – as customers are helped to purchase an entire outfit, rather than a single item of clothing, therefore reducing the need for them to spend additional time and effort shopping in a number of stores to get the outfit they need.