Fostering innovation in the workplace is essential to keeping your business current and relevant to the times and needs of your consumers. If the methods in which you conduct your business are lacking new ways of thinking and operating, it will fail to keep up, and ultimately fail altogether. Innovation and thinking outside-of-the-box is necessary for long-term success. Businesses that are resistant to change will become obsolete.
How can you foster innovation in your business?
Leadership from the Top
If you want your workplace to consist of innovation, experimentation, and creativity, then it all starts with you as the business-owner and leader. You are responsible for creating this culture. You should be open to new ideas, and creative thinking should be encouraged and rewarded. Your team should know that you, as the leader, are always looking for better ways to operate.
As a leader who wants to foster innovation in your business, you must have clear and positive intentions for your business, a forward-thinking and progressive approach, and real drive and motivation to do what your business intends to do.
Hiring the Right People
Let’s face it- your team is everything. Hiring the right people who are equally as driven, creative, and forward-thinking as you are, will ultimately contribute to the long-term success of your business. You have to take the initiative on fostering the culture of innovation in your business, as the team-leader, but without a team that is receptive to it, it will fall flat.
Having a diverse set of equally motivated people brainstorm ideas for one business is a sure way to develop something different than the norm, or different than what you’ve been doing that may no longer be working for your business.
Implement Methods of Creativity
Implementing methods of creativity into day-to-day business is imperative for keeping up team morale, and for keeping up creativity. You can do this in several ways. Maybe you want to give your team the added assignment of coming up with a newer, better way to approach an everyday project. Maybe you want to hold regular team meetings and have everyone prepare to share something they would like to change or do differently, or ideas they have for the future of the business, or even share things they think are no longer working for the business.
Keeping this open flow of communication is essential for fostering the flow of innovation, as people need to feel that their ideas are valued.
Don’t Be Afraid to Try New Things
It is great to have new ideas talked about, but really putting them into action is the important part. Your team is not going to think up, and speak their new ideas, if they know that ultimately no change will come from it. Work with your team to figure out how you can actually implement the new ideas that you come up with. Don’t be afraid to try new things!
As business-owners, we are constantly taking risks. It is a risk to open up a business in the first place! Don’t get comfortable and complacent. Failure is a part of risk-taking, but so is growing and learning.
Reach out to us if you are ready to take the leap and bring on a CFO to transform your business.