13 Tips for Building Your Innovative Team

13 Tips for Building Your Innovative Team

By Jeff Davidson

Is it human nature that we don't want to assess our performance most of the time? We'd rather plow ahead, hell-bent for leather, to what's next than stop and carefully determine whether or not we’re proceeding wisely in pursuit of a given task or goal. When it comes to generating innovative ideas, however, self-assessment is a valuable tool.

Assessing Yourself, Building on Ideas

Since it's difficult to retrace one's own thought pattern, a more convenient way to assess your openness to innovation is to record yourself. If you're in a meeting, especially one you're conducting, record the meeting for playback later, perhaps while you're driving – but keep your eyes on the road! Then listen to what transpired:

* When people suggest a new idea, are you cutting them off at the pass?

* What about when you suggest a new idea?

* If it doesn't get an immediate warm reception, do you retreat to familiar turf, preferring to tow the line rather than rocking the boat?

So What’s Truly New?

A new, wonderful, innovative idea is such a rare thing. We often make assumptions that are so deeply ingrained within us that we’re not even aware we’re making them. Do your recurring thoughts represent reflective thinking, or reflexive thinking?

Often, we simply mirror what we've been thinking all along and, even then, don't build upon it, explore it, or move it around to see what else develops. This is such a shame, because in the course of a day, each of us is likely to spew 20,000 to 30,000 words. Such Chatty Cathys! Most of it may be ordinary conversation, but it's easy to identify in advance those times when we're likely to hear or say something brilliant:

Staff, team, or department meetings or time on the phone with a brilliant conversation partner represent two highly fertile areas.

Assessing our proclivity to build upon and act upon innovative ideas pays off. Being able to assess your conversation patterns, especially in regard to innovative ideas, is so worthwhile that once you start, you'll look forward to future recording sessions. Fortunately, many technological tools are available for capturing telephone conversations.

The next time you're on the line with others who help you to generate a variety of ideas, tell them to hold on a moment while you flip the switch or hit