How can You Turn Tiny Sparks of energy into success?

re you and your company still doing business the same way you did 12 months ago or worse still, are you still operating your business the same way you did 5 or 10 years ago? Our grandfathers could afford to keep doing business the same way they had for decades, as the business cycle in the 1950’s was estimated to be around 50 years. The ever increasing pace of technological advancement and other changes, has dramatically shortened this cycle and today that same business cycle, is estimated to be as short as 16 months.

Some companies are great, because they are constantly innovating and re-inventing themselves

Mike Duke was employed for 16 years, by one of Wal-Mart’s competitors and struggled for all that time to understand why it was virtually impossible to knock Wal-Mart off their pedestal, as the best discount retailer in the USA. When he joined Wal-Mart’s executive team, he finally realised why the discount giant was so difficult to beat. They have a culture, which encourages all team members to constantly innovate and evolve. They constantly generate new ideas to improve their business and remain abreast of their customers’ needs and expectations.

Sam Watson, the founder of Wal-Mart had a natural instinct and ability for creating new ideas and as a great leader he inspired those around him to do the same. Although the leadership has changed since the death of Mr Watson, his legacy still lives on. Wal-Mart still maintains its market leadership position, because of the organisations commitment to always search for and apply new and innovative ideas in their business. What is your organisations commitment towards innovation and idea generation?

The role of Leadership

If you want to your business to not only survive, but to thrive over the next 5 – 10 years. Your commitment as a leader needs to go beyond merely coming up with great ideas yourself. Yes of course you as the leader have a shared responsibility to come up with new ideas and support your team to do the same, but that is only part of the job description. You must also strive to be the catalyst for great ideas and must support your team to create, improve and implement a consistent flow of new and creative ideas into your business.

How can you become a catalyst for new ideas?

Program both yourself and your team to constantly be on the lookout for new ideas. – Encourage a culture of consistent innovation and new idea generation within your organisation. As you know ideas arrive at the strangest of times, when we are in the shower, out jogging etc. They will however never come your way if you are not constantly and actively looking for them. Great idea people have at least one eye on the dock, just in case opportunity sails up for a visit.

Learn the art of asking questions about the business. – If you want to become a great ideas person, it all starts with you first becoming a great questioner. The quality of your questions will be the catalyst, which will help you to find great answers and ideas to encourage your business to keep innovating. Keep asking relevant and pertinent questions, understand your business, markets and the people around you, always embrace what works, but don’t be afraid to challenge the system.

Invite Potential and Eliminate Challenges – Your questions and new ideas must focus on developing more potential and new ideas, which will reduce problems.

Create a Culture of Innovation – Innovation must be the way you and your team do things every day, so that ideas flow into the organisation all the time. There will however be times where you may need to assemble a team of your top ideas people to think around a specific topic or challenge. The secret to make this work for you is to allow the ideas to flow freely at first. Invite input from everyone. Record the ideas without analysing them at all. Only assess, which idea offers the best solution, once you have recorded all the ideas.

Rely on your team – Great ideas may come from individuals, but it is the collective mind of your team, which will allow you to develop and get the most from any new ideas, which you may come up with. The more of the right people you can get to brain storm new ideas, the better will be the final result.

Have Huge Expectations – Always drive every idea meeting by expressing your passion and don’t be shy to express your huge expectations to your team. When the idea team is acutely aware that you have big expectations that any new idea must be improved, there is a very different energy in the room and everyone thinks far more creatively.

Show Appreciation – There is no greater motivator of people than appreciation. Consistently show appreciation to all the idea generators and idea improvers, in your organisation. The more people are appreciated for creating and developing new ideas, the more they will be inspired to keep doing so.

Creating a consistent flow of new and innovative ideas is not something, which happens in a day. It is must be a culture within the organisation, which encourages daily idea generation and must involve many people within the organisation. It is not only the job of the idea or innovation team to come up with new ideas. It is everyone’s responsibility. Invest resources to support your team to become innovative thinkers and as a leader strive to be the catalyst, who helps your team mature into something special.