If you want a truly innovative organization, you have to empower your people to try new things.
You also must give them the time and space to experiment with tackling problems.
Leaders: Your job is to remove the barriers so that your people can get on with their jobs and succeed.
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At work we tend to get into a groove. We do the same things and think the same way every day. But the big challenges we face need fresh thinking and innovative approaches. How can you shake up your thinking? And how can you do the same for your people?
Lateral thinking involves deliberately adopting an unconventional point of view in order to conceive unusual ideas and winning solutions business leaders can use to unlock creativity and innovation within their teams, helping them to think differently when faced with challenges and work together to overcome them.
In business, a strict regime of hard work and meetings with no downtime to be creative and think outside their normal patterns leaves little to no space for fresh ideas and experimentation. If you want a truly innovative organization then you have to empower your people to try new things and give them the time and space to experiment with how they tackle problems.
We’re more likely to generate a variety of options and alternative ideas on how to solve the same problem if we have many different starting points to how we approach the situation.
So, here are five questions which you should encourage people to ask themselves when they’re looking for fresh ideas – and please try them yourself.
What is it the biggest benefit customers get from us and how can we give them more?
Whether your customers are consumers, external businesses or internal departments, ask the above question. Look past the obvious answer and delve deeper. For instance, Wonderbra do not sell underwear; they sell self-confidence for women. That is the key benefit of their products.
Consider what is your real added-value for customers and how could you deliver more of it – not a little more but much, much more! This question will get you thinking about vital business issues.
What is stopping us from being faster, more productive, more creative?
If you could remove just one impediment to efficiency in the workplace, what would it be? If you are a manager, ask your people this type of question. It will help you identify important constraints that are preventing them from doing their job at their fullest potential.
Your job is to remove the barriers so that your people can get on with their jobs and succeed.
What if every assumption I am making at work is wrong?
A key principle of lateral thinking is to challenge dominant ideas and assumptions. Which is why this question is so important. Here are typical assumptions that people make at work:
We cannot raise prices because we will lose customers.
This report is unimportant because nobody ever comments on it.
Customer X is a difficult person because they are always complaining.
We cannot recruit good engineers because they are so scarce.
You can see that each of these notions might be wrong. Some things that were true last year are no longer true. Some things that did not work in the past will work now.
Every lingering belief and assumption limits our thinking and restricts possibilities. We need to consider heretical ideas. This question starts the process.
What is your greatest strength? How could you exploit it to be more effective in your job?
We all have areas of our jobs that we excel in and find easier than others. Knowing which parts these are allows you to prioritize your personal (and team) development.
By focusing on your strengths, you can also increase your self-confidence and do a better job overall. You can ask this – and the next question – of your boss or your colleagues and they will tell you.
What is your main weakness? What is holding back your progress and career?
Perhaps you are really good with technical issues but not good at communicating with or dealing with people. Perhaps you are great at sales but terrible at admin.
If you are aware of your key weaknesses, you can take steps to fix them or mitigate them. There could be a training course that would help, or perhaps you can get some tasks reassigned to someone who is more suited to them.
A lateral thinking approach to your weaknesses can also help you to reframe them as strengths. For example, a pint of Guinness takes longer to pour than other beers, and this could be seen as a sticking point for impatient customers. But instead, their marketing team chose to focus their advertising on the drinker’s anticipation and used the slogan ‘Great things come to those who wait’.
Try these questions yourself and then suggest them to members of your team. It will get them thinking differently and you might be pleasantly surprised at the results.
