The year has changed, but the business continues to face challenges.
Every business has to face technology changes, market volatility, people-related issues, and many more challenges in today’s world. However, a leader can guide the organisation to overcome any problem by embracing innovation.
Innovation approaches are for more than just large organisations. The fundamental principles that drive innovation approaches used by companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple are simple to implement yet powerful in their impact.
So how can any business bring innovation within their team?
Here are three simple ways business leaders bring innovation within their teams.
1. Multiply by 10
Google’s Moonshot Factory pioneered the 10x method. The method is simple. Multiply your vision by 10.
The logic behind this is that if the goals are not big enough, we limit ourselves by finding better ways to use existing methods. However, when we set a 10x goal, we need to change the whole thought process and try finding new methods to achieve the goal.
The 10x method begins with attempting to solve a problem that is huge, has been around for a long time, or has an impact at a global level. The next step is to define a radical solution that, if it existed, would solve the problem you have taken. Finally, the proposed solution must be crazy yet achievable with enough creativity, passion, and persistence.
As a leader, you often need to set a vision for your team. Using the 10x principle is an easy way to allow your teams to aspire to think big and not limit themselves in how creative they can be.
2. Pull an extra chair to your next meeting
Amazon’s way to stay true to its core customer centricity is simple and ingenious. For every meeting, they have an extra chair in the room.
The extra chair symbolically represents the customer. Having an extra chair in the room makes everyone in the meeting aware of the impact of their discussion and decisions. Furthermore, it silently nudges people to think differently and have the end-customer’s perspective while in the meeting.
Having silent nudges to remind people to have different perspectives would avoid groupthink within the teams.
3. Debate deliberately
A business cannot hide from failure in a complex world like ours. Having creative abrasion in the form of debates was critical to Apple’s rise to become one of the world’s leading organisations.
Apple had experts from 40 different functions sitting in a room to discuss a solution to bring the dual-lens camera portrait mode feature to its iPhone. Having various experts constantly debate over a problem might be unpleasant at first. But this method has proven to create unique and lasting solutions over time.
When you bring a team together, ensure you have experts representing functions that complement each other. Having experts from different functions work together automatically results in cross-collaboration between teams.
And so…
And the three simple ways to bring innovation to your organisation create a positive impact at an individual, team, and organisational level.
So the next time you think about how your organisation can be more innovative, remember these three ways
- Multiply by 10
- Pull an extra chair to your meeting
- Deliberately debate with different experts in a team