Fresh Ideas for a Challenging Marketplace

Photo Courtesy of www.istockphoto.com

When’s the last time your organization had an infusion of fresh, inspiring, downright awesome ideas?

Are you in touch with what your people are thinking? Is your senior management team exploring and sharing new perspectives?

In a world that’s always changing, these are crucial questions. To adapt to this shifting landscape, business owners require a healthy dose of fresh and innovative thinking. Luckily for us, there’s plenty of fresh thinking out there; it’s right outside your office door!

Crank up the internal idea engine

Sometimes the best ideas are right in front of you. Do you have a work environment that encourages sharing ideas at the office? Do your people feel comfortable presenting new ideas, suggestions, and constructive criticism that challenges the way things are done?

If so, you’ve already set yourself up to tap into an incredible source of innovative ideas. Internal collaboration is so effective because it:

• Challenges the status quo
• Brings in feedback and suggestions from the front lines
• Gives your people a vested interest in the company's success

Here’s another way to think about it: When you hire great people, your ultimate goal is to have them make solid, well-informed decisions – and in turn, leave you with more time to focus on your business. Your internal idea engine can create the perfect environment for that to happen; if your people are communicating and sharing with one another, they’ll be in a much better position to make the right decisions.

So how can you get that idea engine humming along? Start by asking yourself…

• Have I clearly communicated to my team why we do what we do?
• Do we have clear values and a vision that consistently drives everything we do?

If you can answer “yes” to these questions – and if these things are clearly understood by your team – you’ve already created a fertile climate for growing great ideas that can help your company move forward. Any company can benefit from the resulting clarity and focus; in fact, these are the same principles that Steve Jobs firmly embraced during his tenure at Apple.

Tear down the walls

To get your people on board, build an environment that encourages openness. What are the barriers preventing the free exchange of ideas? How can you knock them down? Ask these questions of yourself, your senior managers, and your front-line employees.

Let’s say that after asking your team, you discover that new ideas are getting lost in the noise; amid the day-to-day hustle and bustle of operating the business, there’s nowhere to capture them. If that’s the case, you might consider an online sharing tool – something like this or this – which can help your organization capture ideas, organize them, and build on them.

Also think about the way ideas flow between you and your senior managers. Here, you can take another page from Apple’s playbook.

A lot has been written over the past week about the entrepreneurial genius of Steve Jobs. But one of his most successful innovations wasn’t a piece of hardware – it was the way he set up Apple to share ideas at the top.

As this article describes, the tech giant was able to make instant course corrections – for example, changing the price of a product right before it rolled out the door – because it had a unified team at the top, rather than separate divisions. Any organization, from small business to Fortune 500 giant, can benefit from the free flow of great ideas between its leadership and managers.

• Online sharing has made collaboration faster, easier, and more convenient. Click here for a thorough list of web-based collaboration tools and apps.
• Social media also offers new ways for your people to put their minds and ideas together. Read this article to see how social media tools can be used to share information and get ideas moving back and forth.

• Done right, brainstorming at the office is another great way to tap into the collective cranial firepower of your employees. Set up a brainstorming session around a key issue, and include both managers and front-line employees who deal with your customers every day. (Click here for outside-the-box ideas on setting up successful brainstorming sessions.)