To become innovative and encourage a culture of creativity, you need to start with your team. They are going to be a rich source of solutions for stagnant or out-dated processes within your business.
To do this well, you need to know how to foster a culture of creativity and innovation.
Business owners and leaders need to have a clear picture of where their business is heading and involve their team in that vision, says Claire Roberts, Executive General Manager, Local Business Banking with the Commonwealth Bank.
“When employees believe in the change, it allows leaders to focus on the mechanics of making the change happen, involving their team throughout the journey, giving them accountability and ownership,” Roberts says.
Ashleigh McInnes, director of PR and communications company Paper Mill, says she realised that if her business was going to stay viable in an industry undergoing rapid change, she needed to build an innovative team culture.
“The challenge is how to define your team culture while it’s happening around you,” McInnes says.
“We have a culture of learning by doing,” she says. “We always try and reflect on what we’ve done, what we can do better and share that with the whole team.”
McInnes says these values have helped her business innovate and fast track growth.
“In any business there are things that aren’t going to go your way,” she says. “But as long as you can learn from that situation and take it on board it’s invaluable.”
A recent Commonwealth Bank innovation survey found that nearly half of Australian businesses (45 per cent) believe one of the biggest challenges to innovation is coming up with new ideas, whilst more than one-third (34 per cent) say the challenge is having the time to look at their business with ‘fresh eyes’ that makes the difference.
Small business owners face a lot of time pressures, but there are still ways of getting a renewed perspective without dedicating massive amounts of your own time.
“Leveraging customer insights (such as online data analytics) is a good example of a small step towards innovation,” Roberts says. “These insights are relatively easy to obtain and can have a huge impact on business processes.”
Paper Mill’s Ashleigh McInnes says that business owners need to realise they can’t do everything themselves and that they should occasionally relinquish control to allow their team to take over some of the burden of innovation.
“I was getting pulled in so many different directions, in terms of strategy and operations to HR, I realised I was not the person to implement the changes needed,” she says.
“We actually brought someone in last year and part of their job was to implement new systems and processes and put in place those changes quickly – it’s been invaluable.”
When it comes to promoting innovation internally, getting the ball rolling through small actions is a lot more helpful than just talking, says Roberts.
“As a business owner, it’s important to help the business overcome roadblocks by demonstrating how simple exercises can be innovative,” says Roberts. “Often it’s about asking the right questions and following through on what is uncovered.”
McInnes started a system where after every completed event or project her team would reflect upon how it went and work out how they could do things better in the future.
“Through that process and relating to our values, we looked at how we interact with our clients and our public,” she says.
“By using this approach we ask people to grow and adapt at a much faster rate than if they were forced to look at things form a solo perspective.”
Engaging your employees in innovative thinking can not only help further your team’s professional development, but also open up new opportunities.
Also, find out about your team members’ hobbies and interests – it can help you identify where their talents may be best directed, says McInnes.
“Learning what my team members are interested in outside of work has allowed me to get to know what their passions are and provide them with specific projects accordingly,” she says.
“I’ve found sometimes staff members can come up with some of the most brilliant ideas. Why not utilise that instead of putting them in a box?”
At CommBank we believe innovation starts by asking questions. Discover new ways to keep your business moving.
Written by: Jacob Robinson
The Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA) is one of Australia’s leading providers of personal banking, business and institutional banking and share broking services. With more than 15 million customers and a history spanning more than a century, the Group’s purpose is to build a brighter future for all. The Commonwealth Bank is Australia’s leader in digital banking and maintains the largest branch network across the country. For more information on Commonwealth Bank, visit commbank.com.au/business.
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