On virtually every team, creative thinking is an asset. In human resources, you could generate ideas for employee retention, in sales, your team could find a way to bring in business, and in data, your techies could bring fresh insights on their analytics. Company-wide, creative thinking can help your employees imagine better ways to communicate and cooperate. Any way you view it, it typically serves your organization’s best interest to get those creative juices flowing.
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1. Encourage the Team to Be Like Children
One of the first things that happens as kids grow into adulthood is they lose their imaginations. It may be a simple matter of becoming more mature. It might also be a product of a school system designed to focus on the empirical rather than the theoretical. So many kids are too busy “learning” to have any time for imagining or daydreaming. Those same kids become adults who cannot think outside the box, which is what most companies need.
To help your employees regain their lost imaginations and get them back into creative mode, plan activities that allow them to get in touch with their inner child. Seriously, get your team out into the park and onto playgrounds, and have them play. Design competitions around obstacle courses, have them push each other on swing sets, and get them running potato sack races. Once out, those inner children are more likely to stick around, with their imaginations in tow.
2. Introduce and Maintain Diversity
One aspect of the workplace that has stymied creative thinking for decades is a lack of diversity. If you have a bunch of people with the same backgrounds, shared experiences, and perspectives, you’re not likely to get a wealth of fresh, new ideas. It’s not their fault, they’ve just all come up in similar ways. This homogeneity can stifle creativity and stunt innovation because your employees are not being as challenged as they could be.
Bringing more women, people of color, and people with differing abilities on board shakes up your workplace in ways that can benefit everyone. Then, plan discussions and panels where the members of your team are encouraged to speak freely and challenge each other. Set rules to maintain respectful rapport, but make no idea off-limits. Also, make sure a manager is present to facilitate open and authentic engagement from everyone present and to reward creative voices.
3. Create the Space
You’ve likely seen the articles about tech startups in Silicon Valley that have an open-plan workspace, a foosball table in the middle of the office, and bean bag chairs everywhere. The idea behind this radical redesign of the workplace is to foster creativity. Of course, this plan can go terribly wrong, with employees engaged in all play and no actual work, but it doesn’t have to be that way. And you don’t have to take it that far.
But, you should create a space in your office for your teams to brainstorm their creativity. Schedule times for your smaller teams to hang out in these spaces together and bounce ideas off each other. It could be a garden, a video game room, or a basketball court. As long as teammates come together to relax, have fun, and spend time together without a task or a deadline looming, you may be surprised by what they come up with.
4. Make L&D a Priority
Learning and development often get left by the wayside in organizations that feel they have to focus on the bottom line. It can be an extra cost that feels prohibitive, and you’re not sure if you’ll see a return on your investment. And when L&D programs do get implemented, they may be outdated or depend on the employees to sign up and show up on their own time. This process is disheartening for staff members who might otherwise be interested.
To be clear, research shows that investing in solid L&D programs pays off in spades. Not only will you likely see a positive ROI, but you’re also going to see an increase in employee engagement. So, schedule your team for L&D they can do as a team-building activity, and you kill two birds with one stone. You keep your employees engaged in problem-solving and creative thinking, and you help them build bonds with each other at work.
5. Remain Open to Your Team
Finally, none of these positive steps you take toward making your team more creative will work if management is not open to change. You can bring people of color into your organization, but if you don’t listen to them, it’s almost worse than not bringing them in at all. You can offer L&D training, but if you don’t empower employees to make decisions and solve problems, they won’t get to grow fully.
Your job as a business owner or manager is to ensure your team feels ready and willing to communicate with you and challenge you. And because there’s safety in numbers, have them challenge you as a team. Let them know they can disagree with you as a group, and you’ll find creativity blossoming in no time.
The reality is that when you bring people together and put creative and playful practices into place, creativity can’t help but thrive. Most humans are naturally creative, and they haven’t lost that ability, they’ve just buried it. Bringing adults together in the workforce to play and get creative together is a winning strategy across the board. You can’t help but succeed at your goals with a diverse, bonded, confident team ready to bring creativity to the table.
