Growth requires continued innovation and creativity. We can quickly become stale and lose our edge when we lack innovation and creativity. What serves us well today may not necessarily help us in the future. To stay current and keep up with the rapidly increasing rate of change globally, we must continually innovate in business and life. How do you foster innovation and creativity in yourself, your team, and those around you?
Here are nine things you can do to help yourself, your business, and your team members become more innovative:
- Practice Constant and Never-Ending Improvement – Never be satisfied that you have found the best way to do anything. It would be best if you always looked for better ways to do every task. Even those you feel you have mastered. The piano virtuoso never stops practicing the golf pro works to improve his swing constantly.
- Challenge long-held beliefs – Just because you have done something a certain way does not mean it is still the best way. Are you still insisting your landline phone works simply fine for all your communication needs? Look within yourself to discover the long-held beliefs that might prevent you from seeing new possibilities. Ask others about the approaches and views they take.
- Read – You can never learn less and never know from where that missing piece of information will come. Even go back and read things you have already read in the past. You will likely find new information when you look at something from the past with modern-day eyes.
- Spend time with people in different industries, cultures, income levels, and backgrounds than your own – Different viewpoints may provide you with some wisdom you can use to your advantage. Best practices in one business are often translatable to best practices in another industry. Best practices in life often turn out to be best practices in business and vice versa!
- Always question what you do and why you do it – Are the things you are doing producing the desired results? If not, you must change your actions to get new results. When we do something out of habit, we fail to find new and better ways to accomplish our goals.
- Do not fear failure – Imagine what you would do if you knew you could not fail. Most of us have genuinely brilliant thoughts and ideas we are not practicing due to fear of failure. Remember, Thomas Edison failed a thousand times before he invented the light bulb.
- Enlist the help of others – Creativity and innovation thrive in a crowd. Brainstorming with your team, bouncing ideas off a mentor or coach, or discussing your thoughts with friends or peer groups helps flush out great ideas.
- Have fun – Having fun encourages our brains to think differently and helps ideas rise to the surface. Add fun intentionally to every task, wherever you can.
- Encourage risk-taking amongst your team, your family, and yourself. People around you need to know that creative thinking is encouraged and cannot get that message without taking the occasional, appropriate risk.
Want a few more ideas to get your creative juices flowing? Here’s a great article from Forbes with additional ideas
Look at how you are doing things and see what you can improve, rework, or rethink to bring new levels of success. We are all creative, and innovation is the future, so shake things up a bit and get your creative juices flowing.
Need a little help to get your creative juices flowing again? Book a call with me and lets find your inspiration!
