Innovation is a process that requires constant monitoring and adjusting to keep the spark alive. It’s not a one-time effort. It requires constant attention and engagement from employees at all levels of the organization to ensure the innovation process stays on course. Innovation is not a top-down process. It’s a bottom-up one. People are the most innovative when they are excited about their work, and when their colleagues and supervisors understand and support their efforts to come up with new ideas. As such, it’s important that everyone involved understands the value of innovation and what needs to be done to keep the process alive. In this post, legal professional Amiel Gross shares some ways to motivate employees to innovate.
Set a vision
The vision of your organization sets the tone for how everyone in the organization works. It defines what your organization stands for, and how it wants to be remembered in the future. It should inspire employees to work harder, to come up with new ideas and to innovate. While every organization’s vision will be different, Amiel Gross believes there are a few things you should keep in mind.
Be realistic – You don’t want to set a vision that is too far in the future, since that will make it difficult to inspire employees with a vision they can reach.
Communicate the Vision – Ensure that everyone in the organization knows the vision, and that they are aware of the key factors that will help it to become a reality.
Share the Vision – Share the vision with your employees, and encourage them to do the same. This will not only help you to engage employees with the organization’s vision, but it will also help you to understand the key factors that will help it to become a reality.
Encourage creativity
While you should use your judgment when it comes to allowing employees to come up with ideas, there are a few things you can do to encourage creativity.
Make sure that the culture in your organization encourages creativity – This may seem like an obvious point, but you should make sure that there are no stigmas around creativity in your organization. You should encourage your employees to come up with new ideas, regardless of how those ideas look.
Encourage everyone to share their ideas – One of the best techniques for encouraging creativity is to encourage employees to share their ideas with their colleagues. It’s one thing to have an idea, and another thing to share it with your colleagues and have them give you their feedback on the idea. This will help those employees feel more comfortable with sharing ideas with their colleagues, and it will also help to encourage creativity.
Involve employees
There are two ways you can involve employees with the innovation process. Firstly, you can involve them in the brainstorming process. This will give them an opportunity to participate in the brainstorming sessions and to share their ideas with the rest of the organization.
The second way to involve employees is to assign them the task of coming up with ideas. This can be done through a hackathon, through a one-day event called ‘idea day’ or through regular meetings. A good way to involve employees is to assign them with the task of coming up with new ideas. This way, you will be able to track their progress, and you will also be able to identify areas that need improvement. You can track employees’ progress by asking them to write down their ideas as they come up with them. For those who are working on the task of coming up with ideas, you can also create a checklist so that they know where they are at, and they are more likely to complete the task.
Celebrate the small wins
Celebrating the small wins can be an excellent way to keep the innovation process alive. You don’t need to celebrate every small win, but you should celebrate them when they happen. There are some things to keep in mind when you are celebrating small wins.
Firstly, you should celebrate individual wins, and not just celebrate the fact that your organization is participating in a hackathon. Secondly, you should celebrate wins that are related to the task of coming up with ideas. After all, even if an employee doesn’t take the idea forward, they still deserve recognition for sharing the idea. You can also celebrate wins by giving away prizes or gifts to those employees who contribute to the ideas. This can be done at either individual or team level.
Avoid stigmas around failure
According to Amiel Gross, Vice President and Head of Legal at the Center for Breakthrough Medicines, in order to keep the innovation process alive, it’s important that employees are not discouraged from coming up with ideas that fail. After all, failure is an important part of the innovation process.
There are a number of things you should do to avoid stigmas around failure. Firstly, you should make sure that employees know that failure is an important part of the innovation process. You can do this by creating a wall where employees can share their failures, and you can also create a ‘failure board’ where you can collect failures of ideas. You can also create a ‘failure corner’ where those employees who want to share their failures can do so. You should also make sure that employees know that they don’t need to come up with a solution to every failure. This will allow them to identify the problem easily and share the information with their supervisor if they require assistance.
Train employees with new skills
One of the best ways to keep the innovation process alive is to train employees with new skills. This will help to make the process more engaging, and it will also help to keep the process fresh. In order to keep the innovation process alive, you must make efforts to keep employees engaged and excited about the organization’s mission. This can be done through training. There are a number of ways you can do this. You can create workshops for employees, you can hold hackathons for employees, or you can organize mock trials where employees can practice their creativity.
Conclusion
If you want to grow your organization and maximize the potential of each employee, then you need to make innovation a priority. However, making innovation a priority doesn’t mean that every employee will be excited about it.
As leaders, it’s your responsibility to make innovation a priority and to keep it alive in your organization. There are a number of ways to do this. Set a vision that inspires employees to work harder and be more creative. Encourage creativity by making it an accepted part of your culture, and don’t shy away from failure. Involve employees in the brainstorming process, and celebrate the small wins. If you want to grow your organization and maximize the potential of each employee, then you need to make innovation a priority.
Amiel Gross 
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