Founder & CEO of Signature Car Hire shares his thoughts on how to encourage innovation in your business.
“We live in rapidly changing times, and innovation is often the key to sustaining and growing your business. Although it’s true that innovation in itself isn’t enough, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it is nonetheless crucial – just look at Tiffany’s, Nikon and Avon, three huge global companies that started out selling entirely different products to the ones they’re now famous for. (Stationery, paper and books, in case you’re interested).
Success often comes from encouraging a culture of innovation within your firm, and making it clear that staff who come forward with ideas will be rewarded. I actively encourage ideas from the all levels of my company, and give staff the freedom to run with the good ones. As well as boosting their morale, it also gives me a chance to help them develop their skills: new business development requires expert research, planning and implementation, and by educating staff in these areas I am helping their growth as well as that of my business.
To get the most from ideas you garner from staff, you need to ensure that innovation is part of their everyday work. Get them to constantly assess the situation and research the market: are there things competitors have started doing, or have clients made any useful suggestions for new products? You should also keep them fully up to speed on your organisation’s mission, vision and any key developments – they more they feel they’re involved, the more they’ll try to take the business to new heights.
As well as imbuing their day-to-day work with a sense of the importance of innovation, you can also create specific workshops where you discuss your business goals and do exercises that map out different ways to achieve them. Free association techniques can be useful here, but remember to draw things back to a practical level at the end of the session to ensure participants feel that they’ve achieved something.
Once you have a good idea, ensure that the staff feel involved at all levels – including the task of assessing the risk of taking an idea forward. This works best if you have a flat management structure, one in which employees can easily communicate with all levels of the chain. If staff feel like they have to jump through hoops just to speak to you, they’ll rapidly lose interest.
Even if the task of designing and implementing an idea is outside their particular skill set, ensure that the staff member who came up with the idea is involved in the planning stage. This will be everything from researching the size of the opportunity to building a financial model and a plan of action. The latter is particularly important as it will give them a tangible idea of how and when the project will take shape, keeping them enthused in the whole process.
One other great way to make employees feel motivated and rewarded is, if they’re willing to take on further work, to assign them a mentor for the duration of the implementation stage. This means that the staff member can participate in the growth of the project and develop their skills as a reward for their idea, while also being under useful supervision that ensures the project stays on track. As the staff member will undoubtedly be the person with the most passion to see the project through to completion, their presence on the project is a very useful tool, as it will provide inspiration for everyone else to make it happen.
A careful choice of mentor will ensure that the project stays focused, and they can make quick interventions that are often the difference between the life and death of a project. You should schedule periodic reviews of the project with the mentor and the employee, which will give you the chance to discuss feedback and whether or not the growing idea is still meeting your business objectives. These are particularly crucial when you are testing your product on a small segment of the market: you need everyone’s input to assess the data and make decisions on what can be refined and improved.
Perhaps the most crucial aspect of encouraging an innovation culture in your firm is making it clear that failure is acceptable. Even the best ideas can come at the wrong time, and it’s essential that you make your staff feel safe enough to keep trying, and keep innovating. As a leader, it’s entirely your responsibility to make this ethos clear in your company, and to keep smiling even when things have gone wrong. It’s not always easy, but you’ll be rewarded by a more loyal, enthusiastic set of employees who are eager to try again, produce more great ideas, and do their best for your company.”