Imagine this frustrating scenario:
Every new initiative, new service, new pivot, and growth idea in your business always comes from you. You’ve been the unofficial Chief Innovation Officer since the day the firm started, and while you’re capable of continuing to generate ideas, sometimes you’re just… tapped out. Or at the very least, it would be nice if someone else brought a thoughtful, well-developed idea to the table for once.
I’ve struggled with this myself over the years, and through experience I can tell you that there’s a simple way to put an end to being a solo ideation machine and encourage your team to contribute.
Step one: Stop giving them all the answers.
I know it may not seem like it’s your fault. But, as we like to say at Crisp, every problem is a leadership problem.
There’s a difference between supporting and encouraging your team and solving all their work challenges for them.
Innovation requires thinking outside the box. It takes brainstorming sessions, trying new things, and learning from mistakes. How will your team be able to do that if you simply provide all the answers or do the thinking for them every single time?
This is one of those times where you need to let go, delegate, and trust that you’ve hired professionals who can handle this for you.
Step two: Provide them with apt support and necessary parameters.
Systems are the key to success. Brainstorming sessions will lead nowhere if you don’t have proper frameworks to guide them. Someone might present you with a bunch of ideas, and you won’t know if they’re good or bad.
Before I send my leadership and other team members into think-mode, I present them with a document with the guidelines of exactly what I require and what they need to consider while coming up with the solution: all the variables and criteria that would align with our organization’s values, realistic timelines, our clients’ objectives, and anything else.
I encourage my team to do research and provide them with all the support I can so they can do it thoroughly. I may give them a budget for testing and development, if need be. By the end, they present their ideas to me, and then we decide which one is worth investing in and implementing.
If you do something like this for your team, not every idea they bring you will be a great one, especially in the beginning. That’s not the point. The point is that your team will be pushed to do the work they excel in — the work you hired them to do, gaining some autonomy and taking work you shouldn’t be doing alone off your hands.
And with time, as strategic brainstorming becomes second nature in your firm, innovation will follow. This way, you’re not relying on luck or random inspiration, but on systems of clarity, consistency, and accountability.
So if you want new ideas, stop being the only one thinking of them and start putting parameters in place that encourage your team to contribute some. Then step back and let them burn some mental calories.
