6 ideas for igniting innovation when you're feeling stuck
“I miss the pandemic.”
Never thought you’d hear that, huh?
Someone in our coaching group said that recently. They didn’t mean that they missed the pandemic itself; they missed the creativity it inspired.
I can totally relate. For business owners like me, the pandemic was an incredibly stressful, scary time, but it also forced us to innovate. If we wanted to keep our doors open and keep our people paid, we had to figure out new, creative ways to do that while still keeping everyone safe. Our Human Leadership Program and online resources came from the pandemic. So did virtual speeches—which now make up 40% of our revenue—and coaching groups. And the time and space away from the day-to-day is what helped me finally make the decision to transition our business away from cleaning and lean fully into leadership development. It’s kind of mind-blowing for me to think about how many new things we created and how many big decisions we made in the span of a year or less.
And I know we weren’t alone. With all its constraints, the pandemic created a really unusual structure for creative thinking. For a time, we all had permission to try anything we could think of to survive, and many people and businesses thrived under these conditions. But now that we are—thankfully—no longer in that place, how can we continue to cultivate that creative spark? How can we keep the ideas and creativity flowing on our teams?
I recently led a team through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis. In it, the team expressed that they felt like they were no longer growing or looking for ways to innovate. But when they got to the opportunities portion of the analysis, they started to come alive with ideas. They ended up coming up with a solution to one of their biggest pain points, and they walked away feeling so inspired.
The point is that ideas don’t just magically come to people. We have to make time to step away from the day-to-day, bring different perspectives together, and ask powerful questions that make people think differently. We have to seek out ways to cultivate our creativity and innovation so that we can always be thinking about what's next.
I want to explore some of the ideas I have for cultivating creativity on a team. These are all things that either we’ve done on our team or that I’ve done with other teams, and they’ve helped maintain inspiration and an innovative spirit, even when we felt stuck:
Give permission to throw spaghetti at the wall. Not literally—unless you’re into that. Sometimes, I think people hold back on sharing their ideas because they don't want to derail a meeting or they don’t think there’s enough time to ideate. I suggest putting meetings on the calendar that are solely for brainstorming and thinking out loud. The point is not to find solutions; it’s just time to think together.
Try a structured brainstorming exercise. We’ve recently started to incorporate brainstorming exercises into our weekly meetings, and it’s helped us generate a ton of ideas. Our favorite is Crazy 8s. The instructions are simple: Identify a topic or challenge. Phrase your topic as a question. Set a timer for one minute and tell everyone to focus on coming up with just one idea. At the end of the minute, say, “Next,” and restart the timer for one minute. Repeat this process a total of eight times. And BOOM! Multiply the number of people involved by eight, and that’s how many new ideas you’ll have in eight minutes! Exercises like this work because you don’t have time to overthink it. The coolest part comes when you share the ideas aloud and start to combine and build off of each other’s ideas. (In fact, the topic of this blog post came from a Crazy 8s brainstorm about blog content!)
Switch up your collaboration. Working with the same people on the same challenges day after day can make things feel stagnant after a while. I think it can help to bring together people who don’t normally work together or who have different perspectives. You could also give the same challenge to different teams—or different departments—and see what each team comes up with. Or maybe you could have someone from another team or department facilitate a conversation for your team. They might be able to connect some dots that your team can’t see because you're too close to the challenge.
Encourage vulnerability. Brené Brown says that innovation requires vulnerability. It’s hard to speak up and share your ideas, and it’s especially hard if you don’t feel safe in your environment. So first, ask yourself if you as a leader or a team are creating environments where people feel safe to be vulnerable. I read in the book What Got You Here Won't Get You There that if you're leading a meeting, be mindful of how you respond when people share ideas. If you say, “I love that idea,” and then someone else shares and you don't say anything, the person might feel that you didn't like that idea. Next time, they may not be as inclined to be vulnerable and speak up. So instead of saying, “I love that idea,” the book suggests that you say, “Thank you for sharing that,” or, “I love that you shared that.” This way, you’re acknowledging the act of being vulnerable—of sharing and speaking up—and you’re creating a space of openness instead of playing favorites.
Rephrase your questions. My coach taught me this one: Sometimes, all it takes to think differently about solving a problem is to speak differently about the problem. A great example is phrasing the problem as a question starting with, “How might we . . . ?” So instead of saying, “We need new revenue streams,” you could say, “How might we increase our revenue this quarter?”
Set deadlines. In my experience, things take as long as we give them. So instead of waiting for the perfect idea to come along, ask, “What is the best idea we can implement by the end of this month? This week? This meeting?” Putting time constraints and pressure on a challenge can force you to take action and get creative—but it’s important to be intentional about it. The last thing you want to do is set a deadline that causes an overwhelming amount of stress. A little pressure goes a long way, but too much causes burnout. Deadlines should inspire forward action, not fear.
I often think back to the amount of new ideas and innovation that came out of the pandemic in awe. Our world changed so much in just a couple of years because people were open to trying new things: remote work, virtual school, outdoor dining, telehealth appointments. What could happen if we intentionally cultivated environments of creativity like we had in that time on a regular basis? Where could we take our organizations? What challenges could we solve?
Hope this really gets you thinking!
Big hugs,
