When it comes to innovation and the nurturing of new ideas, I’m a firm believer in participation by a very diverse group of people within one’s organization.  You may not think that the lady in HR has anything insightful to add to a conversation about a totally new technology idea - but that is exactly why you should include her.

Something New or Different Introduced

Innovation by definition is “something new or different introduced”.  Why not do exactly that in your process of nurturing new ideas? Introduce someone totally new to the process.   Someone you would never imagine could have anything to add.

I venture to say you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Last week I took a half day, and went to MASSMoCA with my wife, along with two of my sisters and their fiances. I needed a break, and we had been wanting to spend time with my three sisters, who are now all engaged at the same time!

It was a great time, and I love just getting away for a while and surrounding myself with the creativity of others.

I mentioned this to a colleague of mine, and he shared with me a GREAT story that illustrates the importance of taking breaks from things:

A professor gets up in front of his class and holds up a jar full of beans. He asks his class how much the glass weighs. He gets all sorts of answers, 1 lb, 2 lbs, 5 lbs. Then the professor tells his class, “What if I tell you that the weight does not matter, but rather how long you have to lift it. If I kept holding this jar up for 5 more minutes, there will be some discomfort. If I do it for 1 hour, I’ll be in total agony. After 5 hours, you’d have to call an ambulance! So understand that stress is like this jar. You can lift some pretty heavy loads, but you HAVE to put it down every once in a while. Otherwise, you’re just asking to be put in the hospital.

So “put down the jar”, go to a museum, take a long nap, go for a walk.  Get Away. You’ll be glad you did.

Yesterday, I came across this amazing series by Jonathan Fields entitled: CEO’s Secret Weapon: little-known tactics that fuel visionary thinking.

The Three A’s that Jonathan talks about in the series are:

Get Away
Train Your Attention
Time To Get Active

I won’t even give a quick summary here.  Read the whole three part series. When reading it, think about the people you know that really seem to stand out as visionaries and top performers.  The people that consistently excel in most everything they do.  Maybe that’s you?  You are probably doing these things in some form or another.

Sometimes a terrible thing can happen to a team. Team dynamics become what I call team “dynumbics”.

People become numb. They become lulled to sleep, not willing to participate in the overall team effort aside from doing their individual tasks and calling it a day. They no longer have a drive to disagree, to be creative or to voice their opinions and ideas.

Why does this happen? In thinking about it, I’ve come up with the 5 dysfunctions of a team as I see them. (I know of Patrick Lencioni’s book with the same title, though I’ve never read it.)

1) Poor Leadership - Poor leadership causes everyone else to suffer. In reality, poor leadership is really the only thing to blame for poor team dynamics.  Leadership needs to recognize the signs of the remaining four dysfunctions, and fix them quickly.

2) Poor Process - Poor process will quickly lull people to sleep and drive teams apart. A poor process can be defined as: no process, a process that is clearly broken, or a process that changes all the time. A process changing and improving from time to time is one thing. However, if you have a fire drill every time a certain task needs to be completed, you have a poor process and you need to spend the time needed to fix it. A poor process just frustrates people.

3) Poor Relationships - Strong professional relationships are key. This needs to be fostered by leadership as well. One simple way to foster strong professional relationships amongst team members is to stress their importance frequently. Like most things, just bring it up. Tell your team that it’s important that they all have good relationships with one another, and that they feel comfortable providing constructive criticism and asking each other for help/input.

4) Lack of Shared Vision - If your team doesn’t have a shared vision for what you are trying to accomplish, how do you expect to accomplish it? Don’t expect that everyone will have the shared vision because you mention it once a year. It needs to be reinforced, brought up frequently, and you need to be evaluating the things that your team is doing to make sure they are furthering that shared vision. Without a shared vision, people can easily become disengaged and feel like they are doing busy work.

5) Lack of Ownership - This is vital for two reasons:

• Ownership motivates people to do their best. If you tell someone that something is “theirs” and that they “own it”, most people are going to do the best they can.  If no one owns it, it’s going to be mediocre.

• If no one owns it, there is no one to hold accountable when it doesn’t get done.  This also means that people will feel like someone else should have done something, which weakens relationships between team members.

Don’t let your team become numb.