e need to hold themselves open to options. Creative thinking and innovative solutions increase when leaders are willing to stay open to possibilities longer.
An Innovative Mindset Requires Affirmative Judgment.
Instead of telling people what they don’t like or what won’t work, innovation leaders let people know what they do like. They point out the strengths and value of a new solution or idea. This lets the team know they’re on to something new and useful, and ensures they retain the most valuable attributes as the idea evolves.
Affirmative judgment also provides recognition and promotes a sense of accomplishment and progress, which employees need to keep them motivated.
An Innovative Mindset Requires Persistence.
By definition, new ideas are strange, unusual, weird, and different. So selling that idea to others to get buy-in takes a lot of work and time.
A senior leader once told his people that if they propose an idea and he says “no,” don’t give up. If they still believe in the idea, he told them he wanted them to try another way to pitch it until he sees its value. For him, that was the definition of “empowerment.”
Innovation leaders empower themselves to do what it takes, which typically requires great persistence.
Innovation doesn’t happen without leadership. Regardless of the brilliance of your strategy, remember that the culture will support it or kill it. Since leaders have such a significant impact on the culture, it’s up to you as the leader to develop it. The next time you hear a new idea or are asked to weigh in on a new solution, make a choice to lead with an innovative mindset and foster innovation.
5 Tips to Protect a New Idea
In How to Treat New Ideas, authors David Magellan Horth and Michael T. Mitchell draw on decades of personal experience, data, and lessons from scores of organizations around the world. They identify 5 tips that can help companies nurture new ideas:
1. Resist the instinct to kill a new idea.
Leaders need to understand that their first reaction to a new idea is typically “fight or flight.” When an idea that is new, foreign, or maybe even odd emerges, we’re programmed to fight it or resist it, perhaps maybe even ignore it in hopes that it will go away.
But leaders who want to encourage innovation should take a deep breath and allow themselves and their teams to think through the idea before rejecting it. They must watch out for signs they are subconsciously sabotaging innovation.
2. Practice innovation thinking.
There’s nothing wrong with traditional business thinking—it’s required to manage a modern organization. But when a new idea comes along, it’s time to switch into innovation thinking mode. Innovation thinking gives new ideas the oxygen they need to continue developing.
3. Frame and clarify the idea’s purpose.
Successful innovators often ask themselves what problem a new idea can help solve or what opportunity it might address. Sometimes this takes a little patience.
When 3M scientist Spencer Silver created a “low-tack,” pressure-sensitive adhesive instead of the super-strong glue he’d been trying for, he couldn’t imagine what it would be good for. When a colleague mentioned a problem with the slips of paper he used to mark songs falling out of his Sunday hymnal, Silver had a solution. The result was 3M’s Post-It notes, now a staple item in every office supply closet.
4. Use the POINt technique.
At this point, the promise of at least some new ideas might be starting to clarify. But to sharpen that promise and test it a bit more rigorously, you can use the POINt technique developed by Pfizer executive Bob Moore.
POINt stands for:
- Pluses: Praise the idea and consider what’s good about it as presented.
- Opportunities: Picture the opportunities and benefits that might be realized if you implemented the idea.
- Issues: While you don’t want to kill new ideas, it’s OK to consider some of their challenges and limitations.
- New thinking: Use new thinking to develop solutions for the issues you’ve raised about the new idea.
Nurturing new ideas doesn’t mean being naive about them. Rath