Thinking Outside of the Cubicle: Unleashing Creative Genius at Work through Team-Based Creativity

cubicle farm

Thinking Outside of the Cubicle: Unleashing Creative Genius at Work

Cultivating workplace creativity is no easy task. It is most stifled by a rigid organizational culture that discourages unconventional ideas or limits freedom of expression. But even if a business is totally on board to foster an environment that supports creative thinking, various factors can make it challenging to get to that state. These roadblocks might run from the pressures of meeting deadlines, achieving targets, and focusing on immediate outcomes to time constraints and very real fears of failure. Moreover, lack of adequate resources, limited opportunities for collaboration and brainstorming, and a lack of support from leaders can further hinder creative thinking. 

So how do you get from wanting to encourage workplace creativity across teams to living those values? Promoting workplace creativity requires a conducive environment that values experimentation, encourages diverse perspectives, and provides the necessary resources and support. Your first step is to make making change the priority. And that’s where we come in

Team-Based Creativity

Team-Based Creativity is a five-session, hybrid training series that puts workplace creativity in the spotlight. The course covers topics such as building and fostering creative environments; building team trust; creating big future states; understanding cognitive diversity; developing disruptive ideas that lead to huge breakthroughs in innovation; and maintaining teams that operate at the highest levels of efficiency, collaboration, and creativity.

During the customized, collaborative series, participants will:

  • Understand the characteristics of high performance innovation teams

  • Learn how to recruit and develop the right talent for your innovation team

  • Develop a clear innovation strategy and identify areas for growth

  • Create an environment that fosters creativity and experimentation

  • Develop effective communication and conflict resolution skills

  • Learn best practices for managing innovation projects, including agile methodologies and design thinking

As with all of our training series, Team-Based Creativity is designed to equip you and your teams with the knowledge and skills necessary to foster a culture of innovation and help drive further growth within your organization. And, we do it all while having serious fun. An enjoyable, fun, and creative training environment creates a safe space where participants are encouraged to disregard any fears of making mistakes, in the name of collaboration and innovation. Engaging with our teams through thought-provoking, results-based, and fun training activities is what we’re all about. And, we’re here to provide that to you and your colleagues too.

All Aboard

We delivered dozens of Team-Based Creativity training sessions in 2023 and are offering a steep, one-time BOGO discount in the month of February for new clients ready to help ignite the creative process that drives innovation (and revenue) within their organization. Schedule a discovery call today to unlock the deal!

 

Intentional Innovation® Powered by Teaming Worldwide

Intentional Innovation® is a commercially-proven innovation operating system designed to simplify and implement higher-performing, longer-lasting solutions that drive market disruption, new revenue, and deeper customer engagement.

Ready to learn more about Intentional Innovation® and how Teaming Worldwide can help you solve your business’s most pressing innovation pain points? Let’s connect. Visit www.teamingworldwide.com/innovation to schedule a discovery call or email hello@teamingworldwide.com.

Steering around Organizational Roadblocks to Innovation: Are Your Leadership Mandates Clear?

Steering around Organizational Roadblocks to Innovation: Are Your Leadership Mandates Clear?

When starting innovation, it is often best to begin by gaining an understanding of what roadblocks exist in your organization today. We have two ways to classify roadblocks: (1) some roadblocks are mandates. These are things you can’t change. And, (2) others are barriers. These are things you can change.

Mandates and Barriers

Mandates take the form of leadership directives, whether they are spoken or unspoken. An example is the statement, “Our charge is to drive productivity to the bottom line.” Although it might not be 100% clear, this statement declares that this organization’s focus is on incremental innovations. It does not care to disrupt the world, and we can determine that the appetite for innovation is very limited.

Barriers, on the other hand, are resolvable issues. An example is this statement: “It’s hard to wrap our arms around innovation. We just don’t know where to start.” This is something that can be resolved with new answers, better answers, or proof based on the unique situation leading to the issue. As the bubble graphic here shows, there are nine major categories of barriers for innovation: some easier to manipulate, and others are much harder to transform. The good news for barriers is that they can be assessed, analyzed, and mitigated. 

chart

Clarity and Communication

 The best resolution for mandates is clarity and communication. You need to get clarity on what leaders mean in their statements, and provide them with examples and be sure everyone is on the same page. Then, communicate that mandate widely and clearly.

The goal of a strong innovation process is to equip you with new answers and proof points to help you resolve barriers and achieve sustainable and substantial growth.

Going deeper, in order to understand leadership mandates, you must have clarity on what your leadership’s commitment to innovation is. With this understanding, you will know how far you can go with your innovation strategy. And this hierarchy helps you understand the different mandate possibilities and their impact on innovation.

Attributes chart

Leadership Commitments, Legacies, and Impacts

Most leaders have a low commitment to innovation and are primarily interested in harvesting and protecting the products and services the organization provides today. This means you are pretty much allowed to innovate at the margin level (e.g., operations) but not much further. The legacy and impact of these types of leaders on the world is pretty minimal.

As we go up the pyramid in this illustration below, the leadership commitment to innovation increases, as does the leader’s potential to leave a legacy and a lasting impact. However, there are fewer leaders open to these increasing levels of commitment. Let’s take a closer look at the key takeaways from this graphic:

  • Leaders who are focused on improvements allow innovation at the product and service level. As such, these leaders are most open to innovation that makes better versions of what already exists.
  • The leaders who are committed to transformation allow innovation at the category level. These leaders are open to changing their industry and the way things are done. And these leaders are open to big ideas.
  • At the top of the pyramid are leaders who are committed to disruption. These leaders want to change the world and the ways things are done, no matter the industry. Additionally, we know that these leaders are very open to big ideas and do not have much tolerance for small ideas.
  • Leaders with the highest levels of commitment to innovation will, of course, leave behind the largest legacy and impact since they are open to not only disrupt the industry, but also the world. 
Pyramid

Conclusion

Keep in mind that each of these approaches is legitimate. Not every leader is equipped for disruptive change. But, by understanding where your leadership falls on the innovation spectrum, you will have a clearer idea of what kind of innovation strategy you’ll have license to pursue moving forward.

All Aboard

Ready to learn more about steering around organizational roadblocks and how Teaming Worldwide can help you solve your business’s most pressing innovation pain points? Let’s connect. 

Intentional Innovation® Powered by Teaming Worldwide

Intentional Innovation® is a commercially-proven innovation operating system designed to simplify and implement higher-performing, longer-lasting solutions that drive market disruption, new revenue, and deeper customer engagement.

Ready to learn more about Intentional Innovation® and how Teaming Worldwide can help you solve your business’s most pressing innovation pain points? Let’s connect. Visit www.teamingworldwide.com/innovation to schedule a discovery call or email hello@teamingworldwide.com.

Assessing the Risks of a GenAI Implementation

Abstract image depicting AI

The year 2024 promises to be the full unleashing of Generative AI (GenAI) with industry- and company-specific solutions popping up like boom towns during The Gold Rush. Innovators, product leads, and project managers need a new vocabulary and more sophisticated implementation models to address these novel technologies. While we are learning a lot about GenAI implementations today, as with anything that is state-of-the-art and new concept, one thing remains the same. And that is with new promise comes new risk. Read on for early predictions on potential trouble spots, starting with large language models (LLMs). 

The Rise of Large Language Models

GenAI projects rely on an LLM, which must be trained to provide the types of insights and responses needed. As more industry- and company-specific LLMs are deployed in 2024, we will see a need for deeper contextual cues and rules to ensure that the GenAI model is delivering the way it should. GenAI will be able to drive new insights in all aspects of corporate operations. This will include strategy, sales, manufacturing, resource management, customer delivery, and support. We will see shifts toward complex automation in core corporate planning actions like supply chain management, portfolio management, governance, and more. Also in 2024, there will be a new raft of projects and products based around GenAI.

The teams charged with working on these will undoubtedly be a mix of professionals possessing either or both experience and technical acumen with AI. As such, businesses engaging in GenAI will need to be clear about the big ticket risks of these systems. Below are six risks to be on the lookout for, along with my recommendation for two new project team roles to help you better safeguard your business in this brave new world of GenAI. 

Looking around Corners: Six Potential Risks with GenAI

  1. Data Privacy and Security. Perhaps the biggest risk in a Generative AI environment, the use of sensitive data in a large language model presents a need for continuous testing and refinement. For example, data security in a financial system is non-negotiable. As such, building in the learning-based contextual rules around an AI-enabled FinTech product or system must be priority #1.   
  2. Process Automation Validation and Integration. Deploying Al requires rigorous testing to ensure outputs improve process outcomes and don’t introduce new risk or work. For example, does a new AI chatbot cause an uptick in call volume? 
  3. Data Availability and Quality. Getting the data right in an LLM is dark magic, and should be iterated. Inadequate data hinders training and performance of Al models. Conversely, large and diverse datasets challenge the organization with privacy concerns. Likewise, biased or incomplete data can lead to inaccurate outputs, exacerbating disparities. 
  4. Investment and Return. Today, GenAI solutions are the purview of large tech companies and startups, although that is rapidly changing. For the Great Middle — traditional companies that see the potential and promise, but must shift and adopt AI — there is a bell curve of adoption. Those who adopt early will realize great leaps in their productivity and the value they deliver to their clients. However, cost is paramount, and as we know, developing and implementing a GenAl model requires substantial resources. These resources include researchers, clinicians, infrastructure, and high-quality data to name a few. As these costs come down over time, more companies will dive into the LLM market. 
  5. Ethical Issues. Creating the right accountability and explainability for a GenAI’s output is important. As LLMs evolve, they will be driving decision making, policy, and eventually will be creating new knowledge themselves. A lack of transparency for how Al arrives at its decisions may lead to deep mistrust and deteriorate brand loyalty. 
  6. Regulatory Approvals. Change comes hardest to the industries that need it the most. Implementing a GenAI platform that requires regulatory approval can be both complex and time consuming. In the world of health tech, for example, new precision medicine algorithms are leveraging LLMs for customer-facing guidance. The FDA and other regulators require extensive validation and evidence of safety and efficacy — and rightfully so. So, plan for these actions early and work closely with the regulatory body to ensure proper compliance.

Two New Roles To Consider in Your GenAI Implementation:

  • LLM Trainer. This role would be assigned early in the project, and the individual would be responsible for working with the AI platform to build the context-sensitive use cases. This role will prove to be critical for the translation of neural algorithms into actual user inputs and outputs.  
  • Prompt Engineer. This would be a customer-facing role that would help your users to get the right types of responses from the system, especially early on. These resources should be assigned at the outset and ramped up before testing begins, so they can understand the strengths and weaknesses of the system.   

We are all learning new things at a rapid pace in this novel environment, so we wish you patience and sanity in 2024 (and perhaps a bit of reassurance knowing more about what to look out for and who to hire to help keep watch). Happy LLM training! 

A Call to Action

Want to learn more about healthy stakeholder engagement and how Teaming Worldwide can help your company take the guesswork out of innovation? Visit teamingworldwide.com/innovation to schedule a discovery call or email hello@teamingworldwide.com for more info.

Intentional Innovation® Powered by Teaming Worldwide

Intentional Innovation® is a commercially-proven innovation operating system designed to simplify and implement higher-performing, longer-lasting solutions that drive market disruption, new revenue, and deeper customer engagement.

Ready to learn more about Intentional Innovation® and how Teaming Worldwide can help you solve your business’s most pressing innovation pain points? Let’s connect. Visit www.teamingworld.com/innovation to schedule a discovery call or email hello@teamingworldwide.com.

Future of New with Jonathan Hefter!

The Future of New Podcast with host Tim Jaques and featuring Jonathan Hefter

Future of New Interview with Jonathan Hefter

On our most recent Future of New podcast, Teaming Worldwide’s Tim Jaques interviews Circl.es‘ own Jonathan Hefter. Jonathan is one of the great thought leaders today on teams, collaboration, leadership, and making effective tradeoffs. He is an OG at Circl.es, a new kind of meeting platform, where he is the Head of Experience Design and Facilitation. Circles comes from the age-old tradition of storytelling and gathering as a community. And the Circl.es System™ enables the same kind of human connection, virtually. Jonathan and his company are at the convergence of authentic human interaction and technology. And it’s an exciting area to explore.

During the podcast, Tim and Jonathan discuss the intersection of change, innovation, and human performance.

Click below to listen to the full interview and discussion between Jonathan and Teaming Worldwide’s own Tim Jaques. Enjoy!   

A Call to Action

Want to learn more about how Teaming Worldwide can help your company take the guesswork out of innovation? Click here to schedule a discovery call or email hello@teamingworldwide.com for more info.

Intentional Innovation® Powered by Teaming Worldwide

Intentional Innovation® is a commercially-proven innovation operating system designed to simplify and implement higher-performing, longer-lasting solutions that drive market disruption, new revenue, and deeper customer engagement.

Ready to learn more about Intentional Innovation® and how Teaming Worldwide can help you solve your business’s most pressing innovation pain points? Let’s connect. Visit www.teamingworldwide.com/innovation to schedule a discovery call or email hello@teamingworldwide.com.

A Quick Reflection on Grit

An image if former President Abraham Lincoln

Change managers today must endure a lot of trust building, compromising, long hours, goal setting and more. We put our hearts into making a demonstrable change that will grow the business and potentially change the careers of many. Such are the trials and travails of making complex change. If this describes you, consider one large, looming historical figure for perspective – Abraham Lincoln. By one standard he could be measured by the large number of failures and losses in his life. But instead, he is held up as an example of great leadership.

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