If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.– Albert Einstein

Celia Hodson, our new CEO at SSE Australia has worked in social enterprise development and supporting social entrepreneurs for 15 years.  She shares with us her top tips for creating a culture of creative thinking within your team.   

Creating a culture where everyone is actively encouraged to put ideas forward can help you innovate. But how do you get the best from your team and encourage them to be at their most creative?

1. Stress the importance of creativity. Ensure all your team know that you want to hear their ideas. Unless they understand how innovating can benefit your venture, your efforts at encouraging creative thinking may fall flat.

2. Make time for brainstorming. Allocate time for new ideas to emerge. For example, start a Creativity Club or set aside a slot at the end of meetings for brainstorming, hold regular group workshops and arrange team days out. You should also give individuals the space to reflect privately on their work if you think they need it.

3. Actively solicit ideas. Create an ideas wall to note down ideas as they happen, appeal for new ideas to solve particular problems and, quite literally, keep your door open to new ideas.

4. Train your team in innovation techniques. Your team may be able to bounce an idea around, but be unfamiliar with the skills involved in creative problem-solving. You may find training sessions in formal techniques such as brainstorming, lateral thinking and mind-mapping worthwhile.

5. Cross-fertilise. Broadening people’s experiences can be a great way to spark ideas. Short-term job swaps and shadowing inhouse can introduce fresh perspective to roles. Encourage people to look at how other ventures do things, even those in other sectors, and consider how they can be adapted or improved.

6. Challenge the way the team works. Encourage them to keep looking anew at the way they approach their work. Ask people whether they have considered alternative ways of working and what might be achieved by doing things differently.

7. Be supportive. Respond enthusiastically to all ideas and never make someone offering an idea feel foolish. Give even the most apparently outlandish of ideas a chance to be aired.

8. Tolerate mistakes. A certain amount of risk-taking is inevitable with creative thinking. Allow people to learn from their mistakes.

9. Reward creativity. Motivate individuals or teams who come up with winning ideas by actively recognising creativity.  You could even demonstrate your recognition that not all ideas work out by rewarding those who just have a rich flow of suggestions, regardless of whether they are put into action at work.

10. Act on ideas. Creative thinking is only worthwhile if it results in action. Provide the time and resources to develop and implement those ideas worth acting upon. Failure to do so not only means your venture will fail to benefit from innovation, but flow of ideas may well dry up if the team feels the process is pointless.

But most importantly….have fun with it.

Reblogged from http://sseaustralia.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/10-tips-to-encouraging-creativity-in-your-team/