Encouraging Innovation Through 5 Key Conversations

The challenge of encouraging innovation

The realities of dynamic and changing marketplaces, including intense competition, new technologies, and increasing customer demands, require that traditional management methods change.

Organisations of the future will be judged on the quality of their ideas and the speed these ideas can be translated into viable products or services that sell in the marketplace.

Creative ideas are often unanticipated or from unexpected sources so the best companies are looking for ways to create a culture that actively promotes these improvements and innovations. They will typically feel like a small company culture in which ideas come from everywhere and employees have extensive relationships with customers and suppliers in order to stay close to their needs.

Companies will need to encourage 'boundarylessness,' breaking through organisational lines up, down, and across so that good ideas are invited and harvested regardless of where they originate.

Category: Assessments

Innovative managers and team leaders:

Inspire Innovation
Build Systems to Support Innovation
Assess Opportunities
Create Champions
Launch the Innovation.

Innovative leaders are not necessarily technical experts or inherently creative. Rather, they have the skill to encourage innovation in others, creating informal and formal systems that invite, support, and reward innovation.

Managers can tap into their employees’ creative processes and encourage ownership of the innovation each step of the way.

Encouraging Innovation Through 5 Key Conversations may be used to:

Establish a new approach to building innovation in an organisation
Provide basic skills training in developing creativity and innovation in individuals and teams
Complement existing leadership development techniques being used in an organisation.

The comprehensive 30-item Participant Booklet features detailed descriptions of the 5 key conversations, ideas for development, action steps, and conversation planners.

What to order: You will need 1 Self Assessment per participant. For maximum benefit, purchase 1 Facilitator Guide per trainer.

Learning Outcomes

Discover how to inspire innovation by eliciting and acknowledging diverse perspectives, learn how to build systems to support innovation, understand how to stimulate creative thinking, and learn how to coach employees to advocate new ideas.

Innovative leaders are not necessarily technical experts or inherently creative. Rather, they have the skills necessary to encourage innovation in others. By engaging employees in conversations that explore possibilities beyond conventional thinking, managers can encourage others to stretch their creative abilities, invite risk taking, and collaborate on the best ways to navigate through organisational boundaries.

Facilitator Guide Table of Contents:

Overview and Introduction
Origin of Encouraging Innovation Through 5 Key Conversations
When to use Encouraging Innovation Through 5 Key Conversations
Our Model of Encouraging Innovation Through 5 Key Conversations
The 5 Key Conversations
Applying the Encouraging Innovation Model
Administration Guidelines
Technical Development
Sample Training Designs
About the Overhead Transparency Masters
Related Materials form HRDQ
References
Overhead Transparency Masters.

Attribute name	Attribute value
ORDERING GUIDE	You will need 1 Self Assessment per participant. For maximum benefit, purchase 1 Facilitator Guide per trainer.
FORMAT	Assessment
OBJECTIVE	To assess a manager or team leader’s current skill level in encouraging innovation in employees
AUDIENCE	Managers and Team Leaders
TIME REQUIRED	1 to 1½ hours
AUTHOR	Jocelyn Kung and Marianne Minor