Why should leaders and professionals pay attention to problem-solving and innovation? Because problem-solving is the essence of innovation. The world is moving at the speed of change. As such, businesses today face three realities:
" First, all advantage is temporary.
" Second, companies tend to decay over time unless they bring in new people and new ideas.
" Third, companies and markets are convergent - that is, products and services become more and more uniform, and differences between them tend to dissipate.
In order to deal with these problems, companies absolutely must innovate. Innovation means problem-solving. And, chances are, your business faces multiple problems when it comes to dealing with issues of innovation and change.
So, what can leaders and professionals do to face these issues?
Here are 6 things you can do to get better results from your problem-solving teams that lead to innovation.
1. Know your problem-solving style and appreciate the value of diversity of styles
2. Know and share your strategies
3. Empower people
4. Train people on creativity techniques
5. Help people understand how change happens
6. Create a database of problem-solving styles
Let's look at each of these in turn:
1. Help team members better understand their and their teammate's strategy for innovative problem-solving. We believe one of the main things is to better understand how people think about problem-solving. All people have a particular style of thinking. What psychologists call cognitive style. We like to just call it thinking style. People have a certain preference for style of problem-solving and we believe it's better to help people understand and appreciate the diversity of styles. There is a definite advantage to having people with diverse thinking styles on problem-solving teams. Managing diversity is the foundation for managing innovative problem-solving.
2. Know and share your strategies. Help people understand what your long-range goals and strategies are. Whether your company has an innovation strategy, a competitive strategy, or a quality strategy, they need to know what it is. Help them get a good understanding of what innovation and innovative problem-solving means for you and your company and how it relates to your overall business goals and strategies.
3. Empower people. Train people on your problem solving process. Make sure you have a good process. If you don't have one, borrow one or develop one. Test to see that people have the time to work on problem-solving teams and work on innovative projects.
4. Train people on creativity techniques. All people are creative. Just follow them around and see what they do in their spare time or in their hobbies. But they can better exercise that creative ability when you create an environment where they can be creative and are given them the tools and training in good creativity techniques.
5. Help people understand and be able to deal with change resulting from solving the problem. Innovation and problem-solving create change. But change has two faces: first of all, change itself is an event, a situation. But it's organizational. The other side of change is human - it's what some call Transition. Transition is the adjustment that people have to make in themselves in response to the situation that is changing.
6. And last, but most importantly, create a database of problem-solving styles. This will make it easier to bring the right people together with the right talents to solve the right problems. There are many organizations who have applied these concepts. For example, DuPont, Procter & Gamble, the United States Army War College, and the Air Force Technical Applications Center have all used these methods to improve problem-solving and, thus, improve their overall effectiveness.
Here's a summary of what you'll get out of this: enhanced quality improvement efforts, teams will become more innovative problem solvers, more diversity of thought within teams, more and better generation of ideas, and greater cooperation among team members. They will also be more effective in dealing with change, and you'll get a greater return on people capital.
