Contents

• Enthusiasm
• Consistency
• Unity
• Set the Expectation Early

Introduction

When people think about what makes a great team great, they often gloss over “effort.” After all, it seems a bit obvious to say that a team can only succeed by putting in hard work.

But for teamwork in the workplace to be truly effective, the definition of team effort must extend beyond “working hard.” Effective effort involves three key components: enthusiasm, consistency, and a united commitment. In fact, consistent, united, and enthusiastic effort is so important to team success that we’ve named it one of our “seven cornerstones of teamwork,” which make up the foundation for exceptional teamwork in the workplace. Read on to see which component of effort your team might be missing:

Enthusiasm

Armed with shiny, new resources (or budgets) and a well-defined goal, teams often start off incredibly excited to tackle the task at hand. That excitement, however, comes in waves—morale is high at the launch of the project and gets another boost at the completion of big phases, but it dissipates between these peaks when the hard work must be put in. Unfortunately, that’s when teams need an injection of enthusiasm the most!

When it comes to customer centricity, skill set and mindset go hand in hand. By fostering one without the other, you will probably see incremental improvements. However, if you want to implement a culture of customer centricity at your organization, building skills and shifting mindsets must be done in tandem. Let’s take a look at the two approaches and how you can tie them together.

Customer Centricity Skills

Successfully serving customers requires certain technical skills that will vary depending on your industry, but there are some universal skills that everybody should learn if you truly want to put the customer first:

• See the business through the lens of the customer experience – This might seem like a simple task, but it actually does take practice for it to come naturally. Individuals in the organization make choices all the time. You want them to make those choices by first asking, “How might this impact our customers?”
• Identify areas of personal responsibility – Everybody is busy, and it’s easy to ignore tasks when it’s not clear whose responsibility they are. Understanding the impacts of taking responsibility (or not) is a skill that can be honed. The more people in the company who possess this skill, the more proactive the entire team will be.
• Take personal action when appropriate – After identifying areas of personal responsibility, it’s time to take action. This is also a skill because it requires understanding the decision-making paths, knowing which barriers stand in the way, and how to overcome them.

All of these skills can be taught and improved over time. However, without building a foundation of a customer centricity mindset, people will be less likely to employ those skills in the workplace.

Customer Centricity Mindset

Creating a customer centricity mindset is a matter of shifting perspectives and ingraining them in the company culture. Some of the factors that contribute to this are:

• Understanding the big picture – Many individuals don’t realize just how much potential they have to impact the customer experience and the organization as a whole. Even people who do not typically interact with customers can influence their experience. Bringing this to light can help shift the perspective from an internal one to considering the customer’s experience in everything you do.

• Feeling empowered to make a difference – The value of understanding the big picture cannot be underestimated, because it can elicit possibilities that leadership might never have considered. For example, in a customer centric culture, a website developer (who never interacts with customers) might take extra care to make an online purchase flow as smooth and fast as possible in an effort to make the customer experience better.

• Feeling invested in the outcomes – When individuals realize that they can indeed have an impact, they are more inclined to feel invested in the outcomes. That same website developer has a choice when working on the purchase flow. He or she can implement an out-of-the-box solution, or he or she can consider the customer’s perspective and create a tailored experience that is designed to delight them. Because he or she is invested in the outcomes, he or she will choose the solution that best serves the customer.

Anybody can adopt this mindset, but without the necessary skills to execute, an initiative to promote customer centricity will fall flat. Individuals need both the internal motivation (mindset) and the ability to execute their ideas (skills). Building customer centricity skills also helps individuals adopt the mindset through regular practice and successes that make them want to continue on that path.

A high performance culture is at the top of many companies’ wish lists, with good reason — when colleagues contribute fully to the best of their abilities (and even stretch those abilities to become better), the company benefits. Unfortunately, leaders are facing an uphill battle in implementing a high performance culture since, according to one survey, just 10 percent of employees define success at work through high performance.

Successfully implementing a high performance culture is most certainly a reason to rejoice, given the obstacles that are in the way when creating it. However, developing the culture isn’t a “set it and forget it” exercise; to continually reap the benefits of a high performance culture, you must find ways to sustain this culture through all of your company’s ups and downs. Here are four keys to sustaining the high performance culture you’ve worked hard to put in place:

1. Leaders Must Model High Performance Behaviors

Sustaining a high performance culture starts with leaders. A company’s leaders should be the living embodiment of the company’s values, and how leaders act — and how often they show their faces outside the boardroom — has a tremendous impact on the behavior of their teams.  Researchers have even found that nonverbal cues from leaders (how they stand, how often they smile, whether they cross their arms, etc.) dictate whether their team members open up or shut down when approached.

While the leadership team may say they value honest feedback, their body language itself may tell employees something completely different. For a high performance culture that lasts, leaders must consciously embody the values and behaviors they hope to see in their own employees.

2. High Performance Culture Requires High Performance Training

A high performance culture supports the development of skills and knowledge through engaging, impactful training programs. Unfortunately, after we learn something, we all experience “learning decay” — we remember less and less of the lesson over time.

To ensure you’re fostering a high performance culture, invest in high performance training strategies that improve the likelihood that the training will stick. For example, experiential learning, where training participants take an active role in a training experience (instead of listening to a lecturer or reading a manual) greatly minimizes learning decay in comparison to more traditional training programs, like “show and tell” presentations which require minimal engagement. High performance training exercises that simulate the real-world workplace scenarios that participants often encounter make it far easier for participants to remember and apply the training lessons in their day-to-day work lives.

3. Confidence, Not Perfection is the Goal

In a culture of high performance, teams still make mistakes — the difference is how quickly they bounce back from those mistakes and continue to move forward. Colleagues in a high-performance culture will analyze what went wrong and make adjustments, rather than abandoning a plan completely in a fit of passion (or embarrassment). Plus, a hallmark of a high performance culture is a focus on collaboration: if one colleague makes a mistake, another is there to pick up the slack and keep a project moving. Empower your colleagues to collaborate, not compete, and to tackle problems (even problems of their own making) with confidence, not a sense a failure.

4. High Performers Focus on Building Strengths, Not Eliminating Weaknesses

Continually focusing on what colleagues are doing wrong results in a culture of demoralization — it’s hard to keep your head up and perform to your fullest potential when you’re constantly being berated! Instead, the focus should be on identifying and further developing strengths. In fact, a study found that when individuals are able to use their strengths on the job every day, they’re six times as likely to be engaged in their work than those who do not — and you cannot sustain a high performance culture without sustained engagement as well.

Inevitably, over time a pillar of your high performance culture may show signs of cracking. What strategies have you implemented to avoid crumbling and continue to sustain an engaged, high performance culture at your company?

Effective time management benefits everyone in an organization. More specifically, sales professionals that manage their time effectively benefit from less stress, better quality work, improved productivity, and more quickly achieved goals.

For B2B sales professionals, better productivity translates to more sales, and one way to increase productivity is through effective time management. Here are six time management tips you can put to use today:

1. Start with a Daily Plan

Make a daily to-do list. This may seem like an obvious strategy, but many people don’t do it. Every morning, or the evening before, plan your day and stick to it as closely as possible. Schedule tasks that you will focus on throughout the day based on importance and urgency. When possible, carve out time slots for each task so you can focus without interruption for the necessary amount of time.

2. Set Priorities

Identify the top priorities for the day and don’t allow yourself to get distracted with smaller, less important tasks until the top priorities are under control. Write down the tasks that must get done and the ones you would like to get done. Start at the top and work your way through the most urgent tasks first. For B2B sales, this includes account planning strategy, focusing on decision makers, and prioritizing the leads that are most likely to convert.

3. Take Frequent Breaks

One study found that the top performing 10 percent of employees had a tendency to work for 52 consecutive minutes followed by a 17-minute break. While this specific schedule might not work for you, it illustrates the importance of taking breaks. Schedule breaks into your day at a frequency that makes sense for you and protect that time. Pause between tasks to refresh your brain and get ready for the next item on your list. This often means stepping away from your desk so you don’t get drawn back into working before you’re ready to start again.

4. Work Smarter, Not Longer

According to a Stanford University study, productivity drops off sharply after a 50-hour workweek and is essentially nonexistent after 55 hours. Continued long hours are also correlated to absenteeism and turnover. If you can’t complete your necessary work in less than 50 hours, it may be time to consider more strict time management, training to improve, or a discussion with your leader to figure out the root cause of the problem and strategize how to make your workweek more manageable and productive. Use the sales tools at your disposal (CRM, reporting software, and so on) and don’t assume that you can remember it all. The tools are there for a reason, and the more you utilize them, the more productive you will be.

5. Set Boundaries

Social interactions in the workplace can have a positive impact, but not when they become distractions. Urgent requests can also take time away from important ones. Set boundaries that define when it’s okay to be interrupted and when you need to focus. If you have an office, it could be as simple as closing your door for certain periods during the day. In an open office, use indicators like headphones or a sign that says you don’t want to be interrupted and set office hours for the times in which you welcome employee interaction. If you are interrupted and the issue is not actually urgent, schedule a time to discuss it and return to the task at hand. Coworkers will eventually tailor their behaviors around your cues.

6. Focus on Your Weaknesses

When trying to get better at time management, identify the areas where you feel the weakest and focus on improving them one at a time. For example, if you know you’re bad at taking breaks, set a timer. If you like to socialize at work, do it only during breaks or schedule coffee with a coworker rather than having an impromptu chat. By improving your weaknesses, you will become a more well-rounded sales professional who is able to manage priorities, achieve (and exceed) client needs, and work productively to achieve the results you need.

Developing new habits for managing your time takes some initial effort, but when they become second nature you will find yourself less stressed, more productive, and ultimately, with better sales numbers.

When you think of organizational development, you might imagine a team of high-level managers gathering a few times a year to create and implement a strategy that includes training programs, benchmarks, and reporting systems. While this is certainly a valuable approach, it’s not the only one. Many organizations are discovering that employee development can—and should—be driven not only by leadership, but also by the employees themselves.

Employee-driven development is beneficial to organizations of all sizes. When individuals define their own paths at an organization, they tend to stay longer because they know where they are headed and that their destination is in line with their career aspirations. Employees also stay more engaged when they are active participants in their own development. A recent study showed that almost half of employees in the U.S. are not engaged at work, primarily because they wanted to learn something new. If that need isn’t met in your organization, chances are employees will find it elsewhere.

If you’re not already factoring individual goals into your organizational development plan, it might be time to introduce employee-driven development. Here’s how to get started.

Let Employees Lead the Way

Collaborate with individuals as they set their own goals for career development. When managers set goals for employees, it can lead to missed opportunities because they don’t necessarily know what employees want or what their capabilities are. On the other hand, when employees are given the latitude to define their own paths, the result is a higher level of engagement and more people in the right roles doing what they enjoy.

Of course, the majority of these individual goals must also benefit the organization and support the business objectives. Start by clearly stating the organization’s goals and asking the employees to set their goals to support these.

Provide the Necessary Resources

After defining individual goals, the organization should offer support by providing access to the necessary resources. These might include:

• Funds for outside training
• Internal training programs
• Membership in professional organizations
• Mentoring and coaching
• Recommended resources
• Peer discussion groups

Knowing how to provide meaningful feedback and accepting honest evaluations from others are essential skills for employee-driven development. Providing training for these fundamental competencies will give individuals a strong foundation for participating in their own development.

Maintain a Dialogue

Employee development is not a single training event or feedback provided during an annual review. The plan should consist of short- and long-term goals with realistic, achievable milestones. Ongoing communication is also essential for the success of any type of development program. Even when employees are leading the charge by setting their own career goals and being proactive about accessing resources, they need coaching and feedback from their managers about their progress.

It’s important for the organization to have a two-way communication process that allows both employees and managers to voice their desires and concerns. It’s not enough to assume that employees will speak up when they have ideas or criticisms. Open communication has to be built into the company culture and employees must be provided with mechanisms (surveys, 360 evaluations, and so forth) for providing feedback.

Build it into Your Hiring Process

Before an employee is even hired, you have the opportunity to set expectations about learning and development. If self-learning is an important company value, that should be communicated to candidates during the interview process. This approach brings self-starters to the forefront because they will be seeking opportunities for growth. Employee-driven development will help you attract and retain the high-potential individuals who want knowledge and a level of control over the future of their careers.

Of course, employee development is not a one-sided equation. Leadership still needs to guide the overall strategy so that any development programs align with and support business goals. Striking the right balance between what each employee wants and what the organization needs is crucial.

For many businesses, success depends on sales, whether they are made to other businesses or to individual customers. This is one reason why creating a positive customer experience from beginning to end is so important. To do this effectively, you need every individual in your organization on board, even if they don’t interact directly with customers. Every employee must know that no matter what their role is within the company, each person affects the customer experience.

Achieving this type of culture doesn’t happen overnight. It requires a strong commitment from leadership and a sustained effort to shift the hearts and minds of every individual to behave in a customer centric way. The results of these efforts will speak for themselves when the organization becomes more successful.

Why Success Starts with a Superior Customer Experience

Companies today have to provide more than just a good product or service. Customers expect more, and if they’re not getting what they want from your organization, they’ll turn to another company to find it.

Customers Want It

Although the quality of the products or services you deliver is important, it might not be the deciding factor when customers make a purchase. Competitive pricing is also a consideration, but not necessarily the only one. In fact, one study showed that the customer experience is expected to be more important than either price or product by the year 2020, which is just around the corner.

Innovation, quality of products and services, and other factors will always play a role in the success of a company, but the customer experience has become a significant deciding factor that will ultimately impact the bottom line. If you’re not already paying attention to the B2B customer experience your company provides, your organization is at risk of getting left behind.

Businesses Benefit from It

The ROI of the customer experience is not easy to quantify, but a recent report from Qualtrics analyzed feedback from 10,000 customers and found that for a $1 billion company, even a moderate improvement in the customer experience would impact its revenue by an average of $775 million over three years. This is not an insignificant number for any organization, especially considering this is for a moderate improvement. Imagine what a major commitment to improving the customer experience could do for your company’s revenue.

The report also found a strong correlation between the customer experience and the decision to repurchase from a company. This is important because it is easier (and less expensive) to make sales to existing customers than it is to acquire new ones. Keeping your current customers delighted with both your products and the experience they have while purchasing them will only add to your bottom line.

The Customer Experience Goes Beyond Customer Service

Many companies make the mistake of focusing only on the customer service department or the employees who interact directly with customers. The reality is that every individual in the organization has the power to impact the customer experience. The software developers who create the website, the individuals who work on a manufacturing line, and the team that sends invoices all make decisions on a regular basis that have the potential to impact how customers interact with the company and perceive the brand.

Focusing on creating a customer centric culture rather than just on providing customer service training will help ensure that the customer is top of mind when any decision, no matter how big or small, is made.

Becoming Customer Centric Requires a Culture Shift

Your organization can achieve a culture of customer centricity by setting a clear goal, having a strategy that supports it, and ensuring a commitment from leadership to invest the necessary resources to maintain the momentum. Experiential learning is one of the many tools that can be used to create conviction and teach people the skills and competencies necessary for supporting a customer centric culture. By directly experiencing the consequences of their actions in a time-compressed setting, participants leave with the conviction that their behavior truly does matter. This knowledge carries through to the real world and influences the daily decisions that have the potential to impact the customer experience.

Businesses rely on customers in order to be successful, and the customer experience is more important now than ever. The organizations that don’t recognize this or fail to make an investment in customer centricity risk losing market share. To learn more about how your company can stay competitive in the new customer centric landscape, read our free guide, The Rise of the Customer Experience in B2B.

Contents

• Understand the Importance of Leadership
• Create Unanimous Focus on a Common Goal
• Clearly Define Roles in Subgroups
• Tap into Your Shared Resources
• Use Frequent and Effective Communication
• Offer Enthusiastic, Consistent, and United Effort
• Employ Periodic and Temporary Suppression of the Ego

Off the top of your head, you can probably think of at least a few ways that teamwork in your workplace has fallen short. The team may have missed a deadline or failed to meet a set objective. Regardless of what happened, when these incidents happen it is a usually a sign that teamwork and collaboration are not functioning properly. Even when a team’s efforts lead to seemingly good results, there are often plenty of missed opportunities because of issues such as:

• Not every voice on the team was heard.
• Communication roadblocks prevented good ideas from coming to fruition.
• Subgroups went in a direction that didn’t support the team’s objective.
• The team fizzled because there wasn’t a consistent and united effort.

If any of these issues sound familiar, it might be time to take steps to improve teamwork. Effective teamwork doesn’t happen overnight. It takes intentional effort and a thorough understanding of what teamwork actually is.

Below are seven cornerstones to improve teamwork in your organization, along with links to resources that will help you learn more.

1. Understand the Importance of Leadership

Every team needs a leader to encourage accountability, model empowerment, facilitate streamlined decision-making, and maintain momentum. However, the appropriate team leader isn’t always the person you first expect. Team leaders are typically individuals who know the most about the project—which means they might not have extensive experience with leading. They might not even be the person with the most ‘senior’ rank in the room. That’s why building in leadership skills exercises into your teamwork training in the workplace is so important.

The role of a team leader extends beyond conducting everyday meetings and capturing action items. The person in a leadership role must recognize their importance, model the expected behaviors, and understand how to harness individual strengths to achieve the outlined objectives.

2. Create Unanimous Focus on a Common Goal

When teams get distracted and stray away from the defined objectives, the project will take longer, or worse, never be fully achieved. Even when teams are working on a simple project, team members still need to see it as their own project. But for that project to truly be the best it can be, each person on the team must have a unanimous focus on a common goal.

It’s not uncommon for the individuals in a team to be pulled in multiple directions. They have daily tasks that must be completed, long-term projects to move along, and departmental objectives to bear in mind. Clearly articulating and repeating the team’s common goal can help the group maintain focus, especially between meetings.

3. Clearly Define Roles in Subgroups

When a team is faced with a large goal, it’s best practice to create smaller teams, or subgroups, within the project to address more specific tasks that support the overall goal. The goal of a subgroup is also more tightly focused than the overall team goal. This means less input from higher-ranking members who are most enthusiastic about the ‘big picture’. Instead, subgroup members with specialized knowledge will steer the subgroup towards its goal.

Subgroups should operate as mini-teams, using all seven of these cornerstones in their own work. Each subgroup needs its own leader, a unanimous focus on a common goal, and so on. They must also be subordinate to the larger team, always supporting the larger goal.

4. Tap into Your Shared Resources

Many people only consider hard resources—money,  equipment, technology, and so on—when thinking about the resources that are shared among a team. However, soft resources can be just as important when cataloging your inventory of shared resources. While they might not seem like elements that must be shared for team success, but think about what would happen if just one person was passionate about the team project, or if only one person ever tried to overcome the inevitable project hurdles that sprung up. Just as when hard resources aren’t spread around equitably, it’s unlikely that project would ever be completed.

In a work environment where budgets are closely followed and individual productivity is valued, it can be culturally challenging to effectively share resources, both hard and soft. Organizations that are committed to improving teamwork must make it clear that team members have access to the resources they need in order to accomplish their goals.

5. Use Frequent and Effective Communication

Every individual on a team must always be able to say, “I know what I need to know,” and, “I understand everything.” If these two statements are not true at any given time, there is potential for the team to break down. The keys to communication in a team are for it to be both frequent and effective. And remember that effective communication requires all team members to know on a high level what’s going on within the team, but also to truly comprehend what’s going on.

Effective communication in a team requires both the right skills and the right tools. Ongoing training can help build the necessary skills to improve teamwork, such as active listening, giving feedback, and creating an environment in which people are comfortable speaking up. The right tools will depend on the team, but could include a document management system, an internal messaging platform, or a system for sharing and storing meeting notes.

6. Offer Enthusiastic, Consistent, and United Effort

The whole point of creating a team is to accomplish a specific goal. This requires effort on everyone’s part, but unless that effort meets certain criteria, you’ll soon find yourself spinning wheels. Putting in consistent, united, enthusiastic effort should be a given for every employee—but, unfortunately, that’s not always the case. That’s why team leaders must be up front about the level of personal commitment and discipline that will be expected of each member.

In addition to articulating the need for this type of effort, team leaders must also model the desired behavior. If team members see that their leader isn’t accountable for his or her commitments or makes excuses for substandard work, they will eventually conclude that this is acceptable behavior and reflect their leader’s level of effort.

7. Employ Periodic and Temporary Suppression of the Ego

Essentially, the principle of teamwork related to ego is about ensuring that individual agendas don’t take over the team’s goals, inhibit other team members’ contribution, or development and create a cycle of diminishing team effectiveness. No team will succeed if it is composed of members with a “me first” attitude. Successful teamwork depends on every individual feeling that their contribution matters.

Keeping egos in check without quashing them requires a delicate balance. Everybody on the team must intentionally manage their ego and shift the focus from individual agendas to the team’s objectives to effectively achieve the desired outcome.

Next Steps to Improving Teamwork in the Workplace

While the teams in your organization might have mastered some elements of this list, it is important to understand that in order to improve teamwork in the workplace it cannot be done alone. So, if you are committed to creating a workplace where teamwork thrives, start by performing an assessment of to determine which areas could improve. You will inevitably find a few gaps. When you do, provide competency development to bring all seven cornerstones into balance and see how the organizations in your team transform.

The relentless pace of change in the corporate world today requires teams to collaborate and innovate. Therefore, company culture must overcome silos and support effective, cross-functional interaction between teams. When teams break out of their silos, the organization has a better chance for long-term success. In a survey of global operations managers, 61 percent cited cross-functional collaboration as being the key to helping the company reach strategic goals. Here are six strategies that can help break down silos and foster greater cross-functional collaboration across the entire organization:

Communicate a Unified Vision

Often, organizational silos form because individual or departmental goals have become such a priority that they become all-important, causing employees to lose sight of broader company goals and purpose. A unified vision that is broadly communicated among employees helps individuals to understand that individual and team goals are secondary to organizational vision.

For organizations that have grown accustomed to operating in silos, the vision will need to be communicated often and across different mediums so that it remains top of mind. When people see the bigger picture, they can begin to understand their unique place in the organization, as well as that of others. In time, a focus on self and team will expand to include other individuals and teams that are also part of the company vision.

Create Shared Accountabilities

Once a unifying vision has been established and communicated, it needs to translate into the everyday behaviors of teams and individuals to take hold. Teams can benefit from having shared goals that pull them together rather than divide them. For example, an organization might align the IT department’s goals with those of other departments to ensure more efficient use of internal IT systems. To further break down organizational silos, it can also be helpful to have two or more teams work together on a task force that ends with a joint presentation to senior management.

Bring Teams Together

Breaking down organizational silos and increasing cross-team collaboration doesn’t happen on its own, but will be more likely when individuals have opportunities to interact and work together. Joint meetings, focus groups, and chat sessions can provide employees with opportunities to get to know people from other teams, who does what, and how they can help each other to achieve company goals. Other activities that bring teams together include combining similar teams under co-heads, or co-locating teams that can benefit from being in close physical proximity, as in the case of companies that sit sales and marketing teams together. Organizing a corporate events can also promote collaboration, build trust, and encourage relationships between teams.

Get Leaders On Board

People on different teams will be unlikely to collaborate and will remain in silos unless they see leaders modeling collaborative behavior. Company leaders need to set the example to demonstrate that they expect cross-functional teamwork and information sharing from their employees. Leaders can support greater collaboration in the following ways:

• Talk about shared goals between teams
• Assign a team member or two to keep another team in the loop on a key project
• Regularly communicate and spend time with leaders of other teams
• Recognize and reward individuals who demonstrate collaboration with other teams

Incorporate Collaboration Tools

In the digital age, there is a range of workplace collaboration tools that can bring teams together in the cloud, making it easier to share ideas and information. Digital collaboration tools can be particularly helpful in unifying remote teams and individuals. Some examples include:

• Project management platforms with chat and virtual whiteboard capabilities
• Shared documents that allow multiple teams to access and collaborate
  on presentations, proposals, and project plans
• Data management tools that incorporate data from other platforms—for example, a CRM that integrates with company dashboards used by various teams

Shift Mindsets and Behavior with Training

A great way to help employees break free from silos is to train them to engage in behaviors that support more teamwork and collaboration. With the help of accountability, communication, and leadership training to name a few, employees can learn more about the dangers of silos, see the benefits of collaboration, and practice useful techniques for breaking down silos back on the job.

Organizational silos stand in the way of innovation and growth. They also limit the success of individuals, preventing them from realizing the positive benefits of teamwork and collaboration. By using strategies that encourage individuals to think of themselves as part of the broader organizational team, more cross-functional collaboration can become a reality.

In 2013, media firm Thomson Reuters took a big risk; they decided to stop driving growth through acquisition and start driving growth through innovation. While acquisitions had been the company’s main source of growth for years, they were proving to be too costly. Instead, Thomson Reuters decided to tap into a huge source of growth potential: its own employees.

The firm developed something called the Catalyst Fund, which gave employees a platform to present their ideas in front of a panel of company executives (and secure funding to explore them), including the CEO himself. The results from their Shark Tank-esq program was the ability to tap into a bank of creativity that was at their fingertips the whole time. Employees began creating new products and innovating in the realm of organization, saving the company time and money with innovative process improvements. This wasn’t just good news for the company; employees became more engaged, as their voices were heard, helping lead the company to new heights.

Thomson Reuters transformed their company culture to enhance innovation. Unfortunately, not many organizations see the same benefit of transforming their culture to embrace innovation.

According to a report from the National Science Foundation, just 14 percent of U.S. companies are considered product or process innovators. While this low number isn’t exactly inspiring, it’s not surprising either, achieving true innovation takes hard work. There are plenty of hurdles that companies face when they try to innovate, time constraints and budget issues among them.

One of the biggest hurdles to innovation, however, the organization’s attitude toward innovation; the tendency to kill ideas before they even get the chance to develop into something worth pursuing. And it’s a more pervasive issue than most companies even realize.

But before we dive into what’s flatlining your organization’s ability to innovate, let’s take a closer look at what we mean when we say “innovation.”

What Is Innovation?

There’s a common misconception about innovation: Innovation is not just about coming up with new ideas, that’s called ideation; and while it’s an important part of innovation, it’s just that: one part. Think of innovation as a process, where you start by identifying the issue and then move on to coming up with ideas, creating and implementing an action plan, and finally achieving, and measuring results. In sum, the process of innovation involves:

• Defining the issue
• Ideation
• Action
• Results

Innovation is all about making something better by doing it in a new or different way. The first step is ideation, or coming up with new ideas’ you’ll never see the results stage if you don’t start at ideation. getting new or different results.

There are two sides to supporting innovation, and it is important to evaluate which side your team falls on. There are innovation killers: they name everything that’s wrong with an idea, without acknowledging an idea’s benefits or offering alternatives.  And there are innovation enhancers: who will acknowledge the merit of the idea and then encourage the team to brainstorm ways to make it work. Which side does your team fall on? Check out the common tactics of innovation killers and innovation enhancers and see which sounds like the more familiar refrain in your company.

Stifling Ideation: Common Innovation Killers

“It’s too expensive”

The team has been brainstorming new ideas that give some team members sticker shock. An innovation killer will dismiss the idea based on the price tag alone.

“You don’t know all the facts”

Sharing ideas with a team puts the idea sharer in a vulnerable place—at a company full of innovation killers, it’s an invitation for scrutiny and judgment. An innovation killer creates an atmosphere in which team members feel uncomfortable sharing, out of fear of ridicule. An innovation killer is all around negative about any new idea or change, even when it comes down to body language and tone of voice. The result: Ideation halts altogether. What’s more, the innovation killer doesn’t just object to new ideas—they make their objections personal, focusing on what’s wrong with the idea sharer, rather than the idea itself. That’s destructive for true innovation.

“I like it in theory, but it’s not very practical”

An innovation killer expects an idea to be fully formed when shared with the group. This, of course, is an unrealistic expectation—and a dangerous one at that. When colleagues feel that they can’t share their ideas until they’ve addressed every angle (like practicality), the ideation process will move at a snail’s pace.

“That’ll rock the boat”

An innovation killer, essentially, is scared. Scared to make a splash, take a risk, and possibly face criticism for it. An innovation killer doesn’t want to rock the boat—not realizing that that’s exactly what leads to real, life-changing innovation. They are chained to old ways, unsure of how to (or unwilling to) break free.

“Just to play devil’s advocate…”

Playing devil’s advocate may seem like a way to examine an idea from another perspective. But if someone on the team is playing devil’s advocate “just because,” it’s a diversion tactic, not an authentic effort to improve upon an idea. An innovation killer only looks at the negatives of an idea, doing so to the point that playing devil’s advocate becomes a game of wasting time.

Fostering Creativity: Innovation Enhancers

“How do we make it work?”

Every new idea can and will be met with some type of objection. To move forward in the innovation process, though, you must turn an objection into exploration. Saying that an idea is “too expensive,” for example, shouldn’t be the end of the idea but rather the beginning. Either finesse the idea until it overcomes objections or set aside the idea only after your team has determined there’s no way around the objection (and that the objection is a deal breaker).

“Building on that idea…”

An innovation enhancer is encouraging while still acknowledging—respectfully—that an idea needs work. For example, it’s very possible that someone may share an idea without knowing all the facts (that’s why working in teams is a smart approach in the first place). Rather than attack the team member for “daring” to speak up, an innovation enhancer will add their knowledge to the idea, positively steering the ideation session in the right direction while sharing vital information in the process.

“What about reshaping it?”

An innovation enhancer knows that truly great ideas hardly ever start out that way—they undergo lots of massaging, revisions, and input from the group to finally become great. That’s precisely why brainstorming sessions and team meetings exist: to help move good ideas from the realm of “theory” to practical, action-oriented ideas that get results. To get there, an innovation enhancer will encourage the team to look at a seed of an idea with fresh eyes and different perspectives to determine if that seed can truly grow into something more.

Keep in mind, though, that someone who encourages and validates every single idea shared in the group may seem like an innovation enhancer—but that’s really not the case. It’s crucial that ideas are examined carefully before being pursued further. But even “bad” ideas can inspire new ones, which is why an innovation enhancer shifts the ideation conversation, rather than just shutting it down altogether.

“How can we get senior management on board?”

An innovation enhancer knows taking risks when it comes to dreaming up big ideas is necessary—but they are also realistic about the pushback that a risky idea may attract. That’s when an innovation enhancer switches to “strategy” mode. For example, if an idea doesn’t seem like it will pass muster with senior management, an innovation enhancer will work with the team to figure out how to frame the idea so that it’s appealing from management’s perspective, like illustrating how the idea is linked to business goals. Not to mention, senior management at a company with a high-performing, innovative culture won’t be afraid of a little “boat rocking” from time to time. Innovative leaders know that taking risks is a part of the innovation game—as long as their teams fail early and learn from their unsuccessful risks.

“Let’s come up with more good ideas like this one”

An innovation enhancer understands that good ideas tend to snowball—once a team gets on an idea streak, the good ideas can keep flowing. Creativity begets creativity. Going through the process of coming up with an idea activates your brain; the more you work on ideation, the more active your brain becomes. Pointing out every little thing that’s wrong with an idea just for the sake of playing devil’s advocate can throw off the whole group’s ideation groove, halting the creative process. If a group seems like it’s on a roll, an innovation enhancer will encourage the team members to keep on rolling, aware that they can submit their best ideas to greater scrutiny at a later time.

Innovation killers may be more subtle—and more pervasive—than just a single team member who’s resistant to innovation. Seemingly high-performing employees may have a block when it comes to innovation. Often, innovation killers even come from the top, particularly in workplace cultures that unwittingly discourage innovation. Luckily, innovation can be taught, and organizational cultures can be transformed when innovation is linked directly to results.

Obvious news flash: Many decisions go into planning a corporate event, from finding the right location and determining menu selections to agenda constraints and giveaways or no giveaways. You even need to consider lighting. Before you can plan the details of your event, take time to brainstorm what will truly make it successful. These four tips will help you plan an event that’s memorable, informative, and dare I say, fun.

1. Determine the Goals of Your Corporate Event First

Educate, inform, drive behavior change, introduce, celebrate, or improve skills—these are all potential goals. Whatever you choose will drive the rest of your event planning, from your budget and venue choice to content and approach. Ensure the goal is strategically aligned with the company’s overall business goals, which will improve the chances that your executives are more eager to buy into your plans. Determining goals first also allows you and your team to clarify a plan of action for measuring event ROI, something else near and dear to the executives.

2. Incorporate a Fun, Relevant Theme

Pick a fun theme to excite and engage your participants throughout the event. You can even get them involved beforehand by asking them to  brainstorm ways they can come to the event fully immersed in the theme—outfits, bringing theme-related items, viewing related videos prior, or team-related pre-work. Themes don’t just present an opportunity to amp up excitement; they can also be used to make your corporate event feel more cohesive, especially if it spans multiple days. Weave elements of your theme throughout different activities to connect the dots for participants.

When you do decide to incorporate a theme into the event, make sure you pay close attention to the details. A half-hearted attempt at carrying out a theme may deflate participants more than it pumps them up, whereas a carefully considered and well-executed one sends the message that your company has invested time and energy into creating this event—and participants are expected to do the same.

3. Keep Participants Engaged with Immersive Activities

If one of the goals of your event is to teach participants new skills, explore training approaches that require active participation. Getting your participants out of their chairs and interacting with one another creates excitement throughout the event. Plus, participatory learning is often more effective in the long term for retention. When participants learn by doing, that knowledge stays with them much longer in comparison to passive learning strategies. We have all been there before and know it’s far easier for participants to “clock out” on a lecture or PowerPoint presentation than it is with an engaged a hands-on learning activity.

If you’re thinking about including immersive training activities at your event, be sure to consider experiential learning. In an experiential learning exercise, participants are tasked with working together to tackle a fun but challenging “project” and the skills needed to successfully complete the challenge are the same ones needed to succeed at work. One of the biggest benefits is that it teaches participants new skills and allows them to practice them during the same exercise. Allowing participants to practice in a conference setting, wherein they’re able to get immediate feedback from facilitators, gives them a chance to refine and perfect those skills before they use them on the job. Plus, experiential learning is a good fit for all types of learners, thereby making it ideal for events put on for a diverse workforce.

4. Invest in Retention Tools and Strategies

No corporate event should be a “one-and-done” affair. If it focuses on teaching participants new skills and information, make sure you have a plan in place to help participants remember the lessons learned. Some post-event retention tools may include:

• Online videos or webinars that serve as refreshers on event training
• Interactive online games that test participants’ knowledge and retention of key concepts
• Group discussions that explore the challenges and solutions addressed during the event
• Forums on which participants can post follow-up questions and discussions

Keeping retention in mind throughout the planning process also helps you design components that support long-lasting learning.

If you planned a particularly well-received corporate event before, let us know what elements you think contributed to its success.