Shawn Bartholomae - How To Create An Innovative Working Environment

Shawn Bartholomae - How To Create An Innovative Working Environment As the founder and President of both Silver Tusk Oil, LLC and Pro AK, LLC,Shawn Bartholomae encourages innovation in the workplace. Without the creativity required to drive innovation, businesses tend to stagnate, which results in them struggling to meet the demands of their markets of their offerings put forth by their competitors. All business owners should look towards innovation as a key aspect of the working environments they create, with the following all being ways that you can encourage innovation in the workplace.

Reward Creativity Many businesses focus on productivity above all else, which results in employees placing all of their energy into getting the most out of current products and processes, rather than applying themselves to the creation of new ones. This is often because rewards and incentives are more directly tied into productivity than they are innovation. To counter this, business owners need to recognize the important role that creativity plays in the workplace and incentivize the most innovative workers to come up with ideas. Encourage creative thinking by acknowledging the success of new ideas and providing reassurance when an innovation doesn’t work out as hoped.

Communicate If your employees feel as though they have nobody to communicate with it is likely that any ideas they have will be kept to themselves. Managers should make it a point to listen to the ideas and concerns of their teams and, as importantly, consider the courses of action they can take in the wake of receiving this information. Poor communication in the workplace leads to a stifling of creativity, especially if employees avoid presenting new ideas for fear of being punished.

Create Diversity While there is something to be said for a homogenous work environment, particularly if you are trying to keep a team focused on a specific task, diversity allows for a wellspring of ideas that finds its roots in the different backgrounds of everybody on the team. Consider people of all cultures and educational backgrounds for your teams, as you never know what new ideas they may be able to bring to the table.

Highlight Issues In some cases, your teams may struggle to innovate because they are unaware of issues that are affecting the company. As a business owner you should consider highlighting problem areas and incentivizing team members to come up with solutions. If there is a tangible problem to work on you may find innovation within the business becomes more focused.

Shawn Bartholomae is the President of Silver Tusk Oil, LLC and Pro AK, LLC. To Learn More,Visit : http://ask.fm/shawnbartholomae1