Want Your Innovation Team to Succeed? Talk More

About HOW you work, now WHAT you do.

Innovation teams spend a lot of time communicating. 

‘Who knows how to solve this technical problem?’ 

‘Let’s share our progress on milestones’

‘How do we sign off the next bit of budget?’

‘Let’s all bond over how annoying department X is’ (you know THAT one is real!)

That kind of communication is useful and necessary.  Many teams also know each other really well, with many social activities sometimes over years of working together.  Colleagues often know about each other’s background and families and that’s useful too.  But, I notice that the most effective teams are the ones who spend time talking about HOW they’re working together.  And importantly, take action based on what they learn.

Innovation teams may be particularly missing out because they are almost always multidisciplinary with people from all sorts of backgrounds. They are dynamic and often have incomers and outgoers. They are likely to sit in complex environments with the involvement of multiple line managers or leaders. Traditionally teams are groups of people lead by one person but this is rarely the case with innovation where teams are gathered and people are borrowed. 

What this means is people assume different norms and are used to different communication styles and decision making. That’s what is so brilliant about innovation. But it’s also the challenge.

High-performing innovation teams don’t just focus on what they’re working on, they build capability and make time to talk about how they’re working together.

Make Time for the Conversation

Conversation has to be intentional, at least until it is habit.  Emphasise the importance of creating intentional space in the diary for this kind of team conversation.

In my experience, if you ask teams what they want or need, they often say they want to spend time on being a team, so getting diary time can be straightforward.  Suggest a regular slot and call out the benefits and intention, fostering safety, clarity, belonging and trust.  You might still hear ‘I don’t have time for that’ or ‘we all know each other already!’.  Here in lies the tricky bit, knowing how to use it so that it does not become another meeting that no-one needs and instead drives value everyone will notice. And, that takes planning and structure.  Here’s some specific ideas that work.

1. Use Stimulus to prompt learning and reflection

I’m a podcast person so I have used podcast episodes that challenge assumptions about innovation, collaboration or culture as talking points.  Articles, TedTalks, or other formats of material work too (consider inclusivity here).  The first time I ever did this I used the first episode of Adam Grant’s podcast, which sharply describes extreme feedback cultures. It’s almost eye watering to listen to (highly recommend!). 

Format: Ask the team to listen prior to the meeting (or even give the first 30 minutes of meeting time to spend listening individually)

Prompt discussion:

• What would happen if we did that? 

• Would that work in our team? Why/Why not?

• Is there an aspect we could use?

• How would we know if it helped?’

2. Facilitate an exercise which helps to understand each other

Here’s a specific idea.  You may have heard of Nobel nominee Edward de Bono’s Thinking Hats.  He summarises a theory that there are different ways of thinking about a problem (the big picture, facts and information, feelings, negative, positive and new ideas) and each has a designated colour.  We can use this theory to support a conversation about how team members think.

Format: Explain the Thinking Hats to the team, although detailed understanding is not necessary.  Allocate everyone a colour.  As the team leader, take blue (the big picture definition) and go first, to explain a challenge you have in mind.  It can be real or hypothetical because the converstaion about styles is what is important here. Encourage each team member to consider the problem from their allocated hat’s perspective.

Prompt discussion:

As you go through, encourage conversation on how that felt.  You might hear ‘that felt hard for me because…’.  Or ‘we don’t have this amount of balance in our team’.  Finish with a summary of  learnings and what actions you may need to take as a team. Consider that action an experiement.

One small watch out, avoid a discussion which labels people.

3. Map the Invisible: Workstyle Preferences Mapping

We all make assumptions, it’s part of everyday life.  Introduce a simple exercise to make the hidden norms of work visible and discuss the impact they have. It's great if you can do this in person, and get physical movement in a room.  But great online tools exist too.

Format: Introduce the following concepts and ask team members reflect on their preferences in each.

• Decision-making (quick vs deliberate)

• Feedback (candid vs less direct)

• Planning (structured vs emergent)

• Communication (written vs verbal)

  
  

Each person marks where they sit on a visual spectrum.

Prompt discussion:

• Where do we differ?

• How do our team processes reflect our preferences? 

• Where might we clash/agree/stretch ourselves?

• How can we make this work for us?

This builds empathy and shared agreements and helps to learn about each other. You might also find it exposes some areas for attention or maybe a topic for focus next time.

Credit for some of these ideas goes to teams I have lead over the years.  Most teams I have worked with have asked to separate project progress discussions from team working and are keen to make that format work. One team created rules for our way of working discussions. Firstly, a revolving chairperson, so everyone got a go to decide what we discussed. This is useful as it the conversation becomes owned by the group.  Secondly, the topic had to be related to building our skills OR ways of working, it could not be hijacked for project progress.  The real beauty is to look for opportunities to listen, learn and take action.  Not just to run more social activities.

It’s worth considering how to prioritise work like this.  I have a former colleague who is insistent that social activities (that are more informal than described here) should be done in work time. Why, when his feels like an unaffordable luxury?  Because building teams is critical to work success. Why should we consider them less worthy of fitting in a workday than project meetings? Putting them outside work time is not inclusive either.  That’s thought provoking. Where is team function in the to-do list?  First, or last?

Try one of these ideas and see what happens. I'd love to hear. Or share your experience and ideas.

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