Finding time to think about the future of your business or keeping an eye open for new opportunities can be difficult. Particularly amidst demanding business pressures.
In fact, according to our recent member surveys – most find ‘lack of time and resources’ and ‘retaining talent’ the most challenging factors to create an innovative business. So, if this is you, know you aren’t alone and that there’s something you can do. All it takes is to change the way you look at a situation – make it an opportunity not a problem.
Perhaps this is the time when you need to review your business from a holistic perspective and be open to new ideas and feedback. Why is it hard to employ good staff? What are others doing that you’re not or vice versa? How do others see your business?
Answering these simple questions can reveal a world of possibilities, but of course aren’t always the high priority over other jobs like answering phone calls or emails, shipping orders or meeting deadlines.
Firefighting is great but ‘forward fighting’ is essential and another way of saying ‘innovation matters for my future’.
Innovation: It’s not lack of time, but lack of priority
Innovation can be a low business priority for several reasons.
- Even though management say “Innovation is the number one priority”, it is not demonstrated to employees. Until that happens, few bother with active creative thinking.
- Being creative often doesn’t look like work
- Creativity and innovation sound like fuzzy concepts. We find most employees are clear on preparing financial projections, responding to customer query’s or filing report because their employers actively engage in training them in delivering these concrete tasks with clear rules. So why aren’t they equally engaged in training their staff to explore unknowns and inspiring creativity and innovation?
What can organisations do to fix this?
At the end of the day – it’s about demonstrating to your team that innovation is a priority. So get out there and start sharing stories about ideas people have had, how they were developed and the results of seeing it through. Equally – don’t be afraid to share the stories of failures too. They’re important learnings for future iterations!
Consider investing in creativity or innovation training that gives people tools and techniques for being creative. Doing so, shows you’re serious about it and starts a precedence of recognising and rewarding creative thinking and innovative action within your business.
At HERA, we strongly believe that this is an important step in changing mindsets toward innovation in organisations. That’s why we’ve invested in creating an innovation course specifically designed to make it easier for our members to take this step for their future sustainability.
This opportunity will maximise your business to deliver greater value through streamlining processes, procedures and policies in your day to day business by investing in creativity training. We start off on Friday 29 June – so come along and learn what our international line up of speakers have to say as the experts in their field of innovation culture, customer discovery and preparing your own innovation strategy.
How does it work?
We know finding time can be difficult to invest in training around a concept that seems out of your comfort zone. But this is exactly why it’s important you engage – so you do get comfortable with the idea of innovation.
To address concerns around having your resources away from the business for extended periods of time we’ve ensured this five day course is delivered over five months (one day per month). This time investment will be one of the most worthwhile decisions you’ll make for the future of your business.
If cost is the factor stopping you from exploring this training further – please don’t let it be. Talk to our General Manager Industry Development Dr Boaz Habib – because we want our industry to transform, and are open to supporting you further if it’ll help you engage in this transformation.
Places are limited and filling fast, so don’t miss your chance to attend this power-packed high-profile course exclusively for our members only.