What Are You Doing to Nourish Creativity in Your Workplace?
Creative employees can help grow your business by coming up with better solutions to problems, expanding sales opportunities and distinguishing your brand and services from competitors.
Photo by Jason Goodman via Unsplash
Creativity cannot be forced, but it can always be fostered. It all comes down to how you, as a company, can nurture creativity within the environment that surrounds you.
Fostering innovation is a big challenge for companies, most often trying to use the physical office space to help make the workplace more creative, when more times then not, innovation is simply tied to company culture. It’s no wonder that big name internet and social media firms are trying everything from hi-tech sleep pods to lavish mini golf courses in the hopes of developing work environments that foster innovative behavior and freedom of thinking.
Creative employees can help grow your business by coming up with better solutions to problems, expanding sales opportunities and distinguishing your brand and services from competitors.
In order to foster a creative workplace environment, first you have to help spark creative thinking in your employees. Many people forget how to let their minds run wild and come up with innovative ideas. Give them a little help by encouraging the right mindset to take hold. Try these ways to allow a creative thoughts to come through.
- Ask “what if?”
Many authors have written books that explore the magic of “what if?”. What if you took a large black marker and wrote “what if?” on the office walls? Would you have an office full of more creative employees? Under the clock, next to a window, or near the coffee machine would all be good places to post this question. It’s a deceptively simple exercise, and it’s a great way to help employees open up their creative thought processes. Give them some reminders to take their thinking in new directions by putting the question right in front of them. Soon, they’ll be thinking this way all the time, and your business can benefit from the results.
