Maximizing Creativity and Ownership: How Early Team Involvement Drives Amazing Results
Photo by Clark Tibbs on Unsplash
Bring the team in as early as possible. Invite them to wrestle with the ideas and the change.
Sounds simple enough, right? Not always. When you’re running a small business or nonprofit, you can easily get caught up in the momentum of the work and forget to stop and consider who needs to be onboard and when. Too often, I’ve seen smart, creative leaders get nowhere (or not far enough) with their ideas because they’re held up by their own people.
The way around this is to include them as early as possible. This isn’t always easy and it often feels inefficient. But the time put in upfront leads to incredible results later on.
Here’s a story of a company who did it just right and the results speak for themselves. Let me introduce you to one of my favorite clients [shhh! I don’t have favorites! Who told you that?!]: CWP Design Studio.
I was in a meeting with the founder and principal, Corey. Her excitement was palpable through the computer screen as she described to me a niche that she was ready to focus her studio around: building brands that would bridge generations. She was “jazzed,” she told me, about brands that would reach Boomers and Gen Z.
There was just one issue. Corey didn’t have time to rebrand her company. She was too busy working on her very full client load as it was.
“Well,” I asked her. “What would you tell a client who said they needed a rebrand but couldn’t focus on it right now?”
Corey sighed and looked at me with the “I know what you’re doing” look. “I would tell them the time up front will save you time down the road. You’ll have to do the work eventually. Bringing the team in now is really the most efficient way forward.”
So we scheduled a team session. We designed some really fun activities to get the team’s creative juices flowing. The team wrestled with the positives and the challenges of the new brand and finally came up with some immediate next steps to moving it forward.
By the end of the team session, every member of the team was 100% in. They were all “jazzed” about cross-generational branding. Because everyone on the team was invited in early a few key things happened:
Everyone bought in - and was all in - on the change.
Creativity took center stage as the group pushed each other to come up with new ideas.
Staff members identified challenges early on and came up with plans to address them.
It was quiet on my end for a while. And then, just a month ago, I received an email from CWP Design Studio with the subject, “Pssst - we’ve rebranded!” And the results were AMAZING! (Seriously! Go check out their website!).
This is a great story with amazing results. But if you take just one lesson from this story, let it be this - Bring your team in early. Give them the opportunity to wrestle with the change, the positives and the negatives. When people are involved in this way, they feel ownership over the results instead of being tasked with them. And the results will speak for themselves (just like this case).
When you're ready to get the time, team, strategy, and data you need to focus on your vision, here are three ways we can help:
Eliminate extra work for your team. Messy internal operations will hold your team back from achieving your vision. Download our free guide: 7 Ways to Eliminate Extra Work in Your Small Business.
Get posts just like this one straight to your inbox. Subscribe to our newsletter: Small but Mighty.
Take your vision from dream to done. Get a completely customized look at the inside operations of your business and easy to implement solutions. Book a 30 minute call.