Stop Hunting Down the Perfect “Ideas Person.” The Solution is in Your Workplace Culture

Anyone in your team could have your next big idea, so long as you create the right environment for it to happen.

We love the concept of an “ideas person.” Someone who is labelled as creative and innovative. The person we bring in for those curly problems and difficult meetings. The one with regular and predictable light bulb moments.

They’re convenient.

They’re reliable.

They’re amazing.

And if they burn out, they leave a huge hole in the team. A hole you urgently need to fill.  

Where does one get an “ideas person”? And how do we convince them to work for us? How much should one pay an “ideas person” anyway? Do we pay them by the idea? Would that help?

What if anyone and everyone in your team could become an “ideas person”? What would it take to make that happen?

Dispelling Idea Myths

(If you’re familiar with my blog, you’ll likely already know the information under this heading. But it’s all worth a repeat, especially for those who are new to the concepts.)

Firstly, ideas are relatively predictable. They often occur under certain replicable circumstances. Create the circumstances and you increase the likelihood of ideas forming.

At their most basic, ideas are created via input and then connection. We take in information (hopefully from varied sources) and then we allow our brain time, space, and opportunity to create connections between that information. Those two elements are the recipe for the sparks that ignite ideas.

Ideas build on each other like links in a chain. By allowing yourself or your team to start small and throw around random thoughts, you’ll create an ideas chain that can build into something you never expected. No idea is too small, too strange, too random, or too silly. Anything that starts the chain or continues the chain takes you one step closer to something actionable and new.

Secondly, creativity forms by finding novelty and value. When we expose ourselves to new information and experiences, we are providing ourselves with fodder for our creativity to work with. When we find value in small things (like the tiny or silly first ideas in an idea chain) we encourage our creativity to engage with the question at hand.

Innovation and creativity are regularly portrayed as qualities someone either has or they don’t. They’re either an “ideas person” or they’re not. But if you can create the right environment and reward the right things, an innovative idea could strike anyone in your team. And that’s a win for everyone.

Creating the Right Environment (Novelty)

Let’s go back to that definition of creativity. Creativity (a key element in innovation) is enhanced by novelty and finding value in things (even if others might not see them as important). But both of those things are in the eye of the beholder.

The fact that wearing a tie can reduce blood flow to the brain by 7.5 percent (apparently) may no longer be news to me, but it’s likely the first time you’re hearing about it. Is that of value to you? Depends on your smart attire habits, doesn’t it? Either way, I’ve likely introduced a fresh piece of knowledge for your brain to play with, and that’s always a plus. (Unless the information is about nematodes. I’ve never seen personal benefit from knowing more about nematodes. I challenge you to prove me wrong.)

Novelty in a workplace can feel uncomfortable. We like knowing all the things we need to know about our job. And we don’t always want to be distracted by information that’s not immediately pertinent to our current task. But if we do things as we’ve always done them and only know what we already knew, how will we produce anything different, interesting, and innovative?

Does that mean you need to compile a daily newsletter of random facts to keep everyone in your team amused and thinking? If that’s your current bright idea, why not run with it! But novelty can be found in something as simple as asking a colleague “what do you do for fun on the weekend?” or “what happened on your holiday?”

We each of us are a collection of interesting and novel information. Sometimes simply crosspollinating that information provides novelty.

Novelty can also come from including someone from another department in a meeting to see if they have anything they’d like to contribute. Could someone from accounts help with a deadline crisis? Could someone from marketing help refine a product idea? Breaking down silos provides opportunity for connection, both the personal and the conceptual. And each connection opportunity is also an idea and innovation opportunity.

Novelty is always something to seek. A workplace cannot be innovative without fresh input and the appreciation for as-yet-unexplored directions. And any idea will be, in and of itself, novel, because it will be a suggestion to do things differently to how they are currently done.

But novelty is only half the equation. We need to make the workplace a safe environment for our novel ideas to arrive into and inhabit.

Making Innovation Safe (Value)

What are your workplace’s values? Safety? Efficiency? Productivity? Measurable results? Right first time? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?

Those all have their place, but in the wrong situation they can terminally inhibit the production of ideas.

If we’re always looking for the safe option, then innovation will look dangerous and we will water down the possibilities until they aren’t any different to what’s already been done, perhaps even less effective than normal operations.

That is definitely not to say that we’d want to endanger any member of the team or be reckless with the company’s bottom line. But when the pressure is on to produce a complete idea—an idea that ticks every box and has no challenges or problems before you even open your mouth to postulate it—you’ll just never open your mouth. Opportunity missed. Or rather, opportunity never there in the first place.

Ideas are not efficient. They’re often not yet measurable. Experimentation temporarily reduces productivity. And if you’re experimenting, then you’re likely not going to be right the first time. Something that ain’t broke may get significantly better with some innovative thought, but only if we’re willing to slow down to get on the bicycle.

If you want ideas in your team, you need to accommodate curiosity and daydreaming and randomness and diverse thinking processes.

You need to be comfortable with the long pause as everyone has a bit of a ponder on a subject.

And, most importantly, everyone needs to feel safe to share their thoughts.

There can be no such thing as a silly suggestion, no thought considered too small, no possibility judged as too wild. Ideas build on each other. If you cut the idea chain, you’ll lose the innovative outcome. People need to know they can bring their authentic self to each and every meeting and share the connections that are happening in their brain, in the knowledge that it will contribute to the whole and perhaps provide novelty to someone else’s brain.

Change your perception of safety from efficiency and scheduling to psychological safety where anyone can bring a thought to the table. Even if the idea presented doesn’t pan out or lead to anything, the fact the team member had it, and they shared it, and the rest of the team saw that it was safe to do so will move you down the path of innovation one step at a time.

You don’t need a special “ideas person” to make this all work. By providing a workplace of novelty and safety you can help your whole team produce ideas. If you value ideas (no matter how small) and team thoughts (no matter how random) you are working your way towards the idea that will provide you that actionable, measurable outcome. But your team need the right environment and culture before they can bring their innovation contributions to the table.

If you’d like some quick, actionable tips on how to do this with your team, subscribe to my companion newsletter The Bright Idea Bulletin, containing punchy and practical tips for implementation.