What does it mean to be thinking ‘WOW’?

Some of our recent programs for virtual leadership teams have been focused on being enablers of innovative thinking for their teams.

In the book, ‘Creativity Today’, the How-Now-Wow matrix explains what it means to be thinking ‘NOW’ and thinking ‘WOW’. Thinking ‘NOW’ means to be focussed on low risk, high acceptability, and on the low hanging fruit. Thinking ‘WOW’ is focusing on innovative breakthrough ideas that can be implemented.

Leaders have a great responsibility in steering teams towards driving such a mind-set to arrive at solutions. It will also help teams to come out with innovative ideas at a faster pace.

Here we share three employee engagement practices to help your team move from thinking ‘NOW’ to ‘WOW’:

Encourage Inquiry:

Especially while leading virtual teams, it can be a challenge to ideate with the team. Asking questions can help team members to come up with solutions that will enable them to take ownership. Set precedence, by having a set of back-pocket questions that can be used in different contexts. Encourage the team members to ask questions as well. Questions have a powerful ability to triggering ideas and different perspectives. They work because it fulfills an innate need we are all have ie. to feel heard.

Create a Safe Space:

Plants need a healthy ecosystem to grow, a toxic environment curtails their growth. Likewise, innovation in teams requires a safe ecosystem. Team members need a safe environment to fall back on since innovative ideas flow where there is acceptance of experimentation, rapid iteration, and failure. Embrace a team/organizational culture of transparency, recognition, and being connected with team members.

Reach Out:

Have a culture of connecting with different stakeholders, personalities, organizations which will add immense value and jolts the patterns of thought process. This will position your team/organization to create your very own ‘Medici effect’ which occurs in an intersection of cultures, domains, and disciplines leading to remarkable innovations.

If you are looking for your leaders who are managing virtual teams to experience such mind-set and behaviors through virtual team activity simulations.

Reach out to us. We would love to be catalysts of behavior change for you, your team, and your organization to move to a space of significantly increased effectiveness.