Building innovative team (culture) - resources

As a part and culture of Humane Warriors, we are always questioning about how we reamin innovative in our approach to bring creativity and innovation with each our volunteer and team member. To do this, we have read through multiple material, heard podcasts and we are reading several books. But above everything, we belive in sharing our knowledge with all, thus here are some resources and notes on them, which we felt worth exploring.

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Something core to creating innovative team is to first Foster an innovative workplace (Some tips below by ReWork, Google)

  1. Shared vision - Make sure everyone knows where the organization is heading. (Is HW clear about this in the first place? :shrug:)

    1. Set objectives and key results (OKRs) to achieve your vision. At Google, OKRs are set at company, team, and individual levels each quarter. OKRs communicate where you’re headed and how progress will be measured

    2. Question your core values -> and dedue them to purpose (why), mission(how), strategy (what), and goals

    3. Tools to conduct the Vision-Mission of team

      1. [re:Work] Building A Shared Vision Slides 

      2. re:Work | Building A Shared Vision Session

    • Autonomy - Allow employees to define their own work as much as possible.

      1. Foster a culture of learning: volunteer-to-volunteer meet up and learning

      2. interdepartmental connections,

      3. Suggestions and not mandates

  • Intrinsic motivation - Hire naturally curious people who like to learn.

    • Risk-taking - Enable employees to feel psychologically safe to take risks and try new ideas.

    • Connection & collaboration - Make it easy for employees to find partners and work together.

Recommended book reading: The Making of a Manager by Julie Zhuo  

  1. As a manger, have a multiplier effect for the team and not additive (e.g. teach skills, or learn skills for and with the team, rather than doing the same process as everyone which might take same/ more time)

  2. Know yourself: know that if you are a leader or a manager -> 

    1. You can be a leader without being a manager, but not vice versa 

    2. Do you really really love being a manager (people’s person?) 

Something which has helped us (at Humane Warriors) has been the postmortem exercise and here are some of the tools to make yours: [re:Work] Postmortem Exercise and [re:Work] Premortem Guide  

Hope these simple list of tools help your team remain innovative!