Creating an innovative environment
In this blog post, Analytics Engines’ Head of Engineering Martin McCartan outlines how he fosters innovation within the workplace and encourages individual development.
It all starts with the people you have around you and providing the talent within your team with the space they need to foster new and engaging ideas.
In my experience, it’s vitally important to make the investment of time to encourage creativity and innovative ideas to flourish. Adopting Agile/Scrum processes has helped create space for this to happen regularly, and this has become embedded within our workplace culture.
I look to encourage the team to take positive risks. It really is true that the fastest way to kill creativity is to develop a culture that punishes failure. It’s important to give yourself space to fail because it’s inevitably going to happen at some stage. The most successful people in the world have one thing in common: they all failed and learnt from their mistakes. When an idea hasn’t worked out, understand why, and expand and develop it. Then tell the whole team to try again and come back with more ideas.
Our approach is geared around empowering the individual and actively encouraging colleagues to come forward with their ideas and to encourage dialogue before important decisions are made. Not every idea is taken forward, that’s just part of the process but I feel it’s incredibly important to provide feedback and advice so that team members can understand the rationale behind a particular decision and can see how they can contribute further.
Encouraging the whole team to think creatively and be innovative in how they approach their day-to-day roles should be factored into their individual development plans and objectives. What I have learnt throughout my career is that companies that do not invest in their people and offer training opportunities will suffer in the long run.
Working environments that welcome brave decisions and unusual thinking, whether it works first-time around or not, are the key to the success of nurturing innovation. Thinking innovatively at work is not just about engaging the creative few, it’s about implementing it as the ‘new normal’ throughout the organisation.
Embedding innovation, creative thinking, and collaboration into the core of our work, and adding it to our team’s daily work activities, helps to make it much easier to complete tasks, execute projects successfully, and reach our company’s own objectives.
Work with us
We’re always looking for great talent to join our team, and we’re currently recruiting for several roles across the company at the moment. To find out more and apply click HERE.
