Names have been changed.
James looked at Wei Man and calmly said, “I don’t know why, but I feel like you’re always cutting me.”
There was a collective tensing of shoulders by the group, as we sat there, wondering what was going to happen next.
“I’m curious as to why you say that.”
James flagged the different incidents where he’d tried to raise an idea, and Wei Man had diverted the conversation back to the task at hand, which was how they would build the marshmallow tower.
Over the next few minutes, we sat there, trying to understand each other’s point of view, with various group members trying to mediate and intervene.
Was this the exercise the facilitators had set us on? Things had seemed familiar.
- Use spaghetti and marshmallows to make a tower.
- Make the highest tower.
How hard could it get?
But if we look at this incident, we would quickly realise this happens regularly at work.
You hear something in a meeting. You want to say something, but just at that moment, you’re reminded of the last time you did say something. Your colleague used the hamburger technique to tell you how that idea sounded great, inserted in the criticism, and then wrapped it up to say, “It’s still a great idea, but perhaps not for now.”
Nothing seemed to change.
Remembering that incident, you suck your comment back in. It doesn't matter if you're working for a supposedly "best workplaces to be". That still happens.
In theory, this is called sub-optimization. You’ve a great idea that could result in a better result, but you choose to keep it in.
Yet as we can see from the above incident, if there is enough safety in the group, the discontent can percolate, emerge, and be worked through.
So if we truly want to be innovative, it’s not just about cherry-picking the laundry list of “How to be innovative”. It is as CORI (Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s Centre of Organizational Resilience) says,
Priming a system for innovation culture:
Building meaningful containment of systems to manage risk, anxiety, and resistance
So the question is not,
How do we be innovative?
But rather, it’s “Why are we not innovating?”
The answer may lie in our own human fears and anxieties.
A story from The Helping Hand, about how we innovated to create a bakery
In April 2020, The Helping Hand was facing a drastic decline in the sales of our furniture as many could not go out.
We looked around for ideas, but we were stuck. There were many things that we could do due to the circuit breaker measures.
As we looked externally at where there was a demand, and internally at what we could do, we decided to start baking goods to sell. Gina, who was previously one of our staff, had some experience with baking.
We had our inaugural baking classes on 25 September 2020, and had the help of Fleming Michael William, Director Training of Cereal Tech School of Baking from International Baptist Church, come and teach this skill to our kitchen staff. They were given regular baking lessons, followed by practice.
Today, it has grown to become a Bakery Cafe, with corporate customers like Far East Organization.
Rather than staying stuck in our fears, we decided to move forward with a bakery.
How can we do the same, in our personal and work lives? Because in a place like today, we might not be able to use the ideas of yesterday to solve the problems of today.
Understand your own internal resistance
Often we don’t create new ideas because we may have our own internal resistances. You may be afraid of what would happen if you shared a seemingly ‘stupid’ idea, and got laughed at.
You do not feel safe to share those ideas. Yes, some of that may be because your organisation is not as open. But are there things within you that you can control? Understand what those are.
For example, in the earlier story, James was taking a big risk by sharing what he genuinely felt about Wei Man. He didn’t have to. He could have swallowed his emotions. Moved on.
But he didn’t. He chose to create his own internal locus of safety, and then share what he felt. That eventually created a better working outcome. If he didn’t do that, he might have sulked and pouted through the entire exercise, wondering why people weren’t listening to him.
Think about how you structure the people receiving your creativity
Often when we look at the places we can be creative, we don’t think about how we can structure it for success. It’s not simply about having an idea, and telling people - I want to do this. You can do that, but it would mean that the innovative spirit would still be with you, and not infect the entire team.
To prime the team to better receive your ideas, in my previous team, I used to tell them,
okay, I know this sounds crazy, but stay with me.
We are going to do this.
This is the role I hope you can take.
Assume the best of the people you work with
One final story before we close. At The Helping Hand, we’ve been fortunate to do many different things over the years. But I think the most important part has been to realise that we’d be nowhere without the residents’ openness and receptiveness to our ideas.
Some would think of ex-offenders as difficult to work with, but when you work with them enough, you’d realize that they too, want to make the most of their time.
And when we too introduce new ideas, perhaps it’d help if we think the best of the people we work with, that they want our success too. We’d be surprised with what we find.