When you think about business technology, you might not immediately think about the relevance of creativity. In fact, innovative and creative thinking is important, and your IT team will benefit from embracing it. Today we’ll take a look at why creativity is crucial, even in IT, and how to encourage your employees to be creative.
How Creativity Benefits Businesses
A creative team can be very useful for any organization. Let’s look at some of the ways that a creative IT department can help your business.
Greater Efficiency
Creative thinkers thrive on challenges. Set out the problem and they’ll be motivated to get going, filtering out strategies that are likely to fail and homing in on solutions. It makes for better outcomes, and faster problem-solving. This is valuable in all aspects of business, but it can be especially useful in an IT department.
A Focus on Results
Being creative means coming up with workable solutions. Creative people are geared towards results, and able to focus on the process and the end goals. Of course, even the best ideas may not always pan out, but creatives can turn that into a positive, building on the experience to find the solution that will work.
Enhanced Thinking
Thinking creatively in one area can lead to more productive thinking more generally. The creative mind often thinks laterally, instead of being confined to the problem in front of them. A team that can bring a variety of perspectives to a problem, and think around it, will have the edge and improved chances of success.
Leadership Abilities
Creative thinkers often make good leaders too. That could be in relation to their own work or in the context of teamwork. Having team members who can take the lead, even in relatively small ways, can enhance internal processes and productivity.
Nurturing Creativity
There’s no doubt that there are advantages to having creative people in your IT team. So – how can you encourage them to use and grow their creative skills?
Promote Collaboration
It’s a little-known truth, but IT generally isn’t always very collaborative. But it doesn’t have to be that way. One way to encourage collaborative working is to occasionally set up small groups and set them a problem to solve. It shouldn’t be anything too major, but a low-stakes challenge can help them appreciate the benefits of balancing their expertise with that of other team members.
Brainstorm Customer Service Challenges
You can also get your IT team to work together on higher-stakes projects – with the proviso that the problem they work on has to be something in the real world, that affects your clients. This frame will help focus people’s problem-solving skills in an applied way, not just in the abstract. It’s also a great way to move forward on problems you need to address in your business.
Support New Ideas
Not every idea that your IT staff puts forward is going to fly, but there should always be space for people to put them forward and receive constructive feedback. It’s a great group exercise for your IT team. The saying goes that ‘Two minds are better than one’, and people may pick up on someone’s idea and be able to use it for problem-solving in another area of your business.
We Can Help Your Team to Get Creative
There’s one barrier to creative work in IT, and that’s time. Your team might have packed schedules, wall-to-wall appointments to deal with and a stack of requests to follow up on. That militates against nurturing creativity in your team.
Here’s how we can help. We can take over some of the tasks that take up too much of your IT team’s time. That will give them the time to come up with great ideas to benefit your organization. For more information about our services, call Quikteks today at (973) 882-4644.