[MUSIC] You learned in an earlier module that cloud technology is not reserved for an elite group of data scientists in high-tech start-ups. The same is true for fostering an innovation culture or scaling the garage mindset. You can cultivate this mindset in your role and your team and across your organization no matter where you are. You can begin with four fundamental questions. As I introduce them, I'll give you sample answers from different industries as inspiration for your own process. Grab a piece of paper or use the template in the student workbook. Write down three headers across the top of your page: my role, my team, and organization. Answer each question across each column. First question, what's your why? Can you write down in one sentence what your mission is? Your team's mission? Your organization's mission? For example, Ella works in a clothing store, her mission is not to sell clothes. Her mission is to help customers feel like the best version of themselves, and to actually look it too. Question 2, what are some principles you can use today or simple changes you can make that would encourage innovative thinking and experimenting? Again, think about this in your role, for your team, and across your organization. Consider your office space or working environment, how is it structured? What about the furniture? Is it constricting communication between employees with cubical style design? Are there habits you can change or additions you can make to this space so people can bump into each other and problem solve without having to setup an official meeting? How could you change your physical space to include those collaborations? Let's look at an example. Mark is a manager in a warehouse that employs 100 people for an e-commerce company. The why for his team is to seamlessly connect buyers and sellers directly. He's learned about the innovation mindset and wants to improve the physical environment to encourage more innovation. He doesn't have the budget nor the authority to make big structural changes but he can do some small things. At lunch, he puts the tables together in the office kitchen, so people sit together instead of separately. This naturally promotes dialogue between employees. Next, he uses some of his budget to put up whiteboards with markers around the warehouse. On each he asks thought provoking questions like, how can we reduce the time to package goods so you guys can go home early on Fridays? Every time employees walk by they're incentivized to offer their ideas. Question 3, if you're in a leadership role, what are three ways you can adjust your management style to help your team feel more comfortable to share ideas? How could you be a stronger coach, seeking to empower and embolden your team? For example, Jorge is a team leader at a design agency. He manages four graphic designers, he takes the client brief, relays it to his team, and reviews each visual in detail. Without realizing it, Jorge sometimes restricts his team's creativity by telling them what to do. Trying to put into practice the innovation mindset, Jorge is adjusting his management style to help his team be the rock stars. He records the client calls and shares them with his team. Even better, he opens the calls to his team so they can hear the client's needs directly. He sets up a 30-minute kickoff meeting with the entire team, challenging his team to bring their top ideas to solve the design problem. He gives feedback early and often both to reinforce what's working and to make constructive suggestions so that they can improve their work. As his team feels more supported and empowered to be creative, they generate better ideas which result in more satisfied clients. The trust and autonomy on the team is high, which means Jorge can take on more and more diverse projects. Question 4, how much time do you spend perfecting an idea instead of sharing a first draft and iterating it with feedback? What about your peers? Do they feel empowered to test their ideas? If you're in a leadership position, how much you create more psychological safety and fuel continuous learning for your teams? For example, Anya is a regional manager for a chain of coffee shops. She's realized that she does not apply the innovation mindset in her role and wants to change that. She starts small, in her staff meeting, she begins by sharing a few of her seasonal product ideas for her team to consider for annual planning. And invites everyone to give feedback and to propose better suggestions. For the remainder of the meeting, she facilitates an ideation session with her staff to address some of the challenges on the team since losing a few resources last month. She sets the expectation for creativity by using the "yes AND" is better than "no but" rule. The goal is to build on each other's ideas and that all ideas are welcome. This leads to a natural flow of ideas and each one better than the previous. By the end of the meeting, the team has picked their top five ideas. Anya wants to see the ideas implemented. She also wants to encourage continuous learning within her region. She and her store managers agreed to pilot the ideas and to host a talk one month later to share best practices with the team. In a few weeks, as staff feel more empowered through Anya's reinforcements, more and more people start to look for opportunities to add value within their corporate office and for their in store customers. Anya takes notice and publicly recognizes her team's efforts at the next corporate meeting. What Ella's, Mark's, Jorge's, and Anya's stories tell us is that a culture of innovation starts with a dedicated mindset and small changes. And you can do the same. Consciously question your mission, focus on your users, challenge yourself and your teams to find 10x solutions and celebrate your learnings. You'll soon discover that this innovation mindset will be your key to solving the cultural, business, and technology challenges of the new Cloud paradigm.
