Who’s on your team? All great ideas require an execution team; the individuals that will work together to take your idea from conception to reality. Identifying the people that are not only trained but compelled to “do the work” will ensure better solutions and ultimately better results in the areas that matter.
[mks_pullquote align=”left” width=”300″ size=”24″ bg_color=”#dd3333″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]In recruiting people to support your project, think beyond job titles, roles, and responsibilities.[/mks_pullquote]In recruiting people to support your project, think beyond job titles, roles, and responsibilities. Your team should include a diverse group of individuals, with distinct points of view, and that interact with different parts of the system that you wish to impact. Together, they will collectively begin to see something that individually none of them could see. Your ideal team will represent a diversity of thought, talents, training, and life experiences.
Your Innovation Team – 6 Key Roles
In building your innovation team, look for the following roles:
- Visionary – The visionary is the person with the big idea. They add value to the team in bringing their original ideas and powerful imagination about what a better future will or could be.
- Thinker – The thinker is the person with a concern for understanding “why,” for identifying opportunities and areas of impact and for thinking it all the way through. They create ideological revolutions and add value to the team by listening, observing, analyzing and challenging how your innovation can make a significant impact and address life’s most important questions.
- Innovator – The innovator is the person with a concern for “how” you will execute the big idea. They add value to the team in identifying and developing new methods, tools and ways to make a significant positive change.
- Leader – The leader is the person with a concern for getting things done. They will add value to the team by leading, inspiring, empowering and moving the other team members toward the common goal and their highest levels of accomplishment.
- Communicator – The communicator is the storyteller, the person that can masterfully convey the big idea to others. Their goal is to transfer knowledge, feelings, and thoughts to persuade, to inform and to change attitudes & behaviors.
- Subject Matter Experts (SME) – Don’t forget the people that are impacted by the solution you are creating.
But First
Before you recruit your innovation team, you should know who you are, so that you can understand where you fit on the team.
