Igniting Innovation from Anywhere: Leaders' Strategies for Remote Teams

Fostering a culture of innovation in a remote environment requires a unique approach. How do you spark those “aha!” moments when your team isn’t huddled around a whiteboard? How do you encourage collaboration and risk-taking when communication happens through screens?

We asked leaders across various industries to share their strategies for igniting innovation in a remote setting. Their insights reveal a fascinating blend of technology, trust-building, and a willingness to embrace new ways of thinking and working.

Read on!

Adrien Kallel
CEO & Co-Founder, Remote People

A simple but effective way to boost innovation in a remote team is to set up regular brainstorming sessions with people from different areas of the company. Get folks from engineering, design, product, and other teams together to focus on specific challenges.

When you bring in different perspectives, you often uncover ideas you wouldn’t find if everyone stuck to their own group.

To make these sessions work, use a straightforward approach like asking focused questions (“How might we…?”) to keep things on track. It’s also important to make sure everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas, no matter how out there they might seem.

Another useful tactic is setting up a space for people to drop ideas anytime, whether that’s a shared Slack channel or a simple online board. This keeps the ideas flowing between meetings and makes sure quieter voices get heard too.

It’s a no-fuss way to keep innovation going remotely.

Kris Flank
Head of Growth, Lunar Links

I’ll be honest, it’s challenging to implement an innovative culture in a remote setting.

Since everyone is working at their own location, establishing the connection is difficult but here’s what I do: I casually talk to my team.

We talk most of the time and let them know of the current situation. With that, they’ll feel more confident in sharing their ideas which can foster collaboration.

As a result, we can come up with more innovative ideas at the same time, they become deeply involved since it’s their ideas that are coming to life.

That’s hitting two birds with one stone 🙂

When fostering a culture of innovation in a remote work environment, I’ve found that building genuine trust among team members is paramount.

Early on in my experience with Auckland & Beyond Tours, I realized that remote settings can obscure emotional cues and intentions, leading to misunderstandings.

To counter this, I’ve made it a point to regularly schedule informal virtual coffee chats, where the team can discuss innovative ideas without the pressures of a formal meeting setting.

This approach not only encourages open dialogue and creativity but also helps build camaraderie, ultimately leading to more collaborative and innovative solutions.

Trust, bolstered by consistent communication and mutual respect, is the bedrock upon which a thriving innovative culture is built.

Dr. Sarah Porter
Licensed Psychologist & Founder,  Dr. Sarah Porter

Try brainwriting instead of traditional brainstorming.

Before coming together as a group to discuss a problem you need to solve, send your team the question to consider and ask each person to generate ideas on their own.

When you introduce the prompt, encourage quantity over quality – perfectly polished solutions are not necessary at this stage of innovation – and invite “out there” ideas – the zanier, the better. Have your team members put their thoughts into a shared document before you meet.

Plan to then convene as a team twice. Use the first virtual meeting to conduct a group review of the brainwriting results with a focus on coming up with more ideas – those that build on what folks wrote plus those that are wholly original.

After giving team members a few days to reflect, host a second virtual meeting where you decide which idea you’d like to move forward.

This process is time well spent. Research tells us that allowing for ample divergent thinking before converging on a decision leads to more creative solutions – a real win for innovation!

Aurelija Gintaliene
COO & Co-founder, Breezit

Being in an industry where creativity and innovation are a two of the most crucial job requirements, we needed to find a way around remote working and try to make sure that this aspect of the job stays alive and thriving.

A few years post-pandemic, it seems that we have managed quite nicely, despite everything.

One of the ways we try to continuously foster a culture of innovation and creativity is to conduct regular check-ins and provide feedback to individual team members.

At a glance, this may seem counter-productive, but it certainly isn’t. This allows team members to discuss at length the projects that they currently have going on. By giving them feedback, they might gain a different perspective on an issue they may be struggling with, and all they needed was an outside eye to make the aspect work.

This space allows employees to feel comfortable with sharing their thoughts and suggestions without any pushback and criticism. It is important to validate their suggestions and help guide them.

Matt Erhard
Managing Partner, Summit Search Group

It’s been my experience that collaboration often yields some of the most significant innovations, especially when you can bring together teams from a variety of different backgrounds, functions, and departments.

In a remote environment, facilitating this kind of “cross-pollination” between different groups or areas of the organization often requires more effort, but it’s worth putting the time and attention into it because you can get some very innovative ideas as a result.

The first step of this is up to leadership, and that’s creating cross-functional teams that encourage more conversation between people from different areas of your business.

Consider ways that you can adjust team assignments or workflows to bring more diverse individuals, and the ideas they bring with them, together on projects.

Once you have those teams, consider all the possible ways they could work together.

Video conferencing can be a useful tool for this but it’s definitely not the only option, and a Zoom meeting isn’t always the best option.

Sometimes shared documents where multiple team members can edit and add their thoughts can be the better approach, for instance, allowing for asynchronous collaboration that can give team members more time to think about and make use of their colleagues’ input.

In our team, we start with a virtual meeting where everyone is encouraged to share personal topics or good news, helping to build rapport.

After that, we transition into what we call a ‘Level 10 Meeting.’ In this part, we review the tasks from the previous week, address any current issues, brainstorm, and make sure we are on track.

At the end, we rate the meeting on a scale of 1-10 to determine its effectiveness.

This structure not only promotes open communication and problem-solving but also ensures we continuously improve our meetings.

At the risk of being accused of holding meetings that could have been emails, one of the best tools we have to maintain a culture of innovation–or any culture, for that matter–in a remote environment is holding regular “report” meetings where different individuals, teams, and departments let us know what they’re up to, why they’re doing it, how it’s progressing, and how we can help.

This helps to keep everyone on the same page and lays the groundwork for the kinds of collaborative relationships that make innovation possible.

The HR Spotlight team thanks these industry leaders for offering their expertise and experience and sharing their insights.

Do you wish to contribute to the next HR Spotlight article? Or is there an insight or idea you’d like to share with readers across the globe?

Write to us at connect@HRSpotlight.com, and our team will help you share your insights.

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