So what does an Innovator look like?

Those with Innovation in their top values may seem highly creative, but that’s because they want to do things in a new and different way. Those that value Innovation will thrive in organizations where opportunities are provided to apply inventiveness and ingenuity. What does this look like?

It looks like allowing the office manager to try out her new scheduling tool. Or giving the editor permission to create a process that makes her daily process go a little faster. It means giving your manager the ability to come up with a solution for your performance management issue or tasking the recruitment team with solving a lagging retention number.

Those who value Innovation want to come up with NEW solutions to the problems they face, even if something is humming along fine. This can help your company as much as your innovators. In fact, compared to other companies, outperformers are more than three times as likely to have adopted smarter working practices, according to an IBM report on the Smarter Workforce.

Sounds like Innovation to me.

That can be difficult for bosses, who want to get the most bang for their buck out of employees and would love to see things that are broken get fixed. So meet in the middle. Manage your Innovation-oriented individuals by giving them options to apply innovation to issues that are already plaguing your organization. Never got that new VOIP system installed? Allow an innovator to do it for you!

Companies like 3M and Google already know the value of giving an innovator some time to think.

The notion of 20 percent time at work was made popular by the companies out in Silicon Valley, specifically, the folks at Google made it a phenomenon.
It has led to some of the biggest advancements on the web today, things like GoogleMaps, Gmail, Google Transit, AdSense, and the popular Google Reader, were all made in 20 percent time. (Read more on OfficeVibe)
But set a deadline

Open-ended projects will languish with an innovator at the helm. Innovation-oriented individuals can get bogged down in the minutiae of daily decisions, especially in a day and age when new products, platforms and tools come out all the time. In fact, shorter deadlines may be a great idea for much of your company (or you can chunk up a large project into smaller, deadline focused pieces).

As illustrator Christoph Niemann pointed out in a 99U interview, deadlines can actually help us by creating a fixed window of opportunity that requires us to be focused, pragmatic, and decisive:
In advertising, and also editorial, when people have 2 days, the briefing is much better, and the discussion is much better. It’s not that people just sign off on anything because they’re in a hurry. They’re just really looking at what they have, and trying to make the best product, and get it done. (Read more on 99U)
Projects you could give to an Innovative individual:

Proposals for new clients: They’ll tackle client issues and give you a couple of new ways to solve them.

Stagnant number overhaul: Do you have sales numbers that haven’t hit budget? Ask an innovator to take a look. They’ll give you insight into new sales ideas and revenue channels.

Onboarding a new team member: They might shock you and create an entirely new process!

These individuals seek to bring modernization to processes and frequently introduce contemporary methods to mature operations. Translation? If it’s old and boring, or hasn’t changed in a decade, give your Innovation-focused employee a chance to take a crack at it. While their methods may be different or new-fangled, they may shock you with their take on things. Encourage their creativity in decision making but be sure to give them parameters and a solid deadline.

This is how you manage someone who has Innovation as their top value, but you want to know something? Innovation could be your top value!

This article orginally featured on the Vitru blog. 

Bio: Ryan Mead

Ryan Mead is the CEO and Founder of Vitru, an employee assessment tool that provides recruiters, hiring professionals, coaches and managers with the insights they need to manage their teams and make better hiring decisions. Powered by science, yet practical and easy to use for a variety of teams, Vitru works for organizations of all size. Want to learn more? Visit our blog or sign up for a free team building personality test account to assess your team today! Tweet me at @GoVitru