Unfortunately, keeping
a vibrant innovation culture alive is not a single effort deal. As
with a flywheel, there is entropy working against such a culture. And as with a flywheel, innovation leaders need to regularly do things to keep the innovative brains of their organizations challenged to remain fully awake. We have to regularly throw additional energy into the flywheel to keep itspinning creatively.
Our friend Ami Henriques at McCormick recently came up with a great way to energize the innovative brains in her colleagues. And it was cheap. As in responsibly frugal.
Ami took the gator break posters -- which are free to you BTW, get them here: http://www.newandimproved.com/gatorbreaks/-- printed them up, and dispersed them around the business site. She then engaged her people in a scavenger hunt where they needed to read the gatorbreak, answer some questions, and attempt to find all of the posters as they went through their day in order to be eligible for an award. In Ami's words, "With 0 budget and a need to be conscientious of not taking up too much of people's work time, it was a great way to provide our folks with some learning, fun, and interaction.
Folks who completed the hunt had a shot at things like our foam gator or a copy of Ami's favorite innovation. There was some fun confusion that people were creative about as well. Poster #5 on the website leads to the website of our evil twin sister company, and the only difference between #7 and #4 is an acronym. When people could'nt find #5, they wrote things like "alligator ate it" or "alligators desert."
Our hats off to Ami for energizing innovative brains while keeping money in their pockets!
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