I recently attended a pitch competition, where different startups were presenting their different ideas of how they were going to be the next big thing and change the world. And, the best ones, they tell a story. The stories of their team, their company, and how their ideas got started. This one company got started by talking about nematodes, which are essentially tiny roundworms that eat the roots of many different plants in almost every environment in the world. Literally, if you’ve ever tried to go a vegetable garden, you’ve probably dealt with nematodes in some way or the other.

The most interesting part of the story was not the nematodes, though, it was about silos, and what happens when we get out of silos and involve other people in our ‘problems’. So, what happened in this case was that the wife of the couple who started the company is a microbiologist. In the course of her work, she was studying, or attempting to study, the microscopic brains of these tiny creatures. She was doing what scientists do best, chasing after knowledge just because it’s knowledge that human beings can have—and who knows what it will turn into. But she kept running up against an issue—the tools that she was using to try and study the brains of these creatures kept killing the creatures with their electric pulses and vibrations.

So, she asked her husband for advice and help. In this case, her husband was both an engineer (the type of people that love to solve very specific problems) and someone who had grown up on a farm (the type of guy well placed to understand the impact of nematodes). What he quickly realized was that this wasn’t a ‘problem’ per se, but might actually be the solution to a big part of a multi-billion dollar industry that revolves around trying to kill pests that attack farmed crops. For centuries, farmers, industrialists and even, interestingly enough, the giant golf industry, has been trying to figure out the least harmful way to kill these pests in mass numbers—in order to protect food crops and even other crops, like the grass that is grown on those golf courses. When the engineer and scientist realized together is that they had accidentally uncovered a potentially perfect solution—a way to kill the best using low-level electric pulses that are perfectly safe for both the crops and the humans or animals that will eat them. Now, they are focused on the golf-industry first, but eventually, the sky could be the limit.

And, its not unheard of, or even that rare, that new technologies, new ideas, and blue ocean strategies can make entire industries extinct, just look at the video-rental industry, right? Uber gained a foothold by asking (in part), what does the customer want more than transportation? Turns out, we wanted to be able to call it on demand, know in advance how much it will cost, and feel a sense of security because we know each other’s names. There are countless examples of where thinking outside the box, turning problem statements into exploratory questions, or communicating with people outside of our industry turn into major money-making ideas or even whole new industries.

Getting outside of our silos, actively avoiding “not created here syndrome” and staying mindful of how group think can creep in on us and our organizations is key to innovation and entrepreneurial thinking, which in turn often results in increased profits for those involved. So, as usual, I did the research and asked the experts for some ideas to share with all of you about how you can get started today by creating some actual processes in your company that help you to step out of your silos and to maximize your profits. Here are 5 steps that you can get started on today:

1. Get outside the box and do creative things

It’s quite literally impossible to think outside the box if you are still in the box. As I writer, I confront this a lot. You need to be constantly doing and trying new things, engaging new experiences and strengthening your creative muscles if you want to be creative.

How might this translate into a process in your company or small business? Can you give all your employees time each week (how much matters less than how often) to just be creative and try new things? In the best-case scenario, you allow your people to use company time and company non-expendable resources in their innovations. There’s literally no way to predict the kind of benefit that it might bring to your organization.

2. Ask completely opposite people for their opinions on your work

Right now, I’m working on trying to write the next best-selling memoir, which is naturally a very difficult and lofty goal. I’m writing stories from 2 isolated group experiences that I’ve had—a cult and the US Army—both of which you might never understand unless you’ve been inside of them. Many books don’t deal with this properly, and therefore their audience is only those who’ve been in that organization.

Instead, I’m working very closely with someone who has never been in one of those organizations, and she can help me take my very real experiences, thoughts and insights—gained only through my unique experiences—and make them accessible to the average reader.

What version of that kind of working relationship could you, or should you, put into place in your company. How can you tie someone with a completely opposite perspective and experience to yours into what you are working on—you might be able to 10x your outcomes.

3. Steal (borrow) ideas from outside your company or even outside your industry

What are you actively doing in your company to protect against the completely natural tendency to show intense loyalty to your products, your ideas, and the things your team has built? Loyalty is great, and a strong group identity is something that many modern leaders strive for, but how are you protecting against group think?

One of my favorite processes is keeping track of where new ideas were born from, when they are introduced, whether you follow them or not. It’s helpful to know how many ideas you are ‘borrowing’ from outside your company, or even your industry. And, at the end of the day, even if you say avoiding ‘not created here syndrome’ is important to you, leaders’ priorities are more about the reporting they require than they are about what you say to your team.

4. Don’t be afraid to brutally criticize ideas

This is something that you need to intentionally build tolerance for in your organization, but once it is accepted as a group norm that nothing is beyond critiquing, the process can be highly beneficial to your organization.

Many special teams in the military operate in just this way—no matter if the mission is deemed overall as a ‘success’ or ‘failure’, the process is still (sometimes brutally) critiqued to ensure that not only are the learnings being recorded and standardized for future operations, but that they are figuring out what worked, what didn’t, what was surprising, and how they can improve. Because everything can be improved about, and sometimes hidden in those small improvements you find what you need to level up your operations and organizations.

5. Don’t put anything or anyone on a pedestal

This one is very near and dear to my heart, coming from the background that I do, and that is that there is extreme danger to putting ANYTHING on a pedestal. There’s a magic that happens when you put anything or anyone on a pedestal—it suddenly seems much more untouchable, perfect, and yes, venerable.

And yes, all of those things are exactly what kill innovation, creativity and growth in an organization. Don’t believe me, just look at the US Constitution, written and intended to be a living document—as evidenced by the number of amendments early on. Fast forward a couple hundred years and the government has an extremely hard time getting any kinds of changes pushed through, because we’ve come to see the Constitution as a ‘perfect’ document that should never change.

How do you avoid this in your organization? Often times leaders need to criticize themselves, publicly and often, so that others in their org know that, while it’s okay to look to them for guidance, it’s less beneficial to the group if they are always looking up, worshipfully, at you. Plus, once we create an organization where everyone can be critiqued, it becomes an organization where, by default, everyone has room to grow.

And always remember, that no organization is perfect. Just do your best to be Great Every Day!

DANIELLA YOUNG IS A TEDX SPEAKER, AN AUTHOR, COMBAT VETERAN, BOARD MEMBER OF OPERATION CODE, & THE CO-FOUNDER OF CAVNESSHR—AN HR-TECH COMPANY WHO’S MISSION IS TO MAKE BIG-BUSINESS HR AVAILABLE TO SMALL BUSINESSES, THROUGH INNOVATIVE SAAS AND VIRTUAL CONSULTING. DANIELLA SPECIALIZES IN HELPING BUSINESSES CREATE CULTURE ROADMAPS, LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLANS & EFFECT TEAM TRANSFORMATION. WANT TO LEARN MORE? VISIT OUR WEBSITE AT cavnesshr.com.

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