Making Time for Wonder
Do you ever feel like you just need time to be curious? I think that making time to wonder and dream and try out ideas is both a gift of running your own business and also so good for our mental health and happiness.
I try to make time for our team to wonder and try things out, too. There are few days here where we aren’t trying something out a different way or experimenting or saying out loud to each other, “I wonder if….?” or “Do you think we can….?”
I am fascinated by idea development and teamwork that lead to solutions to big problems.
Just last summer, we had a large piece of equipment delivered by tractor trailer to our wholesale warehouse. We worked for a couple hours to get it off the truck the way that it probably went on. We even had a construction crew from across the street bring a large telescoping machine to try their hand at it— after all, they deal with moving and loading and unloading big machines and deliveries all the time. They couldn’t figure it out and went back to their job site after about 20 minutes.
Then Moussa started to think differently about the problem. Instead of trying to grab the machine out of the back of the truck, he suggested that we make a makeshift loading dock out of pallets and roll the long, heavy machine straight out of the truck so that we could pick it up with our forklift at it’s center of gravity from the side. For a few minutes we all thought it was a crazy idea. The thought of rolling something very heavy onto a temporary platform that we made by stacking wood pallets on top of each other seemed pretty far fetched. But we followed his lead. And it worked. Using scrap pallets from the yard, we solved a problem that wasn’t going to be solved quickly otherwise. We were all so proud in that moment. It was a great example of “necessity breeding innovation.”
But I think it’s also important to slow down and create spaces where people can flex their creative muscles even when big problems don’t need solving. When team members ask if they can try something, the answer is almost always “let’s do it and find out.” In my mind, the benefits of having this mentality far outweigh some time we might lose or a few products that could go bad, EVEN if the experiment fails.
The reason that I will keep making time for experiments and inevitable failures is that they instill worth and confidence in my team. People want to know that they are valued and that their ideas are worthy. When things do work out, it’s an added bonus!
Growing your business is not limited to hiring more people or doing more things or having other people perform tasks exactly the way you’d want them to be preformed. To me, it’s about creating opportunities for people to feel ownership over an area of interest to them. It’s about making sure that they feel curious and excited about the work they’re doing, too.
Here are some suggestions for infusing wonder in your work day:
Hold intentional team meetings each morning or at least a few days a week.
Take breaks together.
Acknowledge work that is hard and ask yourself or your co-workers how it could be made easier.
Allocate time for solving problems that aren’t major problems or stressful problems. Remember, even experiments that fail are good experiments.
Encourage yourself and others to follow tangents, when possible, to test ideas. Or- schedule a full day when the only goal is to innovate together.
Hold a prototyping session. Encourage innovation by practicing it. Choose a problem and allow people to think about ways they might solve it with a new invention. Provide brainstorming tools like notepads, pens, cardboard, duct tape, and access to other tools and materials. The goal is not to make a finished, working tool - but the first draft of one.