TEAM INNOVATION ACTIVITIES

Good things, both large and small, are happening on your team. Taking a few minutes to submit an innovation about the way your team is saving money and time, improving customer service, making the workplace safer or impacting our strategic goals is a great way to highlight their accomplishments and give them the recognition they deserve.

Remember, every innovation submission is considered a nomination for one of the four UDOT Innovation Awards.

Suggestions

• Ask members of the team to help submit innovation stories.

• Let the whole team know about innovations individuals have submitted, review them as a team once they are in the catalog.

• Be generous about recognizing, by name, the members of your team who contribute.

• Remind team members that submissions will be considered for an annual innovation award.

• Record in UPM an employee's participation in team innovation activities.

• Praise a team member's efforts during one-on-one coaching and career development meetings.

• Let your leaders know of the good work individual team members are doing on your team. 

• Share links to your team's innovation stories.

• Work with your region or UDOT communications manager to write up UDOT Newsletter articles about your team member's success.

• Invite the Innovation Team to film a brief highlight of your team's innovation.

Don’t reinvent the wheel! Adopt and enhance an already existing innovation to increase your team's efficiency. Every team that realizes cost or labor savings by adopting an innovation is recognized in the efficiencies report. The innovation does not need to be your idea.

Suggestions

• As a team, discuss how innovations, research, and best practices might be adapted to benefit your work.

• Review the Innovation Catalog for recent innovations. TIP: By default, the catalog shows the most recently added innovations at the top.

• Spark innovation by reviewing the Ideas Portal, UDOT research, industry partners (ASHTO, EDC, TRB, etc.) and other resources.

• Review innovations regularly by designating a 5-10 minutes standing agenda item in your meetings.

• Rotate the responsibility to different team members of reviewing and presenting interesting ideas and innovations to the team.

• Use the Innovation Catalog filters and search to find innovations that are applicable to your team.

• Even if an innovation cannot be directly implemented by your team, what can you learn and apply to your situation?

This four-part activity takes a team through the Innovation Process to solve a real-world challenge. Worksheets are designed to assist teams to complete the process on their own or you may contact the Innovation Program Team for support. We would love to consult with you and are available to facilitate the process in team meetings.

Activity

• PHASE 1 - Idea Phase:

  • Part 1: Identify Problems & Opportunities (Idea Worksheet.doc)

  • Part 2: Solution Brainstorming & Selection (Solution Brainstorming Workshee.doc)

• PHASE 2 - Prototyping, Testing & Refinement (Prototyping and Testing Worksheet.doc)

• PHASE 3 - Implementation (Implementation Worksheet.doc)

• PHASE 4 - Sharing & Adoption (Sharing and Adoption Worksheet.doc)

The systematic pursuit of innovation is a great way to develop skills and build a strong cohesive team. The activities below leverage UDOT's leadership tools; Strengths Based Leadership, Employee Needs (Q12), Five C's of Team Building, and the Five Conversations.

Activity 1: Becoming an Innovative Team - This three-part series is an excellent way to kick things off. These activities are designed to be downloaded by supervisors and completed during three regular team meetings and should take about 10-15 minutes each. Another option is to include all three activities in a team retreat.

• • Part 1 - Innovation, what’s in it for me? (Take a look at the importance of innovation)

  • Part 2 - The Innovation Process (The team begins the innovation process)

  • Part 3 - Let’s innovate (The team identifies an innovation to work on)

Activity 2: Innovation Inspiration - Mix and match these fun activities to motivate and build interest in innovation.

• • Innovation Showcase (UDOT videos)

  • Innovation Family Feud (game)*

  • Innovation Trivia (game)*

  • Innovation Scavenger Hunt (game)*

  • Innovation Benchmarking (YouTube videos)*

  • Let the Innovation Team know your interest in these games, and we will send the resources.

Activity 3: Team Building Exercises - These activities build trust, respect, and teamwork through fun activities. They are great for team retreats or regular team meetings.

• • Contact the Innovation Team for assistance. We are available to help develop customized team building activities. 

Coaching, Employee Development & Performance Planning

Coaching Activities - Looking for opportunities to build leadership skills in your team members? These activities are designed to be assigned to team members to present in your meetings.

• • Facilitate a Brainstorming Session

  • Lead a Discussion

  • Presentation Design and Delivery

  • Reach Consensus

TIP: Supervisors can assign many of the activities on this page as performance plan goals. Innovation is a great way for an employee to show that they exceed expectations.