I was excited when I read the agenda. McBain, working for the BBC as change consultant and the Interactive Media department, would share her thoughts on how you can overcome organisational barriers to innovation and creativity.

The moment she stepped on the stage, she already had to make changes to her introduction. She is no longer working for the BBC but was now a freelance. After working for the BBC for 10 years, she felt it was time to start something new.

Within a company you can have great minds. Great minds can think alike but how current large organizations work can kill this creativity. In order to make sure your organization can benefit from these creative minds, you need to steer them and give them room. There are several ways on how you can do this and McBain shared with us some of the lessons learned while working for the BBC.

First of all, identify the creative people within your organization but also make sure you do not only look to those people. Creativity within a company can sometimes be found with the teams or people you least expect it with. You just need to steer people and share with them what is expected. Don’t be vague but give clear guidelines. McBain called this the tour guide. The tour guide at the BBC is a trained facilitator who has the right tools and knows how to steer people. This tour guide can be a person from a different department, s/he is merely there to facilitate and steer the audience. Together with the facilitator, set the biggest priorities and define a road map. When all this is clear, people know what they have to to achieve.

Now that the scene is set, remove the clutter and build an environment in which people can be creative. Visualize ideas, use scenarios. Ensure that people feel comfortable. When the ideas are put on paper, go over them but be careful that you don’t take the easy way. What worked last year or didn’t work last year maybe will work this year. Be open to change and welcome it. Now that innovation is driving changes, look at your organization and see how the organization can accept these changes. Will management support them? If not, try to work with them and have them understand why it is important to innovate. While discussing the changes with the management, also work on permissions. Don’t have something jeopardize the innovation process.

While I thought McBain shared really good information. The slides were not supporting her storytelling. This made it difficult for the audience to follow her presentation and from the side of the room, you could notice that the audience blanked out at a certain point. My recommendation to her; improve your presentation but keep the story.

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