Empowering Your Team to Drive Innovation

North Mondays Series: Episode 126

In May 2023, Hilda Baci etched her name into history by breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest cooking marathon.

Last week Friday, she raised the stakes again. This time, she wasn’t chasing someone else’s record. She was creating one of her own; the world’s largest pot of Nigerian Jollof rice.

Different stages, different goals, but the heartbeat was the same: food, resilience, ambition, exhaustion, celebration … and a team that made it happen.

Behind every record attempt and every dream, there are people supporting, planning, believing, and showing up when it counts.

No one achieves a great feat by themselves. Behind her was a team chopping, stirring, tasting, sharing — every hand contributing to something bigger than themselves.

That is what innovation in business looks like too.

Leaders may light the vision, but it’s teams who fuel the fire. When the team feels empowered to create, collaborate, and take risks, breakthroughs happen.

Which brings us to today’s conversation: Empowering your team to drive innovation.

If you asked 10 leaders to tell you about their organization and what they do, 9 out of 10 will have the word ‘innovative’ thrown in there. Yet many leaders struggle with this reality: you can’t order innovation the way you order a task.

In this episode of North Mondays, we’ll explore the challenges of fostering creativity, why empowerment is the key to innovation, and how organizations are using innovation labs to spark new breakthroughs.

Challenges in Empowering Your Team to Innovate

You can’t “command” creativity into existence.

What you can do is create the conditions for it to thrive. What kills innovation isn’t lack of talent; it’s fear, bureaucracy, and leadership blind spots.

The truth is, innovation doesn’t come from strategy documents alone; it comes from teams who feel safe, trusted, and inspired to experiment.

Even leaders with the best intentions often face obstacles when trying to encourage innovation.

Key challenges include:

Fear of failure: When employees feel mistakes are punished, bold ideas never see daylight.
Rigid structures: Layers of approvals suffocate curiosity before it has a chance to breathe.
Short-term focus: Innovation withers when everything is tied to immediate ROI.
Unequal voices: When only certain people are heard, fresh perspectives get buried.

Overcoming these barriers requires creating a culture that values curiosity, experimentation, and learning just as much as results.

Empowering Your Team to Innovate Through Innovation Labs

One growing trend that addresses these challenges is the rise of innovation labs. These labs aren’t just trendy spaces with beanbags and sticky notes; they’re permission slips for teams to dream and test ideas without the usual constraints of day-to-day operations.

Innovation labs succeed because they:

They create psychological safety for testing bold ideas.
They bring together cross-functional collaboration, mixing skills that don’t normally sit at the same table.
They prioritize rapid prototyping, moving from idea to test quickly rather than getting lost in endless planning.
They send a clear signal: “Innovation isn’t a side hustle here. It’s central to who we are.”For businesses navigating uncertain times, innovation labs can be the engine that turns challenges into opportunities.

How Leaders Can Start Empowering Their Team to Innovate

You don’t need a physical lab to start empowering your team. Empowerment is a leadership posture; one you can practice every single day.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

Encourage experimentation: Frame failure as learning, not a career setback.

Flatten hierarchies: Give teams autonomy to test ideas without unnecessary gatekeeping.

Allocate resources: Dedicate time, budget, and tools for creativity.

Reward courage, not just outcomes: Celebrate bold attempts, not just successful ones.

Listen actively: Make sure all voices are heard, especially those from unexpected places.

When people feel trusted to think differently, they don’t just meet expectations, they exceed them.

North Mondays Action Plan: Empowering Your Team to Innovate

This week, if you’re a leader, try one or two of these practical moves:

Create space for innovation: Schedule regular brainstorming or prototype sessions.
Pilot a mini innovation lab: Start small; even a cross-functional duo can test an idea.
Model curiosity: Ask questions, show openness, admit when you’re learning.
Recognize effort publicly: Shine light on the people who bring fresh solutions.
Build feedback loops: Don’t let ideas vanish into silence; follow up with direction.

Closing Thought

Behind every leap forward; there’s a team. The leader might carry the torch, but it’s the collective energy, creativity, and courage of the team that makes fire burn.

Empowering your team to innovate isn’t about chasing the “next big thing.” It’s about creating a culture where people believe they can try, test, and transform. The future belongs to organizations that don’t just manage their people but empower them to make history together.