We are all keen to engage our team in their second job – improving their work.

We would love them to come up with innovative and creative solutions that benefit our practice and our patients.

Somewhat paradoxically, rather than encouraging our team to adopt a ‘blue sky’ approach, we would get better results if we proactively direct and limit the search for ideas.

This is the position of Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg and Paddy Miller, authors of ‘Innovation as Usual’. They describe their approach in the article ‘Get More Actionable Ideas from Your Employees‘, published in the Harvard Business Review.