Cultivate collective imagination across teams

How often do businesses include teams that rarely, if ever, meet? They work in silos that focus on particular tasks and require a defined skill set. That can be very effective for goal-driven activities but what if you want your teams to collaborate, share ideas, imagine other possibilities?

If they never cross paths, that’s challenging.

How do people who don’t know each other well willingly share ideas in a group. Especially if their ideas are bold, imaginative, or stretch the borderline of possibilities.

We talk a lot about team building at Imagination Session®; working with one group to create a space where they willingly, and generously, share ideas in a collective imagining exercise.

But how do we encourage the cross-pollination of ideas across teams?

I suggest enrolling two or more teams into one Imagination Session®. In this environment, where the goal is to practise and build imaginative skills, those teams previously active in silos can also practise working together. And then, take those skills with them into the workplace, and beyond, when the session or sessions are over.

Interestingly, the Harvard Business Review publication ‘The Imagination Machine’ has pointed to the ‘ability to broker across groups to cultivate collective imagination’ as a recommended criteria for recruitment and promotion. All designed, according to its authors Martin Reeves and Jack Fuller, to sustain imagination across everyone in a business.