Graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Annelise has spent her career making sure food sounds appetizing on paper, looks good in pictures and tastes amazing when you order it. Her day-to-day consists of working as Marketing Manager at Ready Foods to connect food service operators with ready-to-use kitchen solutions that are easy to incorporate into a kitchen flow and bring great flavor to menu items. Her favorite hot lunch in elementary school was always nacho day. Ready Foods Annelise McAuliffe Soares Ready-to-Use Tips!
Creating a culture of INNOVATION
Does it feel like “innovation” is the new buzzword, hailed as an ideology, almost religion-like in today’s most agile companies and organizations? Let’s not over-complicate it! But we can still revere the possibility innovation holds. Nurturing a culture of innovation is a powerful tool, no matter the size of a team, how large the budget is or the years of experience you have actively working to think outside of the box. Since our inception 50 years ago, we at Ready Foods have always had a culture of innovation, but we never called it that. We were curious, scrappy, creative, but this “i” word wasn’t in our vocabulary yet. This past year, various teams have spent time creating an Innovation Department, along with roles and a vision statement to support its purpose. It’s exciting, but it’s just the beginning for us. Here are a few things we have learned that have helped us start on our Innovation journey. We hope they inspire you to build a culture of innovation amongst your team too: Create a vision for your team, with innovation at the center. If you’re not sure what direction innovation will take in your food service program, try writing a vision statement to help guide the process. Our vision statement is: “We encourage imagination and celebrate curiosity to nurture our culture of innovation.” It’s OK to be a champion of innovation in your school, but for it to really work, the gospel needs to be shared with all departments. Cross-functional teams are critical for innovation to succeed. In our world, for example, it means R&D, Marketing and QA must all work in unison. One way to get all teams on board? Foster a culture of creativity and kindness. If people feel like they are a part of a welcoming team where they can make a difference and safely share new ideas, they will innovate to solve problems. Innovation must be a part of all teams in an organization.
Communication is key. If you are innovating with multiple teams to boldly solve a problem, create a quick format or brief to share important project details to get everyone up to date and on the same page. Understand Who You are Innovating For Before teams can brainstorm to solve a problem, they must first understand who their customer is. Perhaps you’re solving for students, parents or even another team. Remember who you are innovating for and why. Falling or Failing is a Normal Part of Innovation Did you try an idea and it didn’t work? That’s great! You learned something. Plan on failing and encourage falling. If teams never fail, they are not innovating to their highest potential. Focus on Focus Time is finite and we never want innovation to lead to burnout. Encourage your teams to focus 100% of their time on the top 30% of problems you want to solve. Recognize that rest is an important part of innovation. Non-work time has been proven to lead to better focus and quality of work when back at work. We Have to Retrain Our Brains Innovation is thinking outside of the box, it can be uncomfortable and our brains don’t like it. It requires retraining. Try to detach from predetermined outcomes when you are innovating and remember that such a culture and thinking shift can take a few years before it becomes a solid habit. If you feel like you don’t have it all figured out yet, that’s OK! We don’t either. That’s the beauty of innovation, being willing to think outside of the box, daring to brainstorm radical ideas and having the sense to create a culture that welcomes others to push the boundaries and share ideas.
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