by Solverboard, on 30 Jan 2017 8 min read
You can get a lot out of Solverboard to help you and your organisation become more innovative. Here is our guide to making the most of your first 30 days.
Please note: this post references a whole heap of How To guides to help you use Solverboard as effectively as possible. Some of them are still in the process of being written, while others are being updated as fast as we can to keep up with our speedy tech team.
We didn’t want to wait to share these tips until all the content was ready, however, as we think this summary is useful even without the links – we hope you agree. Our writers are writing as fast as their fingers can go without bursting into flames, so do check back every so often, on this blog or on our Help site help.solverboard.com, to see what’s new.
So, you want to promote and stimulate ideas and innovation in your organisation. You want to unlock all the awesome, unused potential of your people and get them thinking about your key business challenges.
You’ve made a great start - you’ve signed up to Solverboard for Business. But now you’ve signed up, don’t let the excitement slip away - if we know anything about how busy everyone’s life is, we know that it’s easy to let a whole month slip by before you really get stuck into using a new tool.
So how can you really put Solverboard for Business through its paces, in order to know for sure that it’s the right tool for you and your organisation? Here are our top tips for making the most of our platform in the first 30 days of use:
Start straight away
There’s no time like the present! We’ve made Solverboard for Business really easy to use, so you can get started and be up and running within hours. Get stuck in and have a play.
Read our Help article on getting started with the Solverboard Dashboard
Get leadership buy-in
We know from experience that innovation initiatives often fail because they didn’t get the right support from the beginning. Whether you are the leadership, or have a leadership to deal with, getting people with influence in your organisation behind the trial will make a huge difference to its success.
Read our post on getting leadership buy-in
Make it your own
We’ve included lots of ways for you to personalise Solverboard for Business with images and information about your team and your people. Make sure you take advantage of all of them so that when your users turn up, they know they’re in the right place, it looks its best, and they feel welcome.
Read our Help article on personalising Solverboard for Business
Invite the right people in
Depending on the size of your organisation, you might not want to invite everyone straight away. Maybe you just want to trial it in one department or team initially, or cherry-pick people from across the organisation to take part. However you want to do it, it’s worth thinking about:
- Numbers – Solverboard works best with a critical mass of people, so don’t keep the numbers too small to start with or you won’t get a lively community.
- Mix – the principle of Solverboard is that good ideas can come from anywhere – so don’t just invite the people who have been creative in the past. Creativity is what happens between people and teams as they interact, so get a good mix of types, levels and skills. And make sure that you’ve included your organisation influencers – you know who they are. They’re the ones that, if you convince them, will bring others along with them.
Read our Help guides to selecting Solvers and inviting them
Identify your business challenges
There’s no point inviting your users to an empty site – your people will only flex their creative muscles if they can get their teeth into some real business challenges. Spend some time identifying and investigating what the real sticking points in your organisation are so your people can get cracking as soon as they log in.
It’s worth thinking about posting some quick win challenges as well as more complex ones, so you can try out the whole Solverboard process from end to end on at least one challenge. And don’t forget to keep Solverboard busy – stagger the challenges so that you have something new to tell people about at regular intervals.
Framing your challenges properly is absolutely vital to getting people to participate, so don’t skimp on the time you spend investigating, understanding and framing your challenges.
Read our Help guide on types of challenge on Solverboard for Business
Read our Help guide on framing challenges to get the best results
Please note: in February 2018 Solverboard for Business became Solverboard Work, and Solverboard Open became Solverboard World. Find out more about these changes here.
