Above: Chasing an Impression by Tim on Flickr.  

Video: Day 1 recap from Council on Foundations 2016 on Youtube.

Innovation: It’s not just for the Facebooks and Googles of the world. Any organization has the ability to innovate, provided it knows how each of its members can most effectively bring an idea to fruition. This was the major takeaway from a Knight Foundation-sponsored workshop at the Council on Foundations annual conference in Washington earlier this month.

Workshop participants took an assessment to determine whether they fall into one of three categories: builders, those who get things done and prefer gradual change built on old ideas; pioneers, visionaries who get an idea a second and want revolutionary change; and connectors, those who have a mixture of builder and pioneer qualities and can bridge the two groups. The assessment, known as the Innovation Strengths Preference Indicator, determines which of the three categories people fall into.

About 50 people attended the workshop and included members of community nonprofit organizations from across the country, many of whom were interested in new ways of serving their communities.

The assessment allows organizations to find the strengths and weaknesses of employees, based on a dozen characteristics. It determines how a person thinks, how they interact with others and how they take action. The results of the assessment show a person their sweet spot: what they can do to maximize innovation for their organization.

Video: Day 2 recap from Council on Foundations 2016 on Youtube.

“It’s really about leveraging strength,” said Andrew Harrison, an innovation ambassador with Idea Connection Systems, the Rochester, N.Y., firm that produces the test. “We don’t want everyone to be the same. If we were all clones of each other there’d be no difference of thought.”

Harrison said the test not only makes people more aware of their own strengths and weaknesses but also aware of the qualities of people around them.

“Everybody’s an innovator,” Harrison said. “We just innovate in different ways.”

Attendees divided into groups based on their innovation types to discuss how the assessment could be applied where they work. During a discussion among pioneer-types, many participants said that before the assessment, they found builders to be plodding, obstructive and too focused on minor details, but now they are more patient with them. Builders, the assessment indicated, might delay the action of a pioneer because they are trying to implement an idea the pioneer had a week ago. Those tendencies to focus on a task and see a project through are a strength, not a hindrance, one attendee pointed out.

Being more aware of others’ qualities is a virtue of the assessment and its role in an organization, said Térèse Coudreaut, vice president of administration for Knight Foundation—and a pioneer.

“Your zone of tolerance changes,” said Coudreaut, who led a discussion among pioneers. “If you’re a pioneer and you have someone around you who’s a builder, they might annoy you, because they want to stop and implement those ideas. Now you have a new appreciation of them.”

Another participant in the workshop, suggested during a group discussion that the assessment could be used as part of a job application. Or managers could use the assessment to structure a team around each person’s strengths and weaknesses. They could also reassign a struggling worker, who might have been given the duties of a pioneer when, in fact, they are natural-born builders.

Susan Barry, the CEO of the Community Foundation of Louisville, Kentucky, intends to show the assessment to her board to possibly implement it.

“This will help focus what tasks everyone will do,” Barry said. “It’ll build a culture that rewards and recognizes everyone’s strength.”

Timothy R. Smith is a freelance writer and an editorial aide at The Washington Post. His work can be found at washingtonpost.com/people/timothy-r-smith.