What's in my head today?

Spend some time talking to the leaders of just about any organisation about the future performance of their business, and at some point they’ll bring up how important it is that their workforce be able to marshal skills like creativity and initiative to identify better ways of working and improved outputs (products, information, outcomes - whatever they’re in the business of producing). Get away from the leaders and spend time with the people on the front line, and you’re likely to get a very different picture of exactly what those same leaders do to “encourage” innovation and support their people’s efforts to improve products, processes and the workplace itself.

Case in point: a large national organisation started to recognise, about two years ago, that their workforce likely had some attractive, and financially rewarding, ideas about how to improve the work they do. The organisation formed a working group whose job it was to design a way for staff to put forward new ideas, and to be rewarded and recognised for the ones that led to verified and measurable improvement. One of the problems from the outset, though, was that the working group consisted solely of staff based in the organisation’s national office; there was no representation for the hundreds of others who worked elsewhere, and who were the actual subjects of whatever process was to be brought about.

Problem number two was the level of knowledge and skill of the working party members; none of them had been involved with anything like this initiative before, all were well removed from the work going on out at the offices and there was a startling lack of knowledge regarding not only what other large companies had tried regarding innovation (successful and unsuccessful), but also of how technology could be used to support and smooth over the process, for both the end users and those involved with sifting through suggestions and selecting viable ones. 

Not surprisingly, given the make up of the working party, the process that was put into practice some weeks later was time consuming, unwieldy and, when it came to what happened with the suggestions that did come in, shrouded in mystery for those who did participate. Any staff member with an idea they wanted to put forward was to complete a template document, created in MS Word), email it to a designated member of the original working group, and wait for feedback. When ideas came in, another small group of national office staff, mostly made up if the working party members, came together and discussed the suggestions, and decided whether any were to be pursued. Compounding the existing problems, it was a “no correspondence will be entered into” process, where the person who put an idea forward was not contacted to clarify what they had submitted. Thus, if anything in the template was unclear, or if the small group of “judges” misunderstood some aspect of the proposal, there was no chance of correcting the problem.

As ideas were considered by a single small committee, there was opportunity for input from others who may have seen the beginnings of something else in the original idea. Ground-breaking new initiatives rarely come about through the incredible insight of a single individual. Rather, they more often grow and develop from the input of a wider number of participants, each of whom suggests twists of their own. As the group goes through the process of, “What if we did this?” or “How about instead of that part, we do this instead?”, the idea evolves into something more than the simple sum of its parts. This wider input also allows people from varied roles and backgrounds to conduct some theoretical trouble shooting along the way, saving time and frustration later if the idea is trialled in the field.

So, back a the organisation in the example, a few people put forward their thoughts on how something could be improved or which new thing should be introduced. The small committee came together, made their decisions, and awarded a certificate and small prize to the monthly “winner” - yes, the rules of the process said that one idea had to be chosen per month, no matter whether the “best” of the suggestions had little chance of being implemented. The idea behind this was no bad - wanting to reward people for having the courage and commitment to put their thoughts forward. It was bound to cause problems later, though, as the “winners” tried to seek an update on how the implementation of their suggestion was coming along.

Unfortunately for the organisation, nothing came of the initiative. A few small projects were trialled, only one of which led to any long-term change, and after a mere four months, the whole thing died a quiet death. The company went back to relying on their executive team and other high-level managers for improvement suggestions.

A new CEO came on board later and wanted to resurrect the process of seeking meaningful input from the field. This time, instead of the highly manual process of the first initiative, staff would be able to put forward their thoughts in a discussion group on the corporate forum. This was certainly an improvement, as more people would see the suggestion and have the opportunity to build on it, modify it and use it to trigger ideas of their own. This wider participation would greatly improve the chances of something meaningful coming out of the exercise. The CEO spruiked the plan on visits to offices around the country and encouraged all and sundry to participate. This form of marketing was a bit hit-or-miss, but the new initiative was looking like it had more chance of success than the previous one.

Shortly after the launch, people starting posting their suggestions - and everything started to head downhill. The CEO, honestly believing in the initiative and wanting it to prosper, made sure, whenever possible, he would be the first to reply to an idea by setting up an email notification whenever a new post went to the group. His replies were fast, all right, but they were unfailingly negative. Each response focussed on why the idea could not work; at best, there was a vague undertaking to “check things out” and “get back to you”, which was not updated later. After an initial burst of enthusiasm in the first weeks, suggestions dropped to a trickle, then stopped altogether. The discussion group remains in the corporate forum to this day, but it’s a wasteland when it comes to entries.

Sadly, this story isn’t unique to this single organisation. Many companies, with the best of intentions, sabotage their own efforts at gathering input and suggestions from their workforce. Yet almost all countries cite the need to seek improvement and new ideas from the bottom up. When those ideas do come through, they are more often dismissed or replied to with patronising platitudes.

After seeing this phenomenon a number of times, I think part of the problem lies in the approach of the managers involved to management itself. These problems normally come to light in organisations that have been comfortable in the old “command and control” system of corporate management. Senior managers set the agenda and direction, those beneath them are responsible for spreading the news and putting things into operation, and those at the coal-face do what they’re told and shut up about it. If the time comes when that organisation (or its senior leadership) starts to buy in to the idea of bottom-up improvement, they find themselves poorly equipped to change their instinctive approach and cede a greater level of control.

This can be dangerous for those companies involved in what we have come to call “knowledge work” - industries where what counts is what the workers know and what they can do with that knowledge, rather than whether they can follow step-by-step instructions that never vary. The problems that these organisations face on a day-to-day basis as they go about their business are often unique (yes, often unique variations on the theme around which the company does business, but unique in the sense of what worked on the problem just dealt with doesn’t work on this one). The benefits that can be gained from the knowledge and experience of front-line staff are just about limitless. Building the environment where the people at that front line believe the organisation genuinely wants to hear from them, and genuinely values their contribution, is not something that just happens as soon as the CEO says, “I want to hear from you.”

These days, there are a number of software platforms that can help you gather and track ideas and initiatives from the field (Idea Storm is my favourite, but there are many others). Low price (in some cases, they are free) and easy implementation mean there’s now really no barrier to using these tools in preference to old paper methods or emailed templates. The hard part is engaging the workforce and getting them to buy-in and put their best ideas forward, then keep building on them. If this was as easy as putting the software to do it in place, everyone would already be there, after all). This kind of cultural change is something that sets truly effective managers apart from those who simply manage. We’ll take a look at some ideas on how to bring this about in the next post.