ideas

When I was younger, I had four full-time jobs before I
started my first business.

Looking back, in none of these jobs did my managers ask for
my ideas or suggestions. Nope - my ideas simply didn't
matter. Even though I had a lot of them. And many were ideas
that could have really helped those companies.

So what did I do?

I left. I left those jobs until I found one where all of my
ideas would receive the proper attention - running my own
company.

But now that I'm running my company, I can't make the same
mistake that my past employers made. That is, I must
challenge my employees and encourage their ideas and
suggestions.

Why? Well for numerous critical reasons according to
award-winning author and professor Dr. Alan Robinson who I
recently interviewed.

Specifically, according to Dr. Robinson's vast research,
85% of new ideas at companies come from front-line
employees. Yes, the employees that are interfacing with
customers and vendors, and employees that are manufacturing
your products or cleaning your facilities come up with the
vast majority of your best ideas.

Which is very interesting and dispels the myth that most
great ideas are generated by CEOs and top managers. This
makes sense though. Entrepreneurs and founders come up with
ideas to form companies. But then they must eventually
transform into managers of their organizations. In doing so,
they move farther away from the front-line operations,
making it harder for them to innovate themselves.

Which is why great entrepreneurs make innovation a key part
of their organizations.

According to Dr. Robinson, the first key to effectively
integrating idea generation and innovation into
organizations is "alignment." Alignment simply means that
everyone in the organization knows the goals of the
organization, and what goals new ideas should aim to solve.
In an example of poor alignment, he mentioned the angry CEO
who found a note in the suggestion box to "offer different
flavors of peanut butter in the cafeteria." Clearly, this
CEO, and not the employee, is at fault for not aligning his
organization around its key objectives.

The second key to effective idea generation is to establish
systems or processes. These systems do not have to be formal
or costly. For example, giving employees 30 minutes/week to
discuss new ideas is enough for them to 1) know that they
should always be thinking of new ideas, 2) that their ideas
are valued, and 3) that they have a formal opportunity to
discuss their ideas.

Implementing idea generation programs not only results in
great new ideas that allow companies to outperform
competitors. But they result in dramatically higher employee
satisfaction and morale.

In fact, one of the top reasons employees give for quitting
a job is that management didn't take their ideas seriously.
When employees are asked to submit ideas, given time and/or
incentives to submit ideas, and see their ideas implemented,
they become much more committed to their organizations and
perform better.

So, as you grow your organization, be sure to implement
formal processes for company idea generation. Fortunately
these processes are easy to implement, and will have
multiple benefits to your bottom line.


To Your Success!