Posts Tagged ‘idea’

Let Suggestions bypass the Line Manager

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

Whatever suggestion scheme or idea initiation events you implement, it is important to ensure that there is a facility for individuals to bypass their line manager if necessary.

Line managers can be resistant to ideas from their own people for a variety of reasons. They might fear that the person making the suggestion might be taken away from them to implement it. They might think that the idea does not reflect well on their department. They might see some implicit criticism of themselves in the suggestion. They might have political agendas or prejudices that lead them to block ideas coming from their team. If all ideas require initial sign-off by the first line manager then the flow of ideas will be inhibited in some areas.

When Lou Gerstner first took over the reins as CEO of IBM one of his first actions was to allow anyone, anywhere in the company to email him with ideas and suggestions. He received a flood of input – much of which gave him useful information on what the real problems were at the grass roots.

Sir Richard Branson has long had a policy that employees can bypass formal idea submission procedures and come straight to him with a business proposal if they are convinced it is the best route.

Allowing people to bypass the normal chain of command provides an essential safety valve that enables radical ideas to be viewed dispassionately at some distance from their source.

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Suggestion Schemes are the engine for your Innovation

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

siemensDoes your organisation have an effective employee suggestions scheme? An increasing number of organisations in the both private and public sectors are finding that they can drive innovation and reduce cost by moving their suggestion box from the office wall to the intranet.

Siemens Automation and Drives is a good example. They employ 400 people in Congleton, Cheshire making electric motor drives. Their scheme is called Ideas Unlimited and it generates over 4000 suggestions per year of which some 3000 are implemented. The total savings are around $1.5m per year. Howard Ball administers the scheme part-time. The key is simplicity he explained when he addressed the national conference of ideasUK, a non-commercial association dedicated to employee suggestion schemes and recognition processes.

There are no forms and no paperwork. The intranet application has just four screens – entering the idea, evaluating, accepting or rejecting and implementing. Every manager acts as an evaluator. Payments are made in the form of vouchers to a value of around $80 on acceptance of the idea. They have found that small rewards and recognition on acceptance are a better incentive than larger rewards delayed until implementation.

Another interesting aspect of the Siemens scheme is that they publish league tables of ideas implemented by department with awards for the most successful departments. Managers are incentivised to accept and implement ideas.

Emma Akerman at Siemens suggested that a component be made out of galvanised steel instead of stainless steel. The idea was accepted and will save around £60,000 a year. She says, ‘The fact that you can put in suggestions on-line makes it easier, and knowing you can contribute ideas means you take more interest in your work.’

The main problem that had to be overcome was getting factory workers to use computers. They were not regular PC users so a training and help programme was put in place. Another thing to watch out for is evaluator overload – you have to give time and recognition to those who assess the suggestions. Ideas Unlimited has been a big success with thousands of employee ideas implemented each year. It is a powerhouse of innovation.

Paul Sloane

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100 Ways to get Ideas

Monday, October 26th, 2009

saitchisonIdeas are the seedcorn of innovation. We need a large supply of them. Are you sometimes stuck for ideas? Here is an interesting blog by Steve Aitchison in which he gives 100 ways to generate ideas for articles for a blog. The principles work for almost any other requirement to generate ideas. So the next time you need to kick start innovation you now have 100 ways to get going!

Paul Sloane

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Innovation in Local Government

Monday, March 23rd, 2009
Jonahtan Kestenbaum

Jonathan Kestenbaum

Today I attended a lunchtime discussion on the hot topic of innovation in local government.  It was held at NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. It was on the launch of a booklet, More than Good Ideas; the power of innovation in local government. The speakers were:

  • Jonathan Kestenbaum, CEO, NESTA
  • Cllr David Parsons, Chair, Local Government Improvement Board
  • Lucy de Groot, Executive Director of IDEA
  • Kim Ryley, CEO,  Hull City Council

The talks were concise and direct – here are some of the key messages that I noted:

JK – Risks are needed for radical innovations but innovation has become just another buzzword.  We are in a perfect storm in local government with increased demands, rising expectations and financial contstraints.  The antidote to the storm is bottoms up innovation.  There is risk capital available from NESTA for innovative initiatives.

DP – Local government is the most effective part of the whole public sector.  It faces severe and diverse challenges such as youth crime, obesity, social housing and climate change.  Regional improvement and efficiency partnerships and the public sector innovation laboratory (at NESTA) can be part of the innovation solution.

LDG – We need to be less afraid and more confident about innovating in the public sector.  We must fight the ‘not invented here’ syndrome.  The unfavourable economic climate makes the need for fresh thinking imperative.  If we do not become more innovative we will fail our stakeholders.  We need to find better ways to share ideas.  We have find new ways to explain to citizens about choices and risks.

KR – We need to move away from the obsession with data and targets towards intelligent risk taking. We should expand our networks of innovators – horizontally and vertically.  The goal in local government should be quality of life – not quality of service delivery, which is what is currently measured.  We need to find new ways to prioritise since we will not be able to provide all the services that are requested.

A couple of other comments I heard in the discussions were:

  •  We have watered the tree for some time, now we will have to prune the branches.
  • The inspection regime in local government inhibits innovation and leads to uniform mediocrity.

The booklet makes interesting reading  and it is available as a download from the IDEA site here.

Paul Sloane

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Resistance to Change

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

We had a lively meeting of the BQF Innovation Group yesterday.  It was kindly hosted by MITIE at their offices in the Counting House near London Bridge.  They presented a case study on overcoming resistance to change in a major corporate outsourcing project.  We then had a workshop session where we discussed change initiatives and the reasons why people resisted change.  The main reasons we identified were:

  1. Fear of the unknown
  2. Suspicion of motives
  3. Bad prior experiences of change leading to low expectations
  4. People stuck in their ways
  5. Lack of self-confidence about accomplishing the change
  6. Change seen as unnecessary
  7. Evolutionary change seen as extended pain
  8. People not used to commercial bottom-line thinking

We then carried out a lotus blossom exercise on each of the these 8 items and 8 groups found 8 causes for each of these 8 top level issues.  We then had 64 possible reasons for resistance to change.  We prioritised  the subsidiary reasons and some of the highlights were:

  1. Ineffective communication
  2. People do not feel in control
  3. Distrust of management
  4. Wrong vocabulary used
  5. Fear of redundancy
  6. Fear of failure
  7. If it’s not broken why fix it?
  8. Internal focus – do not see bigger picture
  9. Fear they lack the skills
  10. Bad management

Groups then chose a forthcoming change in their organisations and did a force field analysis to see what forces promoted the change and what forces impeded the change.  They then generated ideas to reinforce the positive or mitigate the negatives.  It was agreed to be a highly effective way of articulating the issues and planning for the change.

The next meeting is on Feb 18th 2009 in London when we will discuss – ‘Innovating for Cash’.  It will be hosted by A D Little.

Paul Sloane

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Note to Innovators – Re-use Previous

Friday, September 12th, 2008

If you hold a brainstorm meeting and generate 90 ideas then the chances are that you whittle those down to a dozen promising ideas and then action the two or three best.  What happens to the other promising ideas that don’t make it onto the to-do list?  Ideally you should capture them in a database of good ideas and then take a look through that list from time to time. 

Many great ideas are cast aside because the time is not right for them.  An energy saving initiative which is not justifiable when oil is $50 a barrel can be a real winner when oil is $150 a barrel.  The post-it note glue that did not stick was an invention that had to wait until Art Fry found a use for it.

Many of the ideas that you need for new products or services may have surfaced in earlier meetings and been shelved for all sorts of reasons.  Don’t waste all the creativity that goes into idea generation.  Recycle and re-use ideas.  When you need some inspiration just browse through your database of ideas that were promising but not actioned.  The solution you need may be sitting in there now.

Paul Sloane

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