Happiily is a site that lets employees speak honestly and anonymously.  It means that they can give managers an early warning when there are problems.

At the moment this Canadian start-up is offering its services free.  It is an opportunity to [...]]]> Here is an innovative idea for managers.  Find out what your employees really think.

Happiily is a site that lets employees speak honestly and anonymously.  It means that they can give managers an early warning when there are problems.

At the moment this Canadian start-up is offering its services free.  It is an opportunity to learn from your most valuable stakeholders – your workers.

Paul Sloane

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 [...]]]> 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.

People need clear objectives so that they know what is [...]]]> A great leader can turn people into entrepreneurs who are hungrily looking for new opportunities.  The key is empowerment.  By empowering people you enable them to achieve goals through their own ideas and efforts.  The leader sets the destination but the team chooses the route.

People need clear objectives so that they know what is expected of them.  They need to develop the skills for the task.  They need to work in cross-departmental teams so that they can create and implement solutions that will work.  They need freedom to succeed.  And when you give someone freedom to succeed you also give them freedom to fail.  Above all, empowerment means trusting people.  It is by giving them trust, support and belief that you will empower them to achieve great things.

Empowerment is more than managers setting objectives and then leaving people alone.  It is about encouraging and enabling people to solve problems, meet customer needs and seize market opportunities on their own initiatives – either individually or in groups from different disciplines.

The goal is to have everyone think of themselves as an entrepreneur who has the right and the duty to solve problems and seize opportunities – not to offload them to others.  In many organizations problems are passed up and down a long chain of command.  They are postponed, delegated, transferred, ignored and eventually handled by some remote manager who cannot avoid the issue any longer.  In the empowered organization they are handled by the first employee who encounters the problem.  They have the authority to solve problems and take initiatives fast.  They do not do this in isolation – they communicate.  The senior team knows what is going on – but because they trust people to do the right things they find out later – after the fact in most cases.  This involves risks but it pays back in a much more agile, effective, creative and dynamic mode of operation.

The leader strives to change the business from a routine group of people who are doing a job to a highly energized team of entrepreneurs who are constantly searching for new and better ways of making the vision a reality.   We want to use creative techniques to drive innovative solutions to reach the goal.  But just encouraging innovation is not enough.  You need to initiate programs that show people how they can use creative techniques to come up with new solutions.

Paul Sloane