Without great ideas, no organization can stay afloat, much less flourish. Managers and top executives are constantly troubled to come up with big ones - creative merchandising strategies, ingenious cost-cutting schemes and other corporate solutions that will save time and money and improve productivity. But what few of them realize is that right under their noses is a all but limitless source of valuable ideas - ideas that can revolutionize their company and help bring substantial and property competitive advantage. These great ideas come, surprisingly, from the last point of the corporate food chain - from the frontline employees who do the "dirty" work and who therefore see a good deal of problems and opportunities that their managers do not.
Employee ideas are a good deal more valuable than most managers think. More importantly, they can be had all but for free, if you know how. This book teaches the most effective methods for tapping this "hidden" resource, supported extensive research in more than 300 organizations around the world. It offers precise techniques for setting up an idea direction system that can empower your people, transform your organization and make you a much more effective leader.
The Idea Revolution
In traditional companies there are two distinct types of
workers:
1. The thinkers - the supervisors, managers and other
executives; and
2. The doers - the frontline employees.
The principle behind this division is that regular workers
are not capable of the rather critical thinking required for problem resolution and scheme formulation, and therefore they should not participate in brainstorming.
The Idea Revolution invites you to break free from this old, limiting thinking pattern and to change the rules, because the truth is that although your frontline workers may so not have the hang for strategic planning, they do have other, equally valuable type of cognition - detailed, practical information about the company's daily operations, and common sense. Because they are actually where the action is, so to speak, they see a good deal of matters that you do not - what the customers really need, what machines are not working, what is being wasted. And often they know what to do to make matters better.
The only matter you need to do is to ask and to welcome, not discourage, their ideas.
Why Employee Ideas are Important
In most organizations only the first type of cognition is bucked up. The other kind is not only discouraged, but actually suppressed. But actually both are required to run an efficient company. Managers and employees need to cooperate, to contribute what they know in order to come up with feasible solutions and significant improvements.
Managers and supervisors can tend to generalize issues and gloss over certain details, spell employees who work directly with what is causation the problem know exactly what is wrong and what should be done about it. Their cognition of the problem is direct and intimate, and they can provide accurate solutions. They know matters by experience, not by theory.
The Power of Small Ideas
Big ideas are always more attractive - they are splashier,
grander, always more promising. Managers are therefore more likely to comb out "small" ideas and go for the really big ones, the "home runs" - those that could help generate millions of dollars in revenue or topple the competition, instantly. But when it comes to ideas, small does not always mean ineffective or weak. In fact, in organizations it is often smarter to cente small ideas rather than on big ones.
Idea Management
As simple as it sounds, acquiring and exploitation employee ideas to improve your organization's performance entails a good deal of planning, preparation and hard work. Two crucial issues that you would have to deal with are:
o How can the employees be bucked up or impelled to come up with so many ideas?
o Who has time to deal with all of them?
After all, once the ideas start gushing in, they would each have to be evaluated, then implemented. These are non-value adding tasks that can take up all of your valuable time. The only way you can effectively manage employee ideas is by setting up a good idea system, one that will make the process, which can become messy, organized and productive.
Profound Change
By encouraging the free flow of ideas, you will have the chance to produce a profound transformation inside your organization, one that could not only boost its overall performance, but would also liberate the people who work inside it.
Idea systems have the power to change the very culture of an organization, by delivery about more trust, respect, openness, commitment and harmony among its people.
When employees see that their ideas are valued, their attitudes change, from one of detachment and frustration to involvement and fulfillment. This not only uplifts the quality of their lives, but also brings about real growth in the organization.
