Do you rarely hear ideas from your frontline employees? Do great ideas in your organization start out revolutionary but become something that very much resembles everything else your organization has done? Are ideas brought forward by the same few people? …If you’ve answered ‘Yes’, your company needs to make some changes – Your killing ideas!
Companies who worship innovation (e.g. Google, Apple, and IBM) have a formal infrastructure and culture in place to inspire, foster, harvest and evaluate ideas. They’re in the business of ideas. But guess what? You are too!!! Your organization is not in any lesser need of innovation - of great ideas – than any other company.
First of all, ideas are not a nuisance!!! So, while getting the day to day done, make time for them. Immediately!
To be sure, not every idea will be a great idea, but every idea is an opportunity for the organization to re-affirm that ideas have immense value to the future of the organization. Essential, in fact! Imperative! So communicate – no shout! – the virtues and value of ideas and affirm that wherever in the organization a spark flickers, ideas should be embraced and harvested immediately for consideration? Do this now.
Teresa Amabile (1998), a Harvard business school professor and researcher on creativity, helps explain why ideas often get killed, “Our research shows that people believe that they will appear smarter to their bosses if they are more critical – and it often works. In many organizations, it is professionally rewarding to react critically to new ideas.” – Add this to your ‘To Do List’ - Stop the scrutiny!
“Most believe in the value of new and useful ideas. However, creativity is undermined unintentionally every day in work environments that were established – for entirely good reasons – to maximize business imperatives such as coordination, productivity, and control.” (Amabile, 1998) - The frightening new world has made the effective flow of ideas into and through your organization a business imperative. Killing ideas will sentence your organization to a future of mediocrity, at best.
So what can be done right now to un-clot the lines of communications that may be jamming a torrent of ideas from flowing? Well, let’s start with this:
- The senior management team needs to communicate (by what they say and what they do) the irrefutable value (and life and death urgency!) of embracing, supporting and channeling ideas.
- Clarify whose responsibility it is to filter ideas. Do you want the first person that hears the idea to squash or side-line it (and de-motivate the employee!)
- Stop the scrutiny! Look for reasons to explore an idea further…stop criticizing – stop being pessimistic – start dreaming and believing!
- Respond to ideas immediately – they call them sparks because they die quickly.
- Decide how ideas are going to be incubated and kept warm for future exploration.
- Reward and recognize those that surface or champion an idea, especially one that’s not their own!
- Change how you respond to failed ideas. Not all tested ideas will be successful (Actually, if all your organization’s tested ideas are successful – You’re killing ideas! – You should be testing more!) Consider how you respond to failure. Respond positively – reward failure - and move on to the next idea with enthusiasm.
- Make innovation paramount! Clear the path by adjusting organizational systems and procedures to emphasize the value of ideas. Mandate the communication of ideas.
- Discover and discipline the idea killers that lurk in your organization. They’re costing you a fortune and a future!
- Define ‘superstar’ as someone who helps others succeed.
- Have managers positively influence the raw materials that foster ideation (creativity, expertise and motivation) (More to Come on This!!!)
- Don’t be blinded by success. You need good ideas now to sustain your success into the future. You need good ideas all the time!
Reference: Amabile, Teresa. 1998. How to Kill Creativity. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from www.hbr.org
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