A culture of innovation needs a flourishing democracy of ideas. This means that in an organization everyone’s ideas should be valued.. and welcomed. However, it is surprising how often leaders miss out on opportunities to tap their team members for ideas. A few simple actions are all it takes to tap into your most precious resource, the creativity of your team members.
There are three types of ideas you can, and should, get from your team. Each require a slightly different technique to gather.
Type 1 – Spontaneous individual ideas
We continuously have experiences which spur ideas to pop up in our heads. At work such ideas may include seeing potential solutions to problems in our daily tasks (efficiency or process-improvement ideas), or thinking of better ways to bring value to our customers (product or service innovation ideas), or maybe better ways for people in the organization to work together (organizational improvement ideas). The problem is that so many good ideas stay in the head of the person who had them, with no benefit to their organization. This is a shame, and a waste.
Each person is a unique individual with a unique mind, life experience and perspective on the world. So even if you have 100 people in a factory doing exactly the same basic job, you will be surprised at the diversity of thoughts they have about the tasks they do. And, in many cases, simply asking people close to the action what they think about a particular issue or challenge may yield you extremely helpful ideas on how to solve it.
Senior people – who usually have no problem making themselves heard on any topic – too often do not appreciate that more junior people may be reluctant to speak up and share their ideas. But there are many reasons why people hold back: they could be shy, overly deferential, risk averse, or simply feel unqualified to provide input. Sometimes it is a cultural constraint, and sometimes there are language barriers.
Therefore leaders have to create an environment where it is clear to everyone that their ideas are not only permitted, but welcomed. Nothing can replace the one-on-one personal conversation for teasing out Type 1 ideas. And none of this needs to be complicated. Simply walk around, stop at someone’s workstation and chat, keeping your ears open for his or her ideas. You’ll be pleasantly surprised!
Type 2 – Solicited individual ideas
You can also spur ideas from your team members by directly asking for the type of ideas you are looking for at that point in time. The effective way to do this is to frame the issue or opportunity you want ideas for, clarify any constraints they have to take into account, and explicitly communicate any commonly assumed constraints that may be ignored or relaxed.
You can do this informally at a small meeting, or more formally as part of a large organizational initiative like an innovation competition of an efficiency campaign. Articulate a challenge in simple terms, e.g. “How may we reduce our customization process in production from four weeks to three weeks?” and encourage individual participation through a good communications campaign. Give visible rewards and recognition, not only for the winning ideas, but also for the most original idea, the most prolific proposer and so on. People like their contributions to be recognized and appreciated.
Additional ways that you can help people to get out of the rut of their routine thinking include exposing them to new environments and stimuli, like a field visit.
Type 3 – Collaborative interactive ideas
Putting many heads together is the most powerful way of gathering new ideas. Sadly, most organizations are not good at managing the process of collaborative idea generation, which is why they often need to rely on external facilitators like me to manage the group interaction.
The fatal mistake to avoid with any type of brainstorming, is to evaluate ideas as they are raised: If the idea seems good, the group will stop too soon and declare victory. And so they miss out on better ideas that would have come later in the process. If the idea seems bad or crazy, it will be rejected out of hand particularly if there is a strong hierarchy or peer pressure in the group. The inevitable result will be incrementalism – with nothing new really being proposed.
Another mistake is stopping the idea generation process too soon, when the first batch of ideas seems to be drying up, the room becomes quiet, and people look like they want to move on. Research has shown that the best ideas often come on the other side of this plateau, just like when you are trying to break through a barrier in athletic training.
There are many good brainstorming techniques available. Some are better for certain situations than others. But they all have one thing in common: that people should build on one another’s ideas, so that the winning idea is one that no one would have thought about on their own. That way my crazy, impractical idea makes Tom think of an unusual, but more promising idea he would not otherwise have considered, and when Tom mentions his intriguing new idea, it gives Sally’s thinking a jolt so she comes up with the brilliant winning idea.
And, of course, you are more likely to get a diversity of ideas when you have a diverse group of people, representing multiple functions, groups, levels, and viewpoints together for any collaborative idea generation exercise.
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In summary, here’s a simple guide to making sure you make the best use of all your people’s good ideas:
1. Type 1 ideas – Walk around, ask open-ended questions and listen
2. Type 2 ideas – Define the challenge to solve in simple terms, and ask everyone for their ideas
3. Type 3 ideas – Orchestrate one or more collaborative idea sessions, invite a diversity of people, and have rules of order that ban premature evaluation of ideas
Lastly, and very importantly, rather than just gathering ideas you have to be seen to act on them and implement one or more of the ideas generated. Not only is that the only way to actually get stuff done, but soliciting ideas which are never brought to fruition is an idea inhibitor in itself.
This article was originality posted by the author on LinkedIn.
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