The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas
Alan G. Robinson, Dean M. Schroeder
Language: English
Pages: 216
ISBN: 1626561230
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Too many organizations are overlooking, or even suppressing, their single most powerful source of growth and innovation. And it’s right under their noses. The frontline employees who interact directly with your customers, make your products, and provide your services have unparalleled insights into where problems exist and what improvements and new offerings would have the most impact.
In this follow-up to their bestseller Ideas Are Free, Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder show how to align every part of an organization around generating and implementing employee ideas and offer dozens of examples of what a tremendous competitive advantage this can offer. Their advice will enable leaders to build organizations capable of implementing 20, 50, or even 100 ideas per employee per year.
Citing organizations from around the world, they explain what’s needed to put together a management team that can lead the type of organization that embraces grassroots ideas and describe the strategies, policies, and practices that enable them. They detail exactly how high-performing idea processes work and how to design one for your organization.
There’s constant pressure today to do more with less. But cutting wages and benefits and pushing people to work harder with fewer resources can go only so far. Ironically, the best solution resides with the very people who have been bearing the brunt of these measures. With Robinson and Schroeder’s advice, you can unleash a constant stream of great ideas that will strengthen every facet of your organization.
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entourages, of rock stars—put them in the spotlight. “Frankly, we’ve developed some bad habits,” General Dempsey said. … “It’s those bad habits we are seeking to overcome.” The new evaluation regime was part of a broader overhaul of the way senior military leaders were to be selected and developed. Dempsey was attempting to stop his senior leaders from succumbing to the bad habits that come with power. Fighting the forces that drive these bad habits takes place on two fronts. The first involves
be closed and a new one opened for the survivor. An employee pointed out that this was time-consuming, insensitive to the grieving spouse, and practically invited that person to take her or his business elsewhere. It turned out that the policy had been created years earlier by the legal department in an overkill response to federal regulations enacted to protect the estates of deceased individuals. After some research by KSR analysts, it became clear that a valid death certificate was sufficient
impediments much more easily than their peers at other institutions. (Unfortunately, the KSR program was killed when the bank was acquired by an even larger bank, one not known for its enlightened management or customer service.) The KSR process was more involved than a normal idea process, because it is difficult to anticipate all the ramifications of removing or changing a policy. What may seem like an obviously bad policy is sometimes in place for very good reasons. An important lesson that
regular part of the way the company works, and the better it will perform. Step 5. Start correcting misalignments. Before the launch, it is important to eliminate obvious misalignments so that front-line teams can implement most of their ideas without undue heroics. Step 6. Conduct a pilot test. Without a good pilot, many problems that are easy to correct if caught early become disruptive and difficult to deal with when the system is broadly deployed. Step 7. Assess the pilot results, make
linkages, 51, 57–64, 66 Humility of managers, 30–32, 46 Idea activators, 20, 137–142, 154 Idea boards, 93, 94, 96f, 96–99, 108, 171 Idea meetings, 93–95, 97, 108 facilitators in, 94, 95, 99–102 Idea mining, 20, 142–149, 155 Ideas Are Free (Robinson & Schroeder), 49, 86, 90, 173 Implementation of high-performing idea system, 109–133 assessment of organization in, 115–118, 132 commitment of leadership to, 109–110, 111–113, 116, 132 continuous improvement in, 131–132, 133 correction of
