Comments on: Who Needs Innovation Training?

By: The inner sanctum | Managing Leadership

The inner sanctum | Managing Leadership — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 06:38:07 +0000

[...] speaking of questioning habitual arrangements, please see this post by Fred H. Schiegel, author of the Frog Blog, where he offers eye-opening insight about marketing [...]

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 12:32:51 +0000

Fred,

Probably a bit of both, but what I think is more important is for management to be approachable and to adopt an attitude whereby they are receptive to the thoughts and ideas of lower level staff.

As an example, at a technology company for which I used to work, there was one occasion whereby a call centre employee approached the chief executive officer about an idea which he had, and the result of that conversation was a new line of business.

Apart from the new avenue of revenue generation, the episode concerned represented a concrete example to all staff about how change really could happen in the event that low level staff spoke up about innovative ideas, and from that day on, senior management did not need to tell us about how they were receptive to the ideas of less senior staff – our MD had shown this clearly through a very practical example.
.-= Andrew´s last blog ..America and climate change – messy action beats no action =-.

By: Fred H. Schlegel

Fred H. Schlegel — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:21:35 +0000

Hi LaVonn, It is so hard to see the ramp when you’re going 200 miles per hour. It would be interesting to know if time was the real limiting factor to innovation rather than money. How does one take time to slow down and smell the rosy ideas when so many things pull at the modern employees attention?

By: Fred H. Schlegel

Fred H. Schlegel — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:09:14 +0000

Hi Andrew, This is a challenging issue for everybody. It is important that any system perform well enough that work gets done in a somewhat enjoyable and comfortable way. If not we would all loose our hair much too quickly. Change and fighting for change can be very uncomfortable and the rewards might be difficult to see. Do you think that this is more a question of training to make employees more comfortable to push change or that it rests more on the manager’s shoulders?

By: Fred H. Schlegel

Fred H. Schlegel — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:49:50 +0000

Hi Kay, I think 3M takes that approach as well. Kind of a self-organizing method that can be very effective. You might be interested in June 18′s Journal article “Google Searches For Ways To Keep Big Ideas At Home”had a great article about the difficulty Google was having in keeping good ideas in-house. While they are giving plenty of time to line-engineers to work on their own ideas (One day a week evidently, it’s good to be Google ) many of the ideas end up languishing or walking out the door when management doesn’t bite.

By: Bill Welter

Bill Welter — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:48:46 +0000

Fred,
I’ve seen the “question as a complaint” phenomena almost every place that there is an advesarial relationship between management and the workforce. Unless the two parties trust each other, the questions are used and seen as barbs to attack one another. Want to see it BIG time? Consider the “questioning” that goes on in the halls of Congress.
Bill

By: Fred H. Schlegel

Fred H. Schlegel — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:35:27 +0000

Hi Brad, That ‘death by committee’ syndrome can be so demoralizing for the folks in the committee as well as for those who’s ideas get stuck there. That makes creating that pathway from the line employees to implementation is delicate – I’m not sure anyone takes ‘suggestion box’ approaches to communication very seriously anymore, if only because its hard to make anyone think the ideas are taken seriously. Empowering implementation at the lowest levels sure helps teach your employees with street smarts the ins and outs of getting an idea implemented.

By: LaVonn

LaVonn — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:29:41 +0000

I think for most businesses the death of innovation (because of those “deaf to innovation”) is one of the unintended consequence of the pace we have set for ourselves in the business world. We are available 24/7, with every answered email more languish, everyone wants instantaneous results. Management (in general) has lost much of its ability to slow down, listen, talk, think, research (beyond the top 10 hits on google!), ruminate, talk some more and then respond. As you have said before, many great ideas take time and care to develop — if your world doesn’t allow for that — well, unintended consequences.

By: Fred H. Schlegel

Fred H. Schlegel — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:23:17 +0000

Hi J.D., I like your ideas about framing. Your post about how that concept is used at Microsoft was very interesting and I think could be useful. I wonder if it could be applied in the context of an ongoing project in a way where you have the ‘now’ frame and the ‘next’ frame. Ideas that are simply too disruptive for the current discussion get captured and resources are put aside to seriously look through them at an appropriate date. The direction for doing that comes from above, but the drive from below.

By: Fred H. Schlegel

Fred H. Schlegel — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 13:17:08 +0000

Hi Bill, I agree managers ‘deaf to innovation’ can be a serious part of the problem. But I’m thinking the way line employees ask ‘why’ changes over time when the current is against them and that can actually reinforce the manager’s behavior. Maybe it’s the path from confusion to frustration I’m thinking about where the question stops looking like an idea and ends up looking like a complaint. Have you seen anything like that?