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How do you inspire innovation in employees?
Often the best ideas come from employees. How do you inspire a culture where idea sharing and innovation are commonplace? If you have specific examples of things you have done, that would be great.
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3 Answers
Innovation in corporations frequently gets squashed because of policies and procedures. Also, "turf" issues, who gets the credit for innovations and how is risk taking viewed, in general contributes.
Innovation requires the time, resources and permission (tacit or overt) to blossom. People need to know that they will not be punished for reasonable failures and that their efforts will be celebrated both in the broader culture and by their managers.
One specific I can site is when I was CEO of a high tech company, I directed our Engineering VP to load that department at 85%, not 100% or higher. What I meant by that was that I wanted our product creators the have approximately 15% "tinker time". Engineers, when allowed and encouraged to tinker with ideas and existing products or services can come up with some amazing ideas.
I viewed that 15% tinker time as an investment in product development.
Consequently, when project demand and/or market pull began to eat into that 15%, we would hire more engineers to "buy back" that time. Now, our development function did not meet or beat all of the "conventional wisdom" represented by industry benchmarks and I had an on-going war with my own financial people about the "margin erosion" but that "tinker Time" was our future and it definitely paid off.
Making sure that every employee has value and that they will be listened to by managers and top management. Managers do more to stifle innovation than any other single thing by micro-managing, claiming credit for another person's idea, or not passing on any ideas that are not the manager's own. Often employees have great ideas for improvements in other departments or areas than their own and need to be listened to and not ignored because they are out of their area of "expertise."
My favorite story of this kind of inspiration for innovation is something that happened years ago at 3M. That company values every employee and has a very open door policy for ideas at all levels. There was a janitor who swept up the refuse from a particular manufacturing process who thought it was a terrible waste. So he played around with the waste until he found a use. He had invented what is now known as ScotchBrite scrub pads. Because he felt free to experiment and was listened to, 3M ended up with a very profitable product. Obviously, valuing the contributions of every employee paid off for 3M.
1. Listen and understand what employee is saying/trying to say. Innovation can also be likened to QCC groups where a group of employees tackle a known problem.
2. Have a budget for innovation/QCC that is not directly linked to the results that it produces. This budget will be both at the cost level - money to try out new addons/variations and also time - let them do it in company time. Do not directly link this with rhe productivity improvement - though that will always be the final bottom line.
3. Encourage employee to try out and do not punish if the "investment" is a "failure" Analyse the failure and have a second go after rectification of mistakes.
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