It was sometime in 2008.
A team member came to me with an Idea.
He had studied in detail the cost-savings that would accrue if we switched from the market-leading mineral water brand (XYZ) that we were currently consuming in our 250-seater office, to a lesser-known water brand.
I wasn’t convinced because:
i. Water quality is a sensitive issue. I had my doubts if anybody would be open to the suggestion.
ii. The decision was not in my hand (the head of admin and someone higher up would have to decide.)
So, I downplayed and dilly-delayed until the team member stopped following. And that was the end of the Employee Ideas program.
*****
This is typically the state of most Employee Ideas program –— the ideas come in all shapes, the manager has his own view, and the decision frequently is not in the manager’s hands.
You can take the best of companies and they too face these situations.
According to an employee-survey by Sideways6 — a firm that makes Idea Management software:
– 4 out of 5 employees have ideas to improve their business.
– 1 in 3 feel their ideas are not listened to.
– 1 in 2 feel their company fails to implement good ideas.
And yet, there are examples of Employee Ideas program that get talked about for decades.
– McDonald’s Happy Meal started in the mid-1970s, as a bundled offering by its Guatemala-based franchisee ‘to help mothers feed their children more effectively.’ Today more than 3.2 Million Happy Meals are sold every day.
– Swan Vestas, the makers of strike-anywhere matches, saved millions of pounds in production costs after they followed an employee’s advice to put the sandpaper on only one side of the matchbox.
How can you ensure that the best Ideas see the light of day, and the frivolous get killed quickly?
In this article, I share 10 steps that will help you to achieve that.
(Truth be told, I wrote this assuming I am the CEO of a 100-member company. And I think I can implement these steps. You may need to tweak the process as you start implementing it.)
1. Idea Submission guidelines
To ensure that only good ideas get submitted, get more work done upfront at the time of submission. Some suggestions are:
– Provide a submission form to ensure Employee Ideas program to come in a standard format. It can follow the What-Why-How, or the 5-Why’s form. I have provided a sample form here. It also has a sample completed Idea.
– As the manager, you can also set the pace by posting challenges like
Sales – What other markets/strategies can we use to increase sales?
Service – How do we improve customer service? What are our competitors doing better?
Ops – How do we bring down the processing errors in the unit?
IT / Systems – How do we reduce oft-repeated service requests from other teams?
General– Give some instance of bureaucracy we have and how can we eliminate it?
– If you’re getting too many low-quality submissions, consider limiting the number of Ideas per month, per employee to 3 (or 5) in a month. If you consider the 80:20 rule the bulk of the ideas will come from 20% of the people. These people need to exercise judgment when submitting the ideas, and not clog the system with half-baked/insignificant ideas.
– Employee Ideas program can also be the ones that have been discussed/implemented as part of bau (business-as-usual). They can be resubmitted here if the employee so wants AND the idea is a significant one that merits logging in the Idea system.
2. Idea Management Software / Excel
Today, there are several software programs that will readily align with your enterprise social networking application. Just Google, “Idea Management Software.”
An Idea management software will help you to manage the life-cycle of the idea, easily route it to specific departments, help conduct all discussions in one place, be visible to others, and can be tagged with relevant status (initiated, in the discussion, decision awaited, etc.)
For a small company, or a stand-alone department, a Microsoft Excel / Google Worksheet will also do the job.
The main sheet will have all the submitted Employee Ideas program, with later sheets having the individual Idea fleshed out in detail. The Excel rights can be shared for others to comment on individual Ideas in the Excel itself. Just ensure you take daily backups.
3. Idea Vetting
An Idea formally submitted should be up for discussion for 15 days, unless it is time-sensitive.
This will help everyone to think through the idea. People can comment, put questions to the proposer, suggest additions or deletions—helping the proposer to fine-tune the idea.
An Example
When I was finalising the cover for my book, I short-listed two covers. I then put both covers to vote on Pickfu.com. For a fee, I had 50 respondents vote on which cover they liked, along with their reasons. This helped me to decide on the final cover and tweak it further.
As far as possible, avoid a brain-storming session—a coming together of all, physically or online—that will be expensive, logistically and otherwise too.
4. Idea Voting
For some ideas—especially employee-related—the HR department can follow the wisdom of crowds. It can put it up for a vote.
An Example
Google holds a TGIF (Thank God It’s Friday) every week where Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin answer questions from employees. Before the town hall, employees submit questions to a system called Dory. Others get to vote on whether it’s a good question or not. The more thumbs-up votes a question receives the higher it goes in the queue. At TGIF, the Dory queue is put up on a large screen, and Larry and Sergey answer the question as it appears from the top.
(From the book, How Google Works by Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg.)
Likewise, say, the HR team receives 15 suggestions which are Employee-related (Cash in lieu of Cab facility, etc.). After the initial vetting, it can be put up for a vote to employees. The top ones – 5, 6, whatever – can then be implemented first.
5. Timeline
The timeline for the entire Exercise should be known and adhered to. It could be:
Day 1 Idea Submission
Day 2 – 16 Idea Discussion (Sales, Ops, Service, IT—by affected parties)
Day 20 Idea Decision—Yes / No
Day 21 Decision to be communicated to Proposer
Day 26* Implementation process starts, if applicable
Day 30 Award/Recognition to Proposer
*For ideas requiring System / Technological changes, the timeline will vary.
The decision needs to be communicated to the Proposer within a specified time. If it is rejected, the reason needs to be shared. This will ensure that the proposer and others watching it develop faith in the concept that the company considers the Idea Program important and helpful.
6. Recommended Vs. Mandatory (in Idea Implementation)
Some approved ideas will need to be implemented at individual department levels. It could be that specific departments will have a problem with the Idea.
An Example
I remember submitting an Idea—Putting important documents for record-keeping, in an Rs.1 plastic pouch and labelling it, instead of the then-prevalent stitch-binding it or keeping in a box file at Rs.40 cost. The idea was approved at the Country level.
The Cheque clearing department though had issues with it. It said it couldn’t file the cheques in such a casual manner where it was easier to misplace/remove. Cheques are legal documents, and so it wanted to continue its process of stitch-binding it.
The way to address such issues would be to make Ideas that require implementation at department levels, as ‘Recommended’ instead of ‘Mandatory’.
As long as each department shows 60-75% implementation of recommended ideas, it should be left to the discretion of each department which ideas to implement/prioritize. Otherwise a company will spend significant time monitoring the implementation of each idea.
(I recall reading about a Fortune 500 company—although I can’t locate the specific article—which used to follow this ‘Recommended’ approach.)
7. Reward
The reward to Proposer / Co-Ideator can be of varying levels, depending on the benefit to the company.
Put simply it can be of Gold, Silver, and Bronze—a pin or badge, preferably engraved with the company logo—and accompanied by nominal prize money (Rs.500, Rs.1000 & Rs.2500 respectively.) The Silver and Bronze could be awarded at the discretion of the manager of the respective unit. The Gold could be at the Company level, perhaps 3 to 5 every month.
8. Idea Bulletin
An Idea Bulletin should be published every month. This will ensure the idea culture gets ingrained in the DNA of the company.
It will have details of Ideas received during the month, Ideas carried forward from the previous month, best Idea of the month, etc. Such transparency, even when showing a backlog, will help to instil faith.
I have prepared a sample Idea Bulletin. As you progress, you can add more bells and whistles to it, like, an example of a good well-filled Idea form, examples of Ideas from other industries, etc.
9. Appoint an Idea Co-ordinator
In your team of 25—100 people, appoint one or two enthusiastic ‘gets-it-done’ person as Idea Co-ordinator. Some things that they will do are:
– Join you in addressing the team, every month, making it memorable with anecdotes, guidelines, stats, etc.
– Push for a decision on Ideas—from you and other managers.
– Scan the Idea software for ideas worth implementing in the department.
– Publish an Idea Bulletin, if the same is not being published centrally.
Harnessing Ideas will possibly go the way of other initiatives—disappear in the corporate black-hole—if you don’t give the responsibility of coordination to a specific person in your department.
10. The Manager’s Role
It took me a while to figure this out –
“You as the manager can single-handedly set the Idea culture in the department, irrespective of whether your Company has an Idea Program or not.”
i. Most of the ideas that are generated in your department will fall into 2 buckets.
It could relate to another department your team interacts with—Sales, Ops, Service, etc. While the team member will individually interact with his counterpart , you will have to weigh behind for closure. At times, it could be as simple as deciding not to pursue the Idea, based on the response from your peer in the other department. In that case, you will need to justify the decision to the Idea Proposer in your team.
At other times, the Idea could be for general benefit. Like the mineral water Idea I received. In such cases, you will need to help the team member strengthen the proposal, and then use your authority to put forward the Idea to the concerned department—could be Admin, HR, etc.
(In the mineral water Idea mentioned at the start, I could have helped the team member to build credibility into the proposal by listing other companies that have switched over to the lesser-known mineral water brand, giving references to media articles on the lesser-known mineral water brand, etc.)
ii. As regards other things—MS Excel tracking, publishing an Idea Bulletin—the Idea Co-ordinator in your team will do it.
iii. As regards the Awards:
You will need approval from your boss. It should be easy—an expense of Rs. 5000/- odd per month in a 25–100-member team is nominal. I recall getting approval from my boss for a similar initiative.
As regards which Ideas to award, you can decide in consultation with your deputies to ensure fairness.
The Big Picture
The Olympics is the pinnacle of human achievement.
Why do some countries bring in more Olympic medals than others?
It is not population, nor prosperity. It is a “policy.”
In an insightful article in The Washington Post, professor and author Danyel Reiche lists 4 policies. One of these states that “Nations that ‘institutionalize’ the promotion of Olympic sports tend to be more successful.”
Bringing to fruition a million-dollar idea from the depth of the corporate ladder is the equivalent of an Olympic medal.
It will require an institutional approach like the one detailed above—more so if you want it to be a recurring event.
But more than that, I think the active practice of an Idea Program will bring in excitement and a game-like atmosphere at work. And everyone and everything will be better because of it.