Ideas Are Free by Alan G Robinson

Author:Alan G Robinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2011-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

MAKING IDEAS PART OF THE ORGANIZATION’S WORK

So far, we have been discussing how to make ideas a regular part of everyone’s work. But doing this will have little impact unless the way the organization governs how work is done is aligned to promote ideas, too. Consider the following example.

In 2003, we helped a unit of a large medical products company to launch a new idea system. The vice president in charge of the unit had formed a team to design the process. Members of the team had worked hard, done their jobs well, and even proposed ways to make ideas part of everyone’s work. Unfortunately, the organization itself was not ready for employee ideas.

One problem was that front-line supervisors were spread very thin. In some cases, a single supervisor had fifty direct reports. Moreover, many supervisors had to spend literally half of their time in meetings and were constantly blindsided by urgent tasks from above. A number of supervisors estimated that they were able to spend at most 20 percent of their time actually supervising. At the same time, front-line employees complained that it was extremely difficult for them to get any attention from their supervisors. No matter what the team designing the process added to supervisors’ job descriptions, how could supervisors really be expected to fit anything more into their hectic schedules?

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