Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations by Alan G Robinson & Dean M. Schroeder

Author:Alan G Robinson & Dean M. Schroeder
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Published: 2006-01-11T14:00:00+00:00

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Leaders who are serious about promoting employee ideas have to design a role for themselves into the process. This role should keep them informed about the idea system’s performance and put them in frequent personal contact with suggesters and their ideas. This continuously reminds them that their people are a tremendous resource—they care about the company, are thoughtful and observant, and often see opportunities their managers do not.

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Take what happened at Toyota, for example, a company with a long-standing active idea system. During the 1973 oil crisis, Japan’s economy was hit severely, because the country imported almost all its oil. In less than a year, wholesale prices rose 31 percent, and consumer prices 25 percent. The automotive industry found itself in serious trouble. Gasoline prices went up by 60 percent, and the cost of some of its major raw materials rose by as much as 50 percent. Automakers were forced to raise the price of their vehicles substantially. At Toyota, sales plummeted by 37 percent.5 Many companies faced with such a crisis would have laid people off without hesitation. Instead, Toyota asked its employees for all the cost-cutting ideas they could think of that did not require major investment. The response was immediate. Prior to the crisis, employees had been averaging two or three ideas per person per year. In 1973 this jumped to twelve per person—a total of 247,000 ideas corporate-wide—and it is worth noting that the call for ideas didn’t go out until October, when the crisis began. Since 1950, Toyota has not laid a single employee off, worldwide.

Effective top management involvement in an idea system can take many different forms. At Milliken & Company, CEO Roger Milliken and President Tom Malone host quarterly idea “sharing rallies,” at which the employees with the best ideas in that quarter present them to top management. Don Wainwright holds weekly recognition breakfasts for employees who have given in ideas. Every March, DUBAL, the aluminum company in Dubai, holds an annual celebration of its idea system. The one we attended in 2001 included more than two thousand company employees as well as guests from government and private sector companies. Over a hundred employees received awards for different achievements, such as “Best Supervisor” (in each of eighteen areas); “Best Suggester” (in each of eighteen areas); “Best Suggestion” (in each of eighteen areas); and first, second, and third places in a number of categories of suggestion, including energy conservation, quality, safety, and environmental.

Although CEO John Boardman personally presents each award, his main involvement occurs during the previous three months, when he leads the CEO’s adjudication team, which visits all the finalists for “Best Suggestion” in their workplaces. Boardman and his team of the company’s general managers listen to each suggester explain his or her idea in detail and they see it in operation.

In the course of our research and work, we have noticed a marked pattern with CEOs. When asked to share some of their favorite employee ideas, some CEOs have plenty of specific examples, but many do not.

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