Tap Into Your Inner Intelligence
Every company has its own central intelligence “agency.” That group: employees. Tapping into that inner intelligence can lead to valuable process and product improvements.
An organization’s front line sees problems and opportunities their managers don’t, according to Alan Robinson, Ph.D., coauthor of Ideas Are Free and Corporate Creativity. To be truly excellent at customer service, Robinson said during his keynote at the recent Call Center Week conference, you have to be able to capture and implement large numbers of employees’ ideas.
Robinson, a professor at the University of Massachusetts' Isenberg School of Management, gave several examples of companies that have formal idea-gathering processes—not the dreaded suggestion box, but meetings where staff share ideas and management takes the best of them, prioritizes them, and acts on them. Wainright Industries, for examples, gets about 65 ideas per person per year, and implements about 90 percent of them. Richer Sounds gets about 20 ideas per person per year; those ideas have been the source of improvements that led the firm to have the most sales per square foot of any retailer globally, according to Robinson.
One firm, Boardroom, ties ideas to bonuses and gets about 104 ideas per person per year. Employees are required to bring ideas to quarterly meetings. Those who come without any for one quarter don’t qualify to get a bonus for that period; two quarters and they’re fired. No one has ever suffered either consequence. In fact, the “stick” approach has created what Robinson called a black market of ideas. Employees from across the company share ideas regularly in preparation for the meetings. Robinson noted the incredible value Boardroom has gained from getting people across the organization communicating in this way.
Robinson offered four steps for getting started in creating your own idea-gathering process:
Got the idea?
Ginger
Perhaps you are setting your sights too low.
Toyota's Suggestion System created over 20 million ideas between 1951 when it was started and 1988. In recent years the number of suggestions averaged 2 million per year, with over 40 suggestions per year per employee, 95% employee participation, and a 96% adoption rate.
Perhaps that is part of the reason why Toyota is doing so well while other manufacturers struggle.
Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager (at Toyota Financial Services)