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The Idea Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas, by Alan G Robinson and Dean M Schroeder
CONVERSATIONS I have with business leaders rapidly move to one common problem: the current business environment is brutal, and shareholders are not satisfied with anything less than growth.
The knee-jerk answer is to grow the bottom line by cutting costs, which usually means slashing jobs and squeezing suppliers further. However, as Tom Peters famously pointed out in 1997, “You can’t shrink your way to greatness.” You couldn't then, and you can't now.
Clearly, if your strategy is flawed nothing will help until that is problem is resolved. However, if your strategy is essentially sound, the ideas-driven organisation could well be the full answer to your problems, or at least a substantial part of it.
Let me repeat that: the central idea of this book could well be the full answer to your problems, or at least a substantial part of it.
The authors, Alan G Robinson and Dean M Schroeder, are consultants and lecturers. Between them, they have advised hundreds of organisations in more than 25 countries on how to improve their innovativeness and performance.
Their solution involves the very people that bear much of the burden of the problem – frontline employees. These people see many problems and opportunities that their managers do not, but organisations have very successfully suppressed their ideas rather than promoting them.
If managers were able to implement twenty, fifty or even a hundred ideas per person per year, everything would change. If this sounds fantastical, it is not. Organisations that have used processes to garner frontline employees' ideas and then implement the best ones have shown spectacular growth, even in difficult trading conditions.
Dave Brailsford, director of British Cycling and manager of cycling’s Team Sky, was asked how the team managed to win seven out of a possible 10 gold medals at the 2012 Olympics. He explained that it was not one critical thing that did it but rather “the aggregation of marginal gains” - doing many things, just a little bit better.
This is true for business as well.
Traditionally, organisations have been directed and driven from the top. To achieve today, in this difficult environment, they need to be directed from the top but driven by ideas from the bottom.
You probably have a “suggestion box” somewhere, and most probably it has yielded little. Perhaps you have held an organisation-wide contest for brilliant ideas with a fabulous prize or two which, similarly, yielded little.
As the authors point out, these idea-gathering processes are deeply flawed and rarely yield more than an implementable idea or two. There are many reasons for this. Gathering “suggestions” is simply that, suggestions which “the adults” will review decide on.
It is based on the presumption that someone in head office is better able to decide on what is best for customers he has never met that is the deliveryman.
Additionally, the deliveryman is most unlikely to offer a suggestion to his superiors, many of whom would not take advice gracefully from a corporate inferior. Of course, many of the ideas that come from the frontline in idea forums are simply a waste of time and effort.
The challenge of garnering quality ideas
To garner many quality ideas requires the implementation of a well thought through process that addresses this multifaceted challenge.
In organisations where management lacks the humility to realise that their superior education and elevated positions do not make them experts on everything, failure is guaranteed.
This is why a training element is necessary if the organisation is to be driven by ideas from the vast majority of staff who are not in head offices.
Irrelevant ideas that cannot be implemented are a very quick way of burying this initiative. There needs to be unequivocal clarity on what is being sought: customer retention, increased margin, and greater turnover. This will have to be translated into relevant goals for each participating department.
For our deliveryman, this translates into finding ways to make the customers you deliver to happier. It means finding ways to save costs in delivery such as not wasting fuel and organising your routes better. It entails looking for products the companies you deliver to could be buying from us.
When ideas come in, they need to be dealt with rapidly. There are few faster ways to demotivate a staff member than not having suggestions acted on.
The value of this book lies in two areas. The first is the description of idea-systems from organisations ranging from hospitality to hospitals, from services to manufacturing, and even from government. The second is the prescription for implementing this process in your organisation.
This is not a “paint-by-numbers” prescription, but rather the steps in the process you will need to customise to your company.
If you have any doubts about the efficacy of this approach, consider the results in one of many examples in the book. The Clarion Hotel Stockholm is a four-star hotel in the centre of Stockholm. Staff routinely average more than fifty ideas per year each.
They have been trained to look for problems, and for opportunities to improve. While Sweden was feeling the impact of the global recession, the authors reported that they could not get rooms at the Clarion. The hotel was fully booked for most of the next nine months.
Based on their extensive experience, Robinson and Schroeder estimate that “some 80 percent of an organization’s potential for improvement lies in front-line ideas.” Even if they are only half right, this book deserves your immediate attention.
Readability: Light -+--- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High +---- Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.
CONVERSATIONS I have with business leaders rapidly move to one common problem: the current business environment is brutal, and shareholders are not satisfied with anything less than growth.
The knee-jerk answer is to grow the bottom line by cutting costs, which usually means slashing jobs and squeezing suppliers further. However, as Tom Peters famously pointed out in 1997, “You can’t shrink your way to greatness.” You couldn't then, and you can't now.
Clearly, if your strategy is flawed nothing will help until that is problem is resolved. However, if your strategy is essentially sound, the ideas-driven organisation could well be the full answer to your problems, or at least a substantial part of it.
Let me repeat that: the central idea of this book could well be the full answer to your problems, or at least a substantial part of it.
The authors, Alan G Robinson and Dean M Schroeder, are consultants and lecturers. Between them, they have advised hundreds of organisations in more than 25 countries on how to improve their innovativeness and performance.
Their solution involves the very people that bear much of the burden of the problem – frontline employees. These people see many problems and opportunities that their managers do not, but organisations have very successfully suppressed their ideas rather than promoting them.
If managers were able to implement twenty, fifty or even a hundred ideas per person per year, everything would change. If this sounds fantastical, it is not. Organisations that have used processes to garner frontline employees' ideas and then implement the best ones have shown spectacular growth, even in difficult trading conditions.
Dave Brailsford, director of British Cycling and manager of cycling’s Team Sky, was asked how the team managed to win seven out of a possible 10 gold medals at the 2012 Olympics. He explained that it was not one critical thing that did it but rather “the aggregation of marginal gains” - doing many things, just a little bit better.
This is true for business as well.
Traditionally, organisations have been directed and driven from the top. To achieve today, in this difficult environment, they need to be directed from the top but driven by ideas from the bottom.
You probably have a “suggestion box” somewhere, and most probably it has yielded little. Perhaps you have held an organisation-wide contest for brilliant ideas with a fabulous prize or two which, similarly, yielded little.
As the authors point out, these idea-gathering processes are deeply flawed and rarely yield more than an implementable idea or two. There are many reasons for this. Gathering “suggestions” is simply that, suggestions which “the adults” will review decide on.
It is based on the presumption that someone in head office is better able to decide on what is best for customers he has never met that is the deliveryman.
Additionally, the deliveryman is most unlikely to offer a suggestion to his superiors, many of whom would not take advice gracefully from a corporate inferior. Of course, many of the ideas that come from the frontline in idea forums are simply a waste of time and effort.
The challenge of garnering quality ideas
To garner many quality ideas requires the implementation of a well thought through process that addresses this multifaceted challenge.
In organisations where management lacks the humility to realise that their superior education and elevated positions do not make them experts on everything, failure is guaranteed.
This is why a training element is necessary if the organisation is to be driven by ideas from the vast majority of staff who are not in head offices.
Irrelevant ideas that cannot be implemented are a very quick way of burying this initiative. There needs to be unequivocal clarity on what is being sought: customer retention, increased margin, and greater turnover. This will have to be translated into relevant goals for each participating department.
For our deliveryman, this translates into finding ways to make the customers you deliver to happier. It means finding ways to save costs in delivery such as not wasting fuel and organising your routes better. It entails looking for products the companies you deliver to could be buying from us.
When ideas come in, they need to be dealt with rapidly. There are few faster ways to demotivate a staff member than not having suggestions acted on.
The value of this book lies in two areas. The first is the description of idea-systems from organisations ranging from hospitality to hospitals, from services to manufacturing, and even from government. The second is the prescription for implementing this process in your organisation.
This is not a “paint-by-numbers” prescription, but rather the steps in the process you will need to customise to your company.
If you have any doubts about the efficacy of this approach, consider the results in one of many examples in the book. The Clarion Hotel Stockholm is a four-star hotel in the centre of Stockholm. Staff routinely average more than fifty ideas per year each.
They have been trained to look for problems, and for opportunities to improve. While Sweden was feeling the impact of the global recession, the authors reported that they could not get rooms at the Clarion. The hotel was fully booked for most of the next nine months.
Based on their extensive experience, Robinson and Schroeder estimate that “some 80 percent of an organization’s potential for improvement lies in front-line ideas.” Even if they are only half right, this book deserves your immediate attention.
Readability: Light -+--- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practical: High +---- Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.
