Showing posts with label empower. Show all posts
Showing posts with label empower. Show all posts

Monday, July 16, 2007

Ideas Are Free

By Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder

Without great ideas, no organization can stay afloat, much less flourish. Managers and top executives are constantly struggling to come up with big ones – creative marketing strategies, ingenious cost-cutting schemes and other corporate solutions that will save time and money and improve productivity. But what few of them realize is that right under their noses is a virtually limitless source of valuable ideas – ideas that can revolutionize their company and help bring substantial and sustainable competitive advantage. These great ideas come, surprisingly, from the lowest point of the corporate food chain – from the frontline employees who do the “dirty” work and who therefore see a lot of problems and opportunities that their managers do not.

Employee ideas are a lot more valuable than most managers think. More importantly, they can be had virtually for free, if you know how. This book teaches the most effective methods for tapping this “hidden” resource, based on extensive research in more than 300 organizations around the world. It offers precise techniques for setting up an idea management system that can empower your people, transform your organization and make you a much more effective leader.

The Idea Revolution
In traditional companies there are two distinct types of workers:

• The thinkers – the supervisors, managers and other executives; and
• The doers – the frontline employees.

The rationale behind this division is that regular workers are not capable of the kind of critical thinking needed for problem solving and strategy formulation, and therefore they should not participate in brainstorming.

The Idea Revolution invites you to break free from this old, limiting thinking pattern and to change the rules, because the truth is that although your frontline workers may indeed not have the knack for strategic planning, they do possess other, equally valuable type of knowledge – detailed, practical information about the company’s daily operations, and common sense. Because they are actually where the action is, so to speak, they see a lot of things that you do not – what the customers really need, what machines are not working, what is being wasted. And often they know what to do to make things better.

The only thing you need to do is to ask and to welcome, not discourage, their ideas.

Why Employee Ideas are Important

In most organizations only the first type of knowledge is encouraged. The other kind is not only discouraged, but actually suppressed. But actually both are needed to run an efficient company. Managers and employees need to cooperate, to contribute what they know in order to come up with workable solutions and significant improvements.

Managers and supervisors can tend to generalize issues and gloss over certain details, while employees who work directly with what is causing the problem know exactly what is wrong and what should be done about it. Their knowledge of the problem is direct and intimate, and they can provide accurate solutions. They know things by experience, not by theory.

The Power of Small Ideas

Big ideas are always more attractive – they are splashier, grander, always more promising. Managers are therefore more likely to weed out “small” ideas and go for the really big ones, the “home runs” – those that could help generate millions of dollars in revenue or topple the competition, instantly. But when it comes to ideas, small does not always mean ineffective or weak. In fact, in organizations it is often smarter to focus on small ideas rather than on big ones.

Idea Management

As simple as it sounds, getting and using employee ideas to improve your organization’s performance entails a lot of planning, preparation and hard work. Two crucial issues that you would have to deal with are:

• How can the employees be encouraged or motivated to come up with so many ideas?
• Who has time to deal with all of them?

After all, once the ideas start pouring in, they would each have to be evaluated, and then implemented. These are non-value adding tasks that can take up all of your valuable time. The only way you can effectively manage employee ideas is by setting up a good idea system, one that will make the process, which can become messy, organized and productive.

Profound Change

By encouraging the free flow of ideas, you will have the opportunity to bring about a profound transformation within your organization, one that could not only boost its overall performance, but would also liberate the people who work within it.

Idea systems have the power to change the very culture of an organization, by bringing about more trust, respect, openness, commitment and harmony among its people.

When employees see that their ideas are valued, their attitudes change, from one of detachment and frustration to involvement and fulfillment. This not only uplifts the quality of their lives, but also brings about real growth in the organization.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Add Value to Your Business

The purpose of creating a business is to sell it. When it comes time to sell, you want the success of your business to be dependent on systems and not on you. Therefore, you must work on your business as well as in it. You always want to keep the big picture in mind and not get immersed in the details. How do you approach this? Develop systems to enhance it.

There are just four ways to grow your business:
1. Increase the number of customers of the type you want.
2. Increase the frequency with which they deal with you.
3. Increase the average value of the sales transaction.
4. Improve the effectiveness of the processes in your business.

Remember that one of the four reasons for being in business is to have fun.
Your business is there for your benefit; you are not there for its benefit.


What you can measure, you can manage. If you are not measuring a process, it is almost certain that you are not managing it. Think about your business and what makes it profitable. Are you measuring these processes?

• How many customers do you have?
• How many new customers did you get during the last month and the last year?
• What was the source of these customers?

If you and your team are doing activities that you cannot measure, then the chances are that those activities are adding no value. If they are adding no value, why waste your time doing them?

Build your Unique Core Differentiators (UCD’S). This information bulletin is part of our UCD’S. What have you got?

Look for a second dimension in selling your product. Extended warranties, companion selling, etc.

Learn to really listen. Don’t prescribe a solution unless you really understand the problem. Cutting the price is the easy option - but there is often a better way. It will be harder, but you will earn more money and add more value to your business.

Lower the barriers to doing business with you. Some businesses still do not accept credit cards. (Have I hit a sensitive nerve here?) Should you be taking debit cards?

The more specific things you can tell, the more you can sell. What are the reasons your customers deal with you? Tell these reasons to others and see if you gain new customers.

Avoid changing horses in midstream. If you have tested or measured a system or a process and it works, stick with it until you develop an improved system or process.
Know the power of one. Direct your efforts to one customer or to one prospective customer who requires your service or product; don’t direct your efforts to those who don’t require them.

Learn the value of discovering key frustrations.
Systematize: have a specific way of doing every thing.

Set performance standards: have a best way of doing things.

Invert your pyramid and empower your team. The team you have in place can solve most day to day problems. They can do it faster and more effectively than you can. You just need a way of identifying the solution and applying it. Give them the skill and the authority.

Don’t just reverse the risk, remove it. If you give guarantees, you must have systems in place so that the only result will be the one where you will meet your guarantee.
Give your team a clear and detailed action plan. Be pro-active in following up on orders.
Create offers to add value and to encourage faster responses. If offers increase responses considerably, why run an advertisement without an offer?

Add a 3rd dimension to marketing your product. Consider a Host Beneficiary program. Who else is serving your customers? They want access to your customers. You want access to theirs. Find a way to work together to benefit both.

These ideas will only work if you implement them. As the Nike people say, "JUST DO IT!"