You’re sitting on a gold mine of innovative ideas for:
- Disruptive new products and services
- More efficient approaches to using company resources
- How to keep minor glitches from becoming costly crises
- Ways to improve processes, customer service, and product design
- How to better connect with customers and deliver their business objectives
And those ideas are all within your employees’ heads.
Your employees are often your best source for the ideas you need to improve, grow, and transform your organization. So how can you tap into that rich vein?
Stephen Covey, speaking at Southern Virginia University, said, “You may be able to buy someone’s hand or back, but you can never buy someone’s heart, mind, and spirit—these are volunteered only.” You cannot force employees to share their ideas. You can only encourage and enable them to be willing and able to volunteer their ideas.
“You want a culture that just thirsts for (ideas) and doesn’t care where they come from.” Jack Welch
The First Step is to stop punishing people for sharing their ideas and stop discouraging them from wanting to share their ideas. Without intending to, there are many ways organizations punish people who want to share their ideas:
The words you use have impact. What you say when presented with a new idea, such as, “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” “that’s not how we do it here,” or even “yes, but…” can kill the idea on the spot and discourage people from ever coming forward again. The words you use can also reinforce positive change and encourage innovation. Choose your words carefully.
Recognition programs should be inclusive, not exclusive. Rewarding only “big ideas” and successes sends a message that you’re not interested in smaller, less dramatic improvements and that you’re intolerant of failure.
If employees are constantly worried that they might miss out on promotions or lose their jobs over a failed attempt at innovation, they will never take the necessary risks to develop their ideas or back anyone else’s.
Innovation efforts are risky. Failure is an option and failure stings. Until you take some of the sting out of failure, you won’t get many breakthrough ideas.
It’s not just fear. Employees are unwilling to share their ideas if they see their efforts as futile. Employees want to feel that they are being listened to and taken seriously; that their ideas are receiving fair and timely consideration; and that their ideas—good or bad—are at least being acknowledged. Of course they also like to see their ideas implemented.
Without hope that something might actually be done with their ideas, people are unwilling to share their ideas.
When it comes to new ideas, who do you recognize, who do you reward, what do you celebrate?
Being able to identify a single individual who came up with a fleshed out idea—a star—is rare. Ideas are much more often the result of a team effort—a constellation of people working on and enhancing ideas that pass among them. Then there’s the team who evaluate and filter ideas, and the people involved in implementation.
Make sure everyone taking part in the innovation process gets recognized. Feeling as though you’re eligible for recognition and not receiving it is demotivating.
The Second Step is to establish a recognition and reward program because behavior that is rewarded is behavior that is repeated.
There is no one-size-fits all program. Design your program to work within your organization’s culture and financial capacity. Here are a few suggestions:
Recognition – Recognize and celebrate all attempts at innovation without regard to the results, and all behaviors you want to encourage, to foster an innovation culture. This could include privately thanking employees for their efforts, letters of appreciation, public recognition in company newsletters, award ceremonies, plaques, certificates or a recognition dinner with company executives.
“If you’re leading a group and you got somebody taking a swing, you’ve got to make examples out of them. Make them heroes for taking the swing.” Jack Welch
For example, former Yum Brands (parent of Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and KFC) cofounder and CEO David Novak would give out signed and numbered rubber chickens as recognition for exemplary performance, or sets of wind-up walking teeth for employees who ‘walk the talk.’ These small but heart-felt tokens of recognition are often perceived as far more valuable than monetary rewards.
In addition to recognition, tangible rewards may further encourage employees to share their ideas, support the ideas of others, and take some reasonable risks. Tangible rewards may take the form of:
Reward Bucks – Use fake money to get real results. Idea contributors earn company-branded reward bucks or reward tokens for submitting fresh ideas focused on specific challenges or objectives, or for helping to further develop specific ideas. Employees use these rewards at a company recognition event to either bid on or exchange for company-logoed swag or items such as big-screen TVs, bikes, t-shirts, or a gift cards to popular stores or restaurants, etc.
One example includes French building materials corporation Saint-Gobain who hands out rewards as ideas pass through each phase of their 5 phase innovation process. They also multiply the reward by the number of people who jointly submitted the idea, in order to promote collaboration.
Monetary Rewards – Company co-branded gift cards or bonus checks are universally appealing. Monetary rewards may be a small, set amount not connected to the value of the innovation effort, or could equal 5% to 15% of the idea’s value.
Also consider special awards, such as:
Biggest Failure Award – to remind everyone that, in a culture of innovation, failure is always an option and is acceptable. This award is bestowed on whosever unsuccessful idea resulted in valuable learning.
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” Truman Capote
One example is the Golden Egg trophy awarded to the member of an Ann Arbor, Michigan business mastermind group who had the most ‘egg on their face’ after being daring enough to share their biggest blunder (and the associated learning) from the previous month.
Other examples include Tata Group’s Dare to Try award that is given to ambitious projects that have failed for any number of reasons. And advertising agency, Grey, that celebrates failures of daring and audacity with its Heroic Failure award.
The last example is textile company W. L. Gore & Associates who host a celebration with beer or champagne when they kill a failing project, just as they do for a successful project.
Rewards can be instigated by:
Managers – who nominate employees for company-wide recognition and who award reward bucks or reward tokens.
Colleagues – recognition doesn’t always have to come from the top. Peer-to-peer recognition programs encourage employees to collaborate and also help ensure that great ideas, no matter how small, are not overlooked. Encourage peer-to-peer recognition by establishing a system for colleagues to nominate each other and award reward bucks or reward tokens as appropriate.
Zappos, for example, has four different peer-to-peer awards programs.
Employees – who nominate themselves for recognition and reward. Develop a process for who approves the recognition and grants any reward.
The most effective programs strike a balance between tangible rewards and intangible recognition, and individual rewards and team rewards.
Also check your metrics regularly to determine if your recognition and reward program is meeting your goals: metrics such as the volume of ideas submitted or level of participation in the program. Track which incentives are producing the desired results, and fine-tune accordingly.
You can’t just offer a reward for innovation and expect it to produce results without first having a culture that fosters the creation of those ideas. It takes willing and able contributors to unlock the creativity and innovation within your organization.
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