This article is based on
following book: Ideas Are Free By Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2004 ISBN 1-57675-282-8 232 pages 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 lowest point of corporate food chain – from frontline employees who do “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 most effective methods for tapping this “hidden” resource, based on extensive research in more than 300 organizations around 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:
1. The thinkers – supervisors, managers and other executives; and
2. The doers – frontline employees. The rationale behind this division is that regular workers are not capable of 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 rules,because truth is that although your frontline workers may indeed not have knack for strategic planning, they do possess other, equally valuable type of knowledge – detailed, practical information about company’s daily operations, and common sense. Because they are actually where action is, so to speak, they see a lot of things that you do not – what 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 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.
