Strong leaders are able to not only meet the productivity and profitability demands of their divisions, they are also able to tap into their employees’ unused creative potential. These leaders use their employees’ knowledge of processes and experience with daily operations to enhance the performance of the divisions they manage.
Employees have an up-close, front line view of how the process works or fails to work, and often have new and innovative ideas that will lead to enhanced productivity and profitability. Unfortunately, too often their voices go unheard and their knowledge goes unused. Business as usual lacks a mechanism for tapping into the experience, creativity and knowledge of front line workers. When their voices are not heard and their ideas are not used, employees become automatons, working with their hands but not with their brains.
Managers, who are so absorbed in the daily pressures of running their divisions that they fail to create an atmosphere that encourages employee feedback and embraces new ideas, miss a valuable opportunity. Adding levels of bureaucracy to the pressures of management allows for even less time to gather employee feedback and input.
Unlocking employee innovation
In the 1980s General Electric (GE) discovered that its bureaucracy decreased productivity and caused operations to stagnate. In response, GE developed the Work-out. This is a process similar to a town meeting. Over the course of three days, groups of thirty to a hundred employees are brought together with an outside facilitator to discuss how to improve productivity, streamline operations and overcome difficulties faced by the business.
To ensure that the Work-out goes beyond simply expressing opinions, managers commit to approve or deny 75% of employee recommendations, and to resolve the remaining 25% within thirty days.
Elements of a Work-out
This process can be adapted to any organization that follows four basic steps:
Create a safe and open atmosphere – Those on the front lines of a process understand it intimately and often introduce new and creative ideas for improvement, but first they must be given the opportunity.
Challenge the team to develop creative solutions – Too often organizations fail to take advantage of their employees’ talents for innovation and creation because they simply don’t ask. Challenging employees to go beyond the narrow bounds of their job description and to focus on process improvement can motivate them to draw upon unused talents and express previously-unvoiced ideas for the benefit of the company.
Decide on solutions immediately and publicly – This is the true test of an organization’s commitment to change. Creating ideas for improvement is quite common; taking action on these ideas is uncommon. Organizations that act on employee-generated innovations receive the benefit of a mass of new ideas from employees and greater trust and commitment when employees realize that leadership takes their input seriously.
Report on progress – The innovative ideas generated in the Work-out session will require fine tuning as they are applied to daily operations. To ensure that the innovations are deployed properly and take hold permanently, project leaders provide progress updates to the executive team at 30, 60 and 90 day intervals after the project is implemented.
As managers draw upon the untapped creative potential of their teams by creating an environment where employees can speak their minds and have a free exchange of ideas, they will reap a harvest of greater productivity gains, and more engaged and committed employees.
