Harvesting Ideas

My day-to-day work is helping organizations reinvent themselves, or said another way, rethink the way they do things, so as to more innovatively satisfy all their stakeholders, and so profitably grow.

One practice we encourage is harvesting ideas. Many organizations have no established processes and practices to unleash the idea generating capacity of employees, customers, suppliers, alliance partners, in fact everyone they interact with. Which means a huge potential source of ideas, innovation and breakthroughs is going untapped. That is a waste as companies like P&G have demonstrated with their 360 Degree Innovation.

My colleagues and I have the view that an idea without some process or structure to turn the idea into action and outcome is useless. Worse than that, sharing ideas gives the impression that something is happening/will happen - and mostly nothing does. This lack of action around ideas pretty soon stifles any enthusiasm for idea generation, as we frequently hear, "what's the point they never listen, nothing ever happens".

Another idea stifler that is prevalent in most organizations is to have the person who generates the idea be given the responsibility for implementing it. If that person is already overwhelmed, the last thing they need, or want, is one more task or project to add to their to-do list. So, guess what, in that culture it is not smart to offer up many ideas - it just means more work.

So we have devised several ways to help organizations unleash ideas, filter them, and turn as many as possible into actions and desired outcomes. The best ways to do this we have discovered is to coach organizations in creating a home grown solution. It will be part structure, part practices, and part cultural; and wholly owned. Some things do need to be in place for a solution to work:

1. First you need a commitment from the senior leadership to unleash ideas from every and any source - so as to forward some vision, mission or intention
2. This commitment needs to be widely know and its importance clearly understood
   
3. You need an institutionalized set of processes, practices and behaviors to support and reward idea generation and implementation - as robust as credit collection for example
   
4. You need to remove institutionalized barriers to idea generation - they are in every organization, and most prevalent in organization where there are few ideas being implemented, or where idea generation is the preserve of a designated few
5. And remember idea generation is natural, easy, fun, and enlivening. it is the easiest way to build relationship, a sense of ownership and belonging.