It’s exciting when a fresh, promising idea comes across management’s desk, but its allure will be short-lived without a look at those responsible for nurturing it.
While new ideas are important, they’re worthless without proper implementation. Unfortunately, even breakthrough improvements are often met with internal friction among the workforce, both intentional and casual. While sabotaging changes is an obvious issue and should be dealt with swiftly, it and other problems can often be traced back to a lack of engagement and coordination.
The secret to implementing a new idea internally is in the onboarding process. No longer does the “do this” mantra fly in today’s workforce. Employees should be given the opportunity to not only give some feedback, but play a role in the process. Thus, management must embrace the responsibility of identifying the parties involved, from brainstorming to implementation and testing, engaging them, and equipping them with everything they need to bring the idea to life and see it to fruition.
INTERACTIVE – Is your Company actually ready to Innovate?
Depending on the scope of the innovation or improvement, each party, department, or location should be provided with their specific requirements and insights into the role they’re playing in the project, as well as a broad view of the organization’s goals for the project as well. By providing both specific and general guidelines and goals, management can deliver targeted information to those who need it, while helping to connect everyone’s work to the organization as a whole.
Even with a steady flow of ideas coming from management and front-line employees, you’ve only just started on a path to improvement. Change is hard enough, so long-term success with any type of innovation like crowdsourcing, starts with an engaged workforce that both knows and cares what’s going on. From there, providing them with opportunities to shape the programs that affect them only eases and improves the process, scopes more applicable and efficient programs, and keeps everyone moving in the right direction.