I love hearing people’s ideas. I love outside-of-the-box thinking, and I regularly—my employees and co-workers might think too regularly—ask for people’s input. So just to be clear, I want people to offer ideas.
That said, I’m less than excited when people send ideas—and nothing more. They don’t offer any insight into how an idea will be executed. They don’t consider obstacles. In some cases, they don’t even contemplate the true benefits of an idea. They simply identify something they like, and they share it along with a note like “Hey, why aren’t we doing this?” or “Love this. Can we do something similar?”
Sounds harmless enough, right? But what ends up happening is that those people put the burden back on me to develop the idea. I have to follow up to ask them to explain how the new idea helps us reach our goals or to offer a list of potential challenges we’ll face. I often feel like I am shooting down ideas or being too cynical. So either I end up doing all the work for the other person or I’m crushing the idea before it has a chance to develop. Neither is ideal—and neither feels fair.
While we can’t control the actions of all of our co-workers, we can improve how we submit ideas to others. We also can guide our employees to more thoroughly develop their own ideas before sharing them. My own boss introduced the following activity to me, and I follow the process whenever I want to bring a new idea to the table.
I suggest you complete it each time you want to present a new idea to your boss, co-workers or employees, and ask your employees to work through the process before they share an idea with you. Also, it’s a great activity to use during team brainstorming sessions.
Create a chart with four quadrants, labeled as follows. Then answer the questions.
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Goals
How will the idea specifically aid my team/organization in reaching our high-priority goals?
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Tools
What resources (materials, equipment, software) do we need to execute the idea? |
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People
Who (employees, vendors, contract workers, customers) will we need to execute the idea? |
Obstacles
What challenges can we expect that may prevent us from successfully executing the idea?
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The process allows you create a clear picture of what’s involved to bring the idea to life. As you and your staff work through the process, you will flesh out the idea which makes it more likely that it will be successful. On the other hand, you may realize that the idea doesn’t support your goals or that it’s just not doable given your current priorities, so rather than force an idea that will ultimately fail, you can move on to more manageable and lucrative projects.
How do you encourage your employees to offer realistic, workable ideas and solutions?
[Image Source: Caveman Chuck Coker]
Filed under: Dos and Don'ts, Leadership Tagged: | coaching, communication, innovation, new supervisor skills
I would suggest creating a “Kill a Stupid Rule” form, with the following captions: Problem, Solution, Impact, Estimated cost, Time estimated on delivering, Groups affected, Projected outcome or benefit from implementing suggestion, and Presented by. Adding this form would make the person think more of the total impact of their suggestion and if the benefit would outweigh the cost.