Indian HR

Innovation sits at the top of most corporate priority lists today. Faced with a challenging business environment, bosses want more creative products, ideas and solutions to remain competitive. But when it comes to making innovation happen, most simply don't have a clue.

 

Many employees simply shut down and eventually stop trying to come up with new ideas and products, said Josh Bernoff, co-author of Empowered: Unleash Your Employees, Energize Your Customers and Transform Your Business. The cause for their lethargy? A lack of tools to make innovation happen and managers who, often despite good intentions, obstruct their ability to develop new ideas.

 

"Then the CEO says, 'How come nobody in our company comes up with any ideas?' You've trained them that's a bad idea," Bernoff said. "That's a bad thing if they come up with an idea. If they ever did, they certainly wouldn't tell you."

 

The key to making innovation happen isn't setting the direction or making sure that innovation is a priority, it's ensuring that all employees, especially those on the front line, are empowered to solve customer problems. So why aren't companies doing it? It strikes right at the heart of how companies are run, he said.

 

"You can build a strategy around empowering employees to solve customers' problems - but it will challenge your organization from the inside," Bernoff said. "Freeing employees to experiment with new technologies, to make high-profile decisions on the fly, to build systems that customers see, and to effectively speak to the organization in public is not something most corporations or government agencies are accustomed to doing."

 

Open Up Management and Technology

 

Idea generation and innovation are simply not aligned with most employees' goals and daily responsibilities. Traditionally, most strategy comes down from above and managers spend their time telling workers what their jobs are and, in many cases, how to do them. IT departments don't help, either. According to Bernoff, more than one-third of workers are using technology that is not sanctioned by their company for their job, such as downloaded software or online social networking sites.

 

"Consumers these days are so empowered with technology, they move so rapidly, change the technologies they're using - whether it's mobile, video, social - that you really can't serve their needs with a top-down organization anymore," Bernoff said. "The same technologies that are empowering consumers are also empowering employees. It's really easy and cheap now to sign up for Twitter, to start a customer community, even build a mobile site."

 

"You can't succeed unless you encourage them, support them and manage that as opposed to squash it, shut it down and tell them it's not permitted."

 

Find and Celebrate HEROs

 

It's a common misconception that organizational change needs to start at the top in the lofty reaches of the corporate C-suite.

 

"Change actually starts from the bottom," Bernoff said. "You just need to find one of these projects and do what's necessary to clear the obstacles out of the way."

 

Talent managers play an important role by locating what Bernoff calls HEROs - highly empowered and resourceful operatives. When they find them, managers should elevate their visibility by giving them awards and recognition and communicating the results of their innovations so the rest of the workforce understands the company supports their initiative.

 

"That goes a long way," Bernoff said. "People look at that and say, 'You know what, if he can do that, maybe I can do that, too.'"

 

Companies can begin to break down the barriers to innovation by starting small. It's a bad idea to start with the company's biggest product or biggest customer group. Bernoff recommended starting with something that is not so risky.

 

"So just like anything, these things can pick up speed," he said. "The people who build these projects - these HEROs - they become important in identifying how to change the company. You want to put in processes that support innovation in a more deliberate way. If I have an idea, what should I do? You can put a process in place where that can go through and get evaluated."

 

Bernoff points to power tool maker Black & Decker as an example of how empowered employees with the right tools can make a difference. Rob Sharp, head of sales training for Black & Decker, gave Flip video cameras to salespeople and asked them to record ideas from the field. This simple idea quickly generated sales tips and helped the sales team work more efficiently.

 

"They have cut the amount of training down from two weeks to just a few days in the office because they say to trainees, 'Before you come in here, go over here and look at these videos, and then when you come in, we'll be ready to go,'" Bernoff said.

 

While empowering employees is key, it's important to get managers to understand how to do it.

 

"You have to tolerate some failures," Bernoff said. "You need to look at your job as being to clear away obstacles. These things typically reach across boundaries and raise all sorts of questions that a person doesn't typically come up with. That sort of discipline and management is a little different.

 

"If your problem is that you don't trust the customer service people to do their jobs and that if you give them access to these tools, they'll be fooling around all day long, that's management problem. That's not a technology problem."

 

 

[About the Author: Mike Prokopeak is editorial director for Talent Management magazine.]