Why Great Leaders Choose To Hear Everyone’s Ideas

Innovation makes the world go round.

The rise of technology has led to a significant amount of creative new ventures and economies. Quick example: 15 years ago, the hottest “app” in the world was probably Nokia’s Snake game, a free Pac-Man-esque game that came on everyone’s phone. Now, we have independent video game companies that make $1 million a day off the new app ecosystem.

The various mediums to release a software has changed the way we develop products and the way that companies choose to market themselves.

A unique idea, or concept, can change the way people live. Companies can sometimes overlook the benefits of having a lot of ideas from a large, diverse group people. Which begs the question: 

What are companies doing to encourage innovation?

Before coming up with ideas and concepts with your group of creatives, it is vital to sit down and come up with the way to manage these ideas. Being that you don’t necessarily want to have a massive influx of ideas without a way of structuring and planning the ones that you can proceed to make a product.

Here are some tips on managing ideas.

How Idea Management Will Help Your Organization

Idea management is not some sort of new concept; it is simply the way that you’re able to capture all the feedback from anyone that is involved with a project.

Organizations want need great ideas and innovation. Innovation will help solidify a company as the top in their industry.

– If you want to see a perfect example of a company that innovates better than everyone else in their industry, look at the Alphabet/Google.  As their products and practices have made them the world’s most valuable company. 

 

A good amount of ideas is the right way to start obtaining market leadership. Aside from that, it is a great way to make sure that your employees are engaged at work.

When people are passionate about what they do, it will only spark more ideas and greater innovation.

Now, it is up to your organization to make sure that people can give ideas without any hesitation. Managing ideas will help your organization because it’ll help prioritize and promote plans that will push your company forward.

Investing in an idea management tool is the best way to overlook all the ideas that are given to you by all of your employees, or colleagues. Being able to crowdsource this information from within, gives you the ability to get ideas from the people who know the company best.

Get “Open Innovation” By Crowdsourcing Ideas

Open innovation is essentially the knowledge exchange between people that allows ideas to be perfected and tweaked for success.

The general idea behind open innovation is that by opening the floodgates and letting people exchange ideas in a forum, people are able to give each other more insights and ideas to help better there the Initial concept.

For example: if you think of an open-source project, the foundation is set to meet the basic needs of the end user. However, a person with a neat idea has the capability to build something on top of that, while still giving recognition and pinging back to the initial creator.

By crowdsourcing your innovation, you are reducing the cost of conducting research and development to help.

Not only that but it increases the accuracy of market research so that you can better your customer targeting initiatives.

To get a lot of innovative ideas from your group, be specific and ask for something that the company would want to see made. Then have good feedback loops that will allow your team to tweak it to perfection.

Generate A Employee Suggestion System

One of the best parts about ideation software is that it is essentially a suggestion tool for innovative groups to keep on growing their ideas.

If you want the aforementioned open innovation to succeed, it is vital to have your employees go all in and suggest new ideas that will help make past ones better. It is okay to reinvent the wheel sometimes, and simple ideas that are not necessarily a large paradigm switch from what your company, or the competition, does can have a major effect.

A quick look at The Vision Lab’s idea suggestion tool demo.

 

In other words, you don’t necessarily need a massive idea help you grow your company, you just need to have the best one.

Having a suggestion system will lead to the best ideas to be tweaked the best they can. So if you want to make employees given suggestions to ideas make it fun and communicate effectively.

And be sure to use the right tools that will get you the best data.

Focus On The Exchange Of Ideas

Once your company, or department, starts getting a good influx of ideas, make sure to capitalize upon them by acting on those great ideas.

There is no purpose in investing in innovation tools if there is no action plan around the potential game breaking concept.

Communication will always be key, and the learning should never stop. Leaders must embrace change and make sure that people are productive and creative.

 

Encouraging creativity and innovation will not only lead to a more engaging environment but bring in new business.

So keep the conversation flowing within your office and constantly ask for new ideas for how to perfect ideas, concept, workflows, etc.

Obtain The Wisdom of The Crowd

If you want to see the best use of people asking a large group for their wisdom and it working out, look no further than television show “Who wants to be a millionaire” where one of the “lifelines” consists of asking the audience for help and answering the question.

 

It is very rare to see the audience get an answer wrong.

This practice of obtaining the knowledge of the crowd can help out with innovation. Unlike the TV show example, there is no definite right or wrong answer, only the ones that people believe are the best.

You are also an advance because if you are asking people within your organization, then you are expecting them to know what is best to move forward.

Having decisions made by the team encourages innovation, gives people ownership of the product, but more importantly, it takes less pressure off upper-management and teams to meet the goals that management sets.

A Holacratic Management Structure Encourages Innovation

The kind of management structure that allows everyone to have a say in how the company operates and functions is known as a holacracy.

Holacratic management is used by a lot of startups, and small to midsize businesses. The reason being is that it helps drive product innovation and boosts staff morale.

This new way of running an organization removes layers of power from management.

Holacracy allows for clear roles to be distributed within the company, so employees can work in an autonomous nature, without having to deal with a micromanaging boss, or constantly have to report to a superior for progress reports.

There’s an organization that consults companies to help them out. If you’d like to check out a free webinar, visit them and learn more about holacracy, or check out a free webinar: 

Require Creativity From Management

If you are not going to focus on having a holacracy, or changing your management structure any time soon, then require creativity from management.

Come up with ways to make sure that your managers, from whichever department are in, not only coming up with new management concepts but to great ideas of the employees.

Example: instead of having a traditional meeting, opt for walking meetings. Grab some notepads and go for a walk on a nice day. It is not only more productive, but it is scientifically proven to be better for your creativity along with your health (duh).

The key takeaway: Do things differently.

The more you encourage a different way of thinking from mid and high-level management, the better will be for your employees.

Create A Feedback Form To Get Hyper-Precise Knowledge From Your Team

The purpose of feedback forms is to make sure that you are developing talent in an efficient manner.

However, these forms can also be utilized to crowdsource better management tactics. You can use it to continue proving that an employee’s voice will always be heard. You can also use it to get specific information about tasks and projects.

Not to mention, It will help with the following:

• Communication
• Leadership
• Teamwork
• Creativity
• Innovation

A manager must use any and all feedback to facilitate the development of their employees.

So do not just sip your tea, instead, get everyone else’s recipe and use the best one going forward. A serious note, though, make sure that you are gathering specific knowledge from people to help with a product’s innovation.

In the long run, you will be able to justify a product’s success or failure with all of the feedback collected from the employees.

Stay Away From A Traditional Management Structure

Going back to holacracy, is proved to be efficient for companies that are using this kind of managerial system.

So why is it that all companies haven’t adopted yet? People are scared of change. It has been like that throughout history.

A person will say that the world is not flat, and we’ll have hundreds of people trying to prove him wrong. — On the other hand, a rapper just came out and said it is flat and had a world-renowned scientist challenge him, so maybe that’s a bad example.

No matter what innovators always stand out. They are the reason that a new app economy exist, the reason why we can call anyone from anywhere, and it is the reason why we can create businesses that are solely online,

Innovators never follow.

So instead of trying to find the traditional way of going about things, go with the new ways that are proving to be more efficient. The way that encourages innovation from management and employees.

Every company has the ability to come out with a new game changing product; it is just a matter of putting in the work and making sure that all new ideas and concepts are organized in the best way possible.

How Does Your Company Manage Ideas?

Does It Values Its Employees’ Suggestions? Idea management is a tough gig, do you have the right processes that well hope your company grow? Let us know in the comments below.