Saturday, August 20, 2011

Five Ways To Encourage Your Team to Come Up With Ideas

 The need to outdo competitors and predict the next big thing that consumers will lap up has made companies go in for innovation and incubation centres. Bosses now have to coax their teams to come up with unique ideas, with a rider that they are practical and add to the company’s reserves. Devina Sengupta finds that creative success cannot be measured by mass appeal and success. When it becomes part of the KRA, rest assured, the company has found the metrics to harness the best. 


Ideate Frequently 

At board meetings, people often feel its best to put a firm lid on any suggestions that will lead to a clash of ideas and hurt the hierarchy. Reliance Trends, however, follows the post-it system where members write as many ideas they can think of to solve a problem. The postits are then put on a board and ideas that are similar are clubbed together. Team members vote to find out which can be better and this helps the company to “get every bone to think out of the box and at the same time choose only those that are practical,” says CEO Arun Sirdeshmukh. 

Get The Carrots Out
Incentives can get the best out of the team, and lend a healthy dose of competition. At product services firm Adobe, patent bonuses are doled out, which help in nudging employees to think differently. Events like Ideas Unboxed, or Innovation Day, where the CEO gets a glimpse of the ideas, help foster the right kind of creativity for the firm.


Bring In The Experts
Computer storage and data management company Netapp has hired a team of lawyers who guide innovators in getting the right IP done. The lawyers, from all over the world, assist those in the process of making the right products, says SR Manjunath, HR head.


Don’t Curb Ideas
“You can not ask employees to be creative and then put barriers saying they have to be practical,” says Prateek Srivastava, South head for advertising firm Ogilvy and Mather (O&M). Juniors tend to get burdened if they have to think whether their ideas will get the returns. At O&M, there is a group of seniors whose job is to sift through the ideas and select the appropriate ones. As the lower order rises up the ladder, they will have the responsibility to do the same. “So at first, nine out of ten ideas will not work, but as they become senior they will have the responsibility to get fewer but more relevant ideas,” says Srivastava.


Develop Leadership
A strong group of mentors at every step and act as a sounding board can help companies let employees ideate and get the best out of them, keeping usability in mind, says SKNL’s apparel and retail director, Ashesh Amin. Reliance Trends uses the ‘Ninja technique’, where a leader will be appointed to encourage more to think and channelise ideating sessions.


(The Economic Times, Mumbai, 20-08-2011)

No comments:

Post a Comment