Julia's blog

A couple of weeks ago Smartcompany ran an article called “Juggling dual roles” (http://www.smartcompany.com.au/entrepreneurs/20100316-part-time-entrepreneurs.html)

 Essentially the article asked the question “Can a would-be entrepreneur successfully hold down a job while simultaneously starting a business?”. The responses were along the lines of “yes…but”.

“Yes but…. it’s very hard work”

“Yes but..…it’s hard to give your best to the day job when your mind is on growing a business”

“Yes but ….it’s hard to grow a business when you are so busy on the day job…”

Not long after the article was published I spent some time with a very successful company that had recently started expanding into a major new business.

The company had thoroughly done its homework on the new venture and was completely committed to making it a success. In fact the company held the project in such high regard that they assigned the very best employees to it to some degree.

Six months after launching the project the management team was dismayed that the project wasn’t shaping up as quickly and as neatly as they thought it would. They were especially disappointed that their top talent didn’t seem to be delivering the goods.

To help understand what was going awry, the management team had a straight-talking session with the project team. The feedback was unanimous. While the staff on the project were delighted to be working on it, they felt frustrated that they couldn’t immerse themselves fully in it.

Yes, the employees had reallocated their workloads so that they could work part-time on the project and part-time in their usual role, and yes many were – without complaint - working significant amounts of overtime to get the project done.  But despite this, they all felt strongly that they didn’t have the “headspace” to perform at their best in both roles. Over and over again the individuals on the project team said they felt they weren’t doing either their project role or their usual role to the standard they expected of themselves.

And really it’s not that surprising. If it’s tough to hold down a job and start a business at the same time why should it be any easier, just because it’s all within the same company, to hold down a role and start a new venture?

The company I visited is now moving some of the key staff full time into the project. It was a tough decision to make, but they figured that the project was so important a part-time commitment just didn’t do it justice.

It's funny how it's the little things that derail the big opportunities.

A CEO was telling me how he found it very disappointing that his people rarely came up with any ideas for the business. He wasn't lamenting the lack of good ideas; he was talking about the lack of any ideas.

A few days later I was talking with some of his team and, completely unprompted, they told me how frustrated they were because they had generated masses of ideas for the business but none of them ever seemed to go anywhere.

I could have been talking to two completely different businesses!

As I dug a little deeper the team started making a few comments like:

"I never know what to do with an idea, I don't know who to tell it to."

"The CEO says he wants ideas but mine don't feel important enough to bring up with him."

"I took an idea to the CEO but clearly it wasn't the ‘right time' as he gave me the ‘what-the?' look."

"I've taken lots of ideas to the CEO, GM and CFO and never heard anything again."

If you have ever worked in a less-than senior role in a business this will probably sound familiar - certainly I remember having similar thoughts - but is it possible that this is happening in your business? More than possible I'd say; it's very likely.

To get around this problem of employees not knowing what to do with ideas I recommend that all businesses have an "idea-home" - a place to deposit, collect and keep ideas. This needn't be fancy; for a small business a spreadsheet that everyone is able to access will do, for a larger business you may want to use a wiki.

At it's simplest the idea-home is where employees record their ideas. You ask them to submit their ideas to the ‘idea-home' together with enough information to make the idea sound compelling but not so much information that entering data into the system becomes off-putting.

If you want to get more sophisticated you can extend the idea-home to include a place where other employees can comment on submitted ideas, and you can add a ‘progress' column so that everyone can see whether and how the idea has been implemented.

And that brings us neatly on to action. Employees will only use the idea-home if they trust that ideas submitted to it will be reviewed. A neat way to make this happen is to select a small group of people - an "idea team" - to review the ideas each week/month and work out next steps.

This is the simplest and most effective way of improving the number of ideas flowing into your business and because we all know that to be innovative you need lots of ideas why don't you give it a go right now.

I have been working with a fairly large organization recently, helping them plan their innovation process. The team from the client had done their homework and on the day I started came armed with a number of interesting questions including this one “how should we reward employees for contributing ideas?”

This is a question that I am often asked so I thought it would be useful to share my suggestions.

I once read that it takes three thousand ideas to yield a single commercial success. While I can’t recall who actually said this I can, having seen inside many businesses, vouch for the magnitude of the proportion.

Given then that your business needs to generate a ton of ideas, harnessing the brainpower of your employees makes complete sense. But getting them to actually do it  - to take an interest in something over and above the day to day – well that can be tough.  Hence rewards.

The tricky thing is this: the embryonic idea is often the easy part. As Thomas Edison famously said of invention, it is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration. And that perspiration doesn’t come from just one person. In fact the most commercially successful innovations come from ideas that have been worked up and collaborated on by many people.

So for your reward system to be fair it needs to be one that encourages your people to stretch themselves beyond their normal work but recognizes that the “stretch” may not just be about idea generation. Those who work-up the idea and bring it to life need to be rewarded too.

As to the actual type of reward, I would avoid anything that is purely monetary. 

Creativity seems to be stimulated best by intrinsic rewards – the fun of the process itself and its appeal to an individual’s personal growth, enjoyment and sense of satisfaction.

That said, creativity can certainly be bolstered by extrinsic rewards, but rather than a cash bonus try these:

·      Recognition: make a fuss, publicly, of your innovators

·      Celebration: hold a party for contributors

·      Time: allow individuals time off their “day job” so that they can participate in the project of bringing the idea to life

·      Status: give individuals the opportunity to lead innovation projects

·      Education: pay for attendance at personal growth courses and seminars

If you are looking for some quick results - to fill your idea pipeline up and get innovation going with a bang - two fabulously simple reward schemes are these:

·      Freebies: a small gift for every idea submitted. Maybe a chocolate bar, or movie ticket if you can stretch to that. You will be amazed how persuasive even the smallest freebie is.

·      Raffle: everyone who submits an idea is entered into a raffle and a few winners are drawn randomly at the end of the period. The prize doesn’t have to be huge; it’s about the fun of winning.

The ultimate reward for an employee is of course to see the idea become a commercial success.  Just as it is for you.