Imagine the world without Post-it Notes.
According to a 3M Company Web site page, "The Whole Story" describes how the organization’s culture fostered the development of Post-it Notes. Today, almost 30 years later, this product is sold and used around the world and was developed through 3M’s "bootlegging" policy, which encourages technical employees to spend at least 15 percent of their time on projects of their own choosing.
Why after all these years do you suppose 3M continues this policy? Because as this 3M product and other world-changing innovations demonstrate: An organization can be well rewarded by mandating out-of-bounds thinking, as discussed in my previous Insight.
How to get started.
Mandating and managing out-of-bounds thinking almost sounds counterintuitive. Nonetheless, a business can take steps to harness the power of entrepreneurial ideas. For starters, a business can:
implement collaborative meetings or sessions;
involve entire teams, including those from the top to the bottom;
give every employee a voice; and
incentivize and reward innovative ideas that are implemented.
I know of many companies that achieve a higher success rate when they apply this strategy. Sometimes certain employee voices, especially the meek, need to be louder and heard from more often. If invited to or allowed to speak up, even the "under-spoken" can share an idea that can save you millions of dollars. On the other hand, your top-level managers, or more vocal leaders, can fall short when it comes to innovative ideas, because they’re too close to the business.
I'll give you an example.
As a small business owner, let’s suppose you become aware of a shipping issue where the shipping expenses are not working for you. At the end of the day, you find out that packages are not making their way to the discount-rating categories, effectively robbing you of cost-savings from optimal-shipping options. Worse yet, you discover you are paying extra shipping charges every day that end up costing you an extra $25,000 a year.
Because you are busy running your business, you don’t have time to ask every single employee in the supply chain for their suggestions. You also want to avoid unnecessary down-time by interrupting individual employees working to assemble, package, ship, etc. your products.
All totaled, you are losing out on cost-saving opportunities. There is a high likelihood that one or more of your employees would have ideas that could resolve your problems. Someone who, if given the opportunity, could say, "If we did it this way, then maybe we could save some money."
In hindsight, if you had taken steps to harness entrepreneurial thinking in a collaborative way, you would have a process in place.
A collaborative process would have already fostered an engaged workforce culture with employees committed to innovative thinking. In effect, these employees would be constantly on the prowl looking for and collaborating on innovative and fresh ideas and solutions. This culture would be already flourishing because you have been encouraging and rewarding employees.
So in order for entrepreneurial ideas to flourish, employers cannot be timid about allowing out-of-bounds thinking—there should be no walls or constraints. Not only that, leaders should encourage and nourish creativity and innovative thinking. This type of entrepreneurial culture requires a supportive and positive leadership style. The results are amazing; I know it, because I’ve seen it happen.
Bryan Wempen is Manager of Strategic Alliances for PeopleClues. During the past 15 years, Bryan has become a nationally respected authority on strategic staffing operations.