The best idea is everyone’s idea!

How to get a strong support base for new ideas

Have you ever noticed that your employees are not very excited to start working on your brilliant plans to change the organisation for the better? Sure, you have great ideas, but what good are they when your team is not at all motivated to make your ideas a reality?

Frustrating… And it’s not the only way good ideas are put to waste on a daily basis…

Many CEOs and managers complain that very few ideas ever originate on the work floor. It puzzles them that nothing new is ever implemented, as deep down they know that much of their employees probably have good ideas on a regular basis.

They are right of course. But usually, the employees are not to blame for this.

Employees do not share their ideas with their supervisors.
Of course, it is frustrating when people don’t share ideas the organisation can benefit from. But is it surprising? Not really. These employees probably noticed that nothing happened with the last few ideas they shared. Apparently coming up with new ideas is not what they are being paid for…!

When these employees DID share their ideas in the past, their managers were quick to discard them. Although the ideas were well intended, they simply were not compatible with the objectives of the management.

Babylonian confusion
As you can see, the problem is usually not that employees don’t have ideas, nor is it that their ideas are bad. The problem is often that different levels in the organisation don’t really understand each other. Subordinates, middle management and top level executives speak a different language (almost literally). When a representative of either one of these levels shares an idea, those at other levels in the organisation simply can’t see the value. Great ideas quickly die when top- middle- or lower-level employees are not seeing the benefits.

In a world where new ideas are unnecessary, this might not be such a drama… but we do not live in such a world. New ideas are important for any business. Whether it is to improve a certain aspect of the business, to solve a problem or simply to stay ahead of the competition. In the world we live in, a lack of implementable ideas is a serious problem.

Luckily there is a way to solve this problem.

The solution
When looking for great ideas, let the board, (middle) management and workforce generate ideas TOGETHER. They will quickly realise that their seemingly incompatible suggestions are not so far apart after all. Usually, all these different ideas can easily be connected in an all-embracing implementation plan.

And this is exactly how HatRabbits operates. When we are asked to help generate innovative ideas for a tough business challenge, we always include stakeholders from every level. By putting people from the board in the same room as the middle management and the employees from the work floor, we are able to collect ideas that include strategy and vision, but also very specific solutions to common frustrations on the work floor.

By connecting strategy, big business goals and small concrete solutions, we help our clients to generate ULTIMATE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS. Innovative ideas with a solid support base.

So to come back to the title of this article; how do you get a strong support base for an idea? By making it everyone’s idea!

Interested in how we can help you find brilliant business solutions with a firm support base? Contact us via hello@hatrabbits.com.