Student of Life: Ideas

Showing posts with label Ideas. Show all posts

Sunday, 14 May 2017

Be Everyone, Be No One: A Simple Idea to Generate Real Good Ideas

Ideas permeate life. Almost all human progress begins with - and inspires - ideas. The wheel, the Eiffel Tower, the TED Talks, the General Theory of Relativity, the Internet, the Mars Mission, organic farming, the idea of Creation itself - of both man in general, and you and me in particular: these are just a few manifestations of ideas that come to mind, at the moment.

Yes, if we have to get better at what we do, why we do it, who we are and who we are becoming; if we have to help and inspire more and more people to do the same; we have no option but to lock ourselves into an eternal embrace with the infinite power of ideas.

While there are many steps in the Idea Life Cycle, the first step, it seems, is Idea Generation (we will discuss the zeroth step, in a future post). Now, there are various roadblocks to creativity; many known and hidden factors hinder the generation of ideas, especially in a group setting. There are various methods, and types of methods, people and organizations can adopt, in order to remove these blockages.

Here is one more: a simple proposal - a hack if you will - that I think could result in more and better ideas, especially in group/community/organizational contexts.

The key is to look out for two specific types of Ideas - "Everyone Ideas" and "No One Ideas", by being obvious and being foolish respectively.

Now, that may sound both obvious and foolish. So, let me elaborate.

Be Everyone

Ask yourself: which ideas would most, if not all, people find worthy of being accepted?

We are often afraid to look stupid. At the same time, we often fail to see "the obvious". In other words, what is "obvious" is often not obvious. Even then, when the "obvious" is pointed out, perhaps due to hindsight bias, people tend to say/believe that it was always obvious, thereby belittling the idea suggester.

Due to this interesting dynamic, we may often hesitate - to not only state, but even explore, what is obvious. The systematic failure to explore the territory of the obvious can often create a nagging gap in the comprehension and assimilation of reality, at the level of individuals, groups, organizations, even nations and the world.

Adopting this principle can often lead to the generation of ideas that are both must-do and eminently doable, but which no one has bothered to think of/explore/propose earlier. Or it may lead to ideas that are very basic, yet remains unattended due to mixing up of priorities.

Be No One

Here, we ask: which ideas would no one, if any, find worthy of being accepted?

We are all prisoners; at least partial prisoners. Of our past, our experiences, beliefs, values; of who we are and who we aspire to be. This is true at the level of not only individuals, but also groups, families, organizations, industries, nations, societies and even civilizations. The feeling of community breeds silos, almost as a natural by-product. Organizations fail to look outside their industry; often, their industry itself would be in a huge crisis, and the organization may not have woken up to it. As individuals, interactions with like-minded people may form the dominant or even exclusive part of our social diet, thus entrenching these prison-walls of the global society.

Due to the immense self-preserving power of the burden of the past, great ideas would almost always be ahead of the times in which they originate. As such, they are likely to find little, if any, acceptance among most people. [The Theory of Diffusion of Innovations, propounded by Everett Rogers, provides an explanation of the phenomenon of the spread of new ideas and innovations].

Would it not therefore be a good idea to explicitly seek out those types of ideas which are almost certain to be rejected by almost everyone, except you yourself? This is not to suggest that only you or me can be ahead of everyone else; just that at any given time, in any given piece of any giant puzzle, every individual in the group involved in the ideation process has a non-zero chance of striking some gold-mine that is as yet unknown.

The hope is that, by explicitly encouraging people to think of such ideas, we are able to facilitate and expedite the difficult process of freeing ourselves and our imagination from the shackles of our cognitive prison-guards. Hopefully, we would then have a better chance of instigating everyone to truly aim high, dream big, redefine reality, galvanize energies, inspire action and help transform the world.

It may be added that not just individuals, even groups can Be Everyone and Be No One. In other words, the same principle can be applied at the level of groups and organizations too. So for instance, an organization can be no one, by explicitly search for ideas which no other organization in its industry or related industries would find worthy of accepting.

What do you think of this post? Please do take a minute (or more), to share your invaluable feedback. Thank you very much.

- Dheep

dheepjoym@gmail.com

May 14, 2017

Sunday, 7 May 2017

When Single Parenting of Ideas becomes an Innovation Killer!

"Anyone who gives an idea without taking it forward for implementation should be hanged".

- The Single Parenting Principle for Ideas (term coined by yours truly)

These are the words of a highly respected senior professional of my service. Do you agree with him/her - in principle? Do you believe that, with the freedom to propose ideas comes the responsibility to implement them too?

When one of my very good friends told me of this statement, and that she admires it, I told her that I beg to differ; I told her that, no, they should not be hanged.

Why should they not be hanged? Because I think the above philosophy conveys the following harmful messages to the people in our organizations, to us.

1) Thou Shalt Propose Only What Is Possible for You

By placing the responsibility for implementation on those who come up with ideas, the system implicitly asks employees to propose only those solutions which they themselves would be able to implement. What is the problem here?

Let me ask you; what is your potential? I mean, do you know your true potential? I am of the firm belief that whoever you are, your potential is infinite, a lot remains to be tapped, explored, realized. However, you would agree that many people underestimate their own potential (and hence of those around them too).

Organizational culture can often widen this gap between true and estimated self-potential. For instance, a multi-layered bureaucracy where individual autonomy is minimal can make employees extra-diffident. Further, many employees (as well as executive leadership) commit the fallacy of regarding organizational resources as fixed, and set goals based on currently available resources as the starting point. This can lead to goals that do not do justice to the organization's potential.

Couple this with our risk-averse nature and the low tolerance level most organizational cultures have for "failure".

In this situation, asking employees for what is possible for them to do translates inevitably into what employees think is certainly possible. In other words, this can lead to ideas that in most cases are too modest to be good enough.

The single parenting principle can thus scuttle ambition, imagination, freedom and creativity - doing significant harm to the quality and quantity of generated ideas. The organization thus can fail miserably in stretching the horizon of the possible, leave alone, inspiring the impossible.

2) Either We are Too Good or You Have Infinite Time and Energy

Besides demanding individual employee ability to implement proposed ideas, the Single Parenting Principle also expects employee willingness in bringing the idea to fruition.

In most cases, proposing an idea is but one piece of the long-drawn process of organizational improvement. Significant time and energy would often be required in developing, implementing and institutionalizing it.

Can we expect the same employee who proposed the idea to play the lead role in all steps of the process? Mostly, no; more so, if the idea does not squarely fall within the umbrella of responsibilities given to the ideator. Yet, this is what the Single Parenting Principle assumes.

Thereby, conveying the message that innovation and organizational improvement are optional, even a luxury!

3) Thou Shalt Work in Silos

We know that almost all organizations have a certain division of functional responsibilities. These boundaries are often closely guarded, thanks to a sense of attachment to one's work, which in turn flows from the personal pride in what one does. Not keen to rub others the wrong way, most people take care in respecting these work boundaries - even excessively. Left unchecked, this apparent deference to one's personal professional space can cultivate systematic organizational myopia, and can even lead to the permanent loss of even industry-redefining opportunities for the organization.

Arguably, the biggest insurance against such opportunity losses is an idea-friendly organizational culture. One where no one is afraid to be labelled an idea person or to propose an idea for the improvement of even a team or function which is normally "none of your business".

This is especially important, given that many ideas for organizational improvement are either applicable in multiple divisions, and/or spans multiple divisions/functions.

Imagine what the Single Parenting Principle does to an organization that lives by it. In one stroke, it kills most worthy ideas. The ones that do manage to take birth are likely to address at best some local issues which may be just symptoms of deeper systemic problems; not big-picture issues, let alone game-changers. If inter-departmental ideas do emerge, the transformation of the ideator as the implementer can well lead to ego clashes and dysfunctional conflicts. Ensuring thereby, an idea-shy organization.

4) Thou Shalt Do Great Work - All Alone!

The world has always been strange to the keen observer. On the one hand, today's world appears to be hyper-competitive; at the same time, it is true also that the age of competition is over! Yes, the ability to collaborate is perhaps the definitive "competitive advantage" in the 21st century, and beyond.

The Single Parenting Principle strikes at the root of the ethos underlying this collaboration economy, By incentivizing individual accomplishment rather than group performance, the principle can prod people along heroic pursuits of self-imagined individual greatness, blind to the beauty, meaning and possibilities of collective development and mutual meaning-making.

The Single Parenting Principle for Ideas fails to recognize that we need great teams, not lone geniuses, now more than ever. No, in fact, it entrenches the opposite mind-set and motivations.

5) We Are Not One

We saw how the Principle does not fit with the realities of collective human accomplishment, in terms of the demands it places on individual employee ability, energy, group work processes and the value creation process in the 21st century society.

A closely related, and perhaps the deepest and most significant, failure of this Principle lies in what it does to the very concept and idea of the organization itself. To the idea of work.

Let us take a brief step back, before coming to this.

I have a daughter. I love her very much. Is she my daughter? Yes. But, is she "my daughter"? My daughter alone? Of course, no. Not only is she (obviously) my wife's daughter too, she is a daughter of God, and of the world too - in the sense of being a gift, a calling to be a blessing, to it. God, one's spouse, our family, the world - all of them, as well as our children themselves, have a role in the development of our children, even if we be their parents.

In a similar sense, just because I proposed an idea, does that make the idea mine? Even if we choose to conveniently forget that we stand on the shoulders of giants, the idea belongs to the organization, the industry, the world, the times. It is my humble submission that unless we are able to adopt this spirit, innovation is likely to remain a solitary, highly painful and often fruitless pursuit.

Yes, idea and innovation success demands both letting go of the self, and loving "their" children as yours. By allowing only one person to parent an idea, the Single Parenting Principle kills not only innovation and organizational performance, but also the essence of the human spirit. And the danger is that it does it stealthily, subliminally, often without our knowledge and understanding.

Isn't it time we adopt a more single-minded approach? An innovation philosophy, where employees are:

encouraged to imagine the impossible and propose ideas that they believe they will not be able to implement (the ability may be unrealized, it may lie elsewhere, or the organization may acquire the ability),

freed to give suggestions without having to take personal responsibility for them (in the confidence that the management will take care of it),

emboldened to respectfully question accepted wisdom with childlike freedom and confidence (in the security that it will not hurt interpersonal equations),

motivated to build on each other's ideas and implement them together,

inspired to respect diversity, yet think and act as one, routinizing innovation and time-proofing organizational development?

Isn't it time we shed - and put an end to - the Single Parenting Principle for Ideas? Realizing that ideas have, and need, multiple parents, just like all of us need multiple parents? (I am not referring to biological parents, and please be assured that I am not making any evaluative judgement on the merits of single parenting). Hope I am not being over-confident in hoping that you agree!

Incidentally, I just discovered that I forgot to mention another - equally critical - reason for ending the Single Parenting Principle. Let me reserve that for another post.

Thank you for your kind attention, to this idea! If you find this as an "idea worth spreading", or at least deliberating upon, please do share this post with your friends/colleagues. Many thanks!

We all need feedback; would hence be grateful for your invaluable feedback. It would help me in improving/correcting my thinking, as also this idea on the Single Parenting Principle. Thanks again.

And deeply grateful to my dear and respected friend Neha; she is the one who has been the trigger for this post. Can't thank her enough.

- Dheep

dheepjoym@gmail.com

May 7, 2017

Ideas are Infinite, just like You!

Well, so I have a confession to make. I have been, for quite some time now, passionate about the immense power of ideas. I believe ideas are indeed the currency of the 21st century knowledge economy. Today's challenges and opportunities place a premium - perhaps like never before in human history - on our ability to continually generate worthy ideas and implement them. For the good of our organizations, societies and lives.

An almost direct implication of this is the heightened need to establish a vibrant democracy of ideas - an environment where ideas are not sought out from the select or privileged few, but from (almost) everyone! Well, various stakeholders should be given not just the opportunity to contribute ideas, but to also give shape to their implementation.

Are our organizations and societies capable of doing this? I find that the answer is largely NO, at present. They need to set in place new organizational processes, structures and moreover cultures and mindsets, in order to be able to engineer the shift. Not easy, not impossible as well.

Exactly around two years ago, I thought of proposing a system that can enable the Government of India to do this. A system that would enable the Government to become a virtual Idea Factory. I had thought deeply about the design of the system and was very excited about it.

In fact, I had already proposed citizen engagement platforms such as regulations.gov, petititions.whitehouse.gov to the leadership of my organization, in May 2014 itself; but my ideas were not received favourably enough.

So, I had the idea conceptualized, but I had not yet learnt how to develop an online portal end-to-end. Hence, I got in touch with one of my entrepreneur friends, who had started a pain-sharing portal called sharingdard.com (seems to have been shut down or shifted now), in the hope that she and her team could collaborate with me, in developing this idea sharing portal. I was hoping that once it is done, we could present it to the Prime Minister of India. :)

But then, this happened, MyGov was launched, by the PM himself.

Well, it was a happy sad moment for me - to be honest, more sad than happy. I took to Facebook and vented my grief, in the form of a question, asking: do I need to be happy or sad, or both?

I now realize that the first answer - given by my friend Aniket Chati - is perhaps the best one, the best attitude to have, the best way to respond: "Nothing. you would get another idea very soon". Not just as the best way to console yourself.

But more so as an authentic reflection of our reality. Each one of us has infinite potential. So does our organizations. I feel that often, we pay only lip-service to these statements.

If we really realize that we are capable of and called to do great things, that we have infinite capacity, the loss of one opportunity, the failure to get recognition or appreciation for anything, should hardly matter.

I realize that this realization of self can also be highly liberating. It would enable us to share credit, give genuine appreciation and really build others, in a much better, easier and authentic manner.

So, let us make every effort to realize this hidden potential in us. And in our family members, friends, colleagues and everyone else we come in touch with. And let us also work towards reforming our organizations, so that they become ecosystems that lead to the growth of dense forests, comprised of trees that extend heavenward. And not remain as furnaces that do disservice to the infinite beautiful potential of the people who work in them.

Postscript: You would be amused to know that another idea which I proposed to some of my colleagues, was also launched separately by the Prime Minister around an year ago But then, hey, I am at least a little wiser now. I am infinite, just like you! And our ideas too. Let us resolve to work together, to realize our potential - and our ideas.

smile emoticon

Saturday, 16 April 2016

How to Implement an Idea Management System

In an earlier post, we examined the enormous potential of an Idea Management System in powering organizational innovation. So, how do we go about implementing it? A roadmap is proposed hereby, using which you may operationalize an IMS in your organization.

Sponsorship & Active Support of Top Leadership

Experience from organizations which have sought to implement idea management systems show that the success of such idea initiatives is critically dependent on the priority accorded to it by the top leadership. The importance, benefits and need for this system would have to be communicated by the top leadership to all staff and employees on a regular basis. The intervention of the top leadership might be required also when the system faces major bottlenecks, which cannot be resolved at a different level.

The Chief Innovation Officer (CIO)

It is proposed that a Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) (or equivalent) may be appointed to systematically and strategically manage the organization’s innovation projects. The CIO may be entrusted with the core responsibilities of:

Facilitating idea generation
Providing support to managers in evaluating and selecting ideas for implementation
Supporting promising ideas and best practices
Helping managers and employees explore further potential of implemented or proposed ideas
Monitor the idea process and help fix anomalies, to ensure the smooth functioning of the organization’s idea initiatives

The CIO need not necessarily be a full-time job; (s)he may hold other responsibilities as well. The CIO may be allowed to recruit a team to assist him in this role.

Tools & Processes

A judicious combination of tools and processes would have to be employed in order to ensure that idea management is effective and yields desired results. Keeping this in mind, the following tools and associated processes are proposed:

Idea Factory: A simple web-based portal may be developed for documenting, sharing and developing ideas. The portal would be internal to the organization. The idea factory would enable users to perform the following functions:
- Report an improvement opportunity and solicit ideas to utilize that opportunity
- Submit ideas
- Search for and view submitted ideas
- Comment on and contribute to development of submitted ideas
- Share lessons learned
- View latest and overall summary of ideas and generate reports (this shall be of use particularly for top management)
Idea Sheet: To start with, we may experiment with a very primitive form of the above – a simple Excel sheet of ideas. Even after the system gets established, this may be used in conjunction with the web portal.
Idea Reporters: Not everyone would be comfortable or sufficiently equipped to use the web portal. Keeping this in mind, some staff members may be designated as ‘Idea Reporters’. Someone with an idea may contact this person and ask him to enter the idea into the idea factory.
Idea Boards: Boards may be put up at convenient, accessible locations in different parts of the office, so that anyone may post their idea on the board. These too shall be entered by the Idea Reporters into the database (so that the database is the complete repository of all submitted ideas).
Idea Meetings: Regular and frequent meetings may be held by the head of each team/unit. Every member of the team may be asked to come to the meeting with at least one idea for organizational improvement. The meeting may be used to collect these ideas, document them systematically and decide on further course of action.
Idea of the Week/Month: These may be decided by the Chief Innovation Officer and publicized across the organization, as a means of providing encouragement and recognition to the employees for their ideas.
Idea Fairs: These may be organized once or twice a year, to showcase the ideas implemented by the organization, to other stakeholders and at the same time provide recognition to employees.
Idea Contests: These may be employed when the organization has to tackle a project or problem which is either novel or challenges organizational resources or has defied a solution for long.
Idea Reports: The CIO’s team would be able to generate idea reports, which give a summary of organizational ideas. This would contain metrics such as implemented ideas, status of other ideas, ideas submitted by each team, ideas generated by each manager, etc. This can help the CIO to take appropriate corrective measures.
Idea Autonomy: It is clarified that this system does not seek to upset the autonomy enjoyed by individual managers and teams. Though anyone in the organization would have the freedom to submit an idea for the team’s consideration, what it is to be done with that idea would remain the prerogative of the team entrusted with implementing it. However, it would be wise to furnish an explanation of why an idea is not being taken forward. This would help sustain the enthusiasm of idea suggesters and bolster collaborative mentality.
Idea-friendly culture: Organizational culture is of paramount importance in ensuring the success of this system. Hence, the management at all levels needs to make it abundantly clear that ideas are not only welcome, but actively encouraged. Further, all employees who come forward with ideas need to be treated with due respect and dignity, so that even if an idea happens to get killed, the employee motivation is not.

It may be clarified here that all employees and staff may be encouraged to come up with ideas relating to any aspect of the organization. In other words, they should not be restricted to contributing ideas for their team or unit alone. Managed well, this can improve inter-departmental understanding, team spirit and have a salutary effect on organizational culture and performance.

Ideas can be of two types: an opportunity for improvement and a solution which can help improve something. Both are to be welcomed and encouraged.

Further, the dominant focus would have to be on small ideas. Experience bears it out that focusing on a large number of small ideas is the key to improving organizational performance.

Hope this helps you, in accelerating innovation in your organization. In making it a high-performing and exceptional organization.

(Published originally on LinkedIn)

References:

Saturday, 9 April 2016

How an Idea Management System can make your organization more innovative

The Innovation Mandate

To innovate is a fundamental and universal organizational imperative; for continuous improvement, learning and rapid adaptation; in an external environment that is changing at lightning speed; in an age of ever-increasing uncertainty.

The Innovation Challenge & Opportunity

Innovators – organizations and individuals - face multiple challenges. An idea management system can convert these challenges into opportunities. An indicative list of such challenges and corresponding opportunities follows:

Challenge	Opportunity
Scarce Resources: All organizations and managers are called upon to continuously do more with less. This is perhaps particularly true for the public sector, as reflected in the catchphrase and philosophy, “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance”, of the Government of India.	Our People: For most if not all Government organizations, their most invaluable resource is their people. However, their potential lies largely untapped, hidden and under-utilized. An idea management system is an opportunity to develop our people and empower them to contribute for organizational improvement and innovation.
Islands of Wisdom: The structures and systems we have devised to ensure order and efficiency have also erected boundaries within and among departments. These boundaries encourage working within silos, and make it difficult for the organization to harness its innovation potential adequately. Thus, an idea with organization-wide applicability remains confined to an island; and an idea which can spawn many other ideas fails to give birth to them.	Organization-wide Collaboration: An idea management system offers to make collaboration and team-work the norm, rather than the exception. Organization-wide sharing of an idea enables not only enables its wide adoption and full exploration, generating potentially numerous other ideas for organizational improvement; but also builds camaraderie and mutual respect, improving organizational culture and performance.
Lack of Employee Motivation: A quintessential problem, this is sometimes more entrenched in Government departments. This cripples organizational innovation, which demands that everyone – not just the management – puts on a thinking hat and is able and willing to go the extra mile in contributing to the organization.	Employees as Innovation Partners: By asking employees to be thinkers and innovators, an idea management system enriches and enlarges their job. It is a tool to enhance employees’ self-worth, bring about greater job engagement, organizational commitment and superior performance. Moreover, being intimately familiar with the work they do, employees have been found to come up with some of the most innovative and impactful ideas.

The Need to Manage Innovation

A systematic process is required to convert such challenges into opportunities, as above. Evidence from hundreds of diverse organizations shows that innovation does not happen on its own; innovation has to be managed actively. Further, as innovation researcher Tim Kastelle says, innovation is the process of idea management.

Thus, ideas are the key ingredient in the innovation process, but without a mechanism for managing them, it is difficult to prioritize innovation efforts and to channel innovation activity into the areas it is needed most. An idea management system can be of immense help in this regard.

The benefits of a systematic well-run idea management system would far outrun the ones initially envisaged. The impact it can have on the organization can be nothing short of revolutionary, in an incremental fashion though. It is a tool for organizational transformation which thus marries the incrementalism of Government systems with the high aspirations leadership and citizens have for the end-goals of public service delivery.

What is an Idea Management System?

An idea management system (IMS) is a systematic, formal mechanism for soliciting, generating, developing, evaluating, selecting, implementing, spreading and learning from large numbers of ideas from anyone and everyone in the organization.

How an IMS assists in the Innovation Process

The below table identifies how an IMS can assist at each stage of the innovation process.

Innovation Phase	How an IMS assists
Idea generation – finding, adapting or creating the ideas	An IMS can encourage employees to put forward ideas. An IMS can help in the process of refining and iterating those ideas by allowing others to share their perspectives and inputs.
Idea selection – picking which ideas to use	By letting others be aware of suggested approaches, ideas can be tested early through sharing of experiences, limitations and impacting factors, and possible improvements to the idea.
Idea implementation – putting the ideas into practice	An IMS can assist implementation if it records lessons learnt, identifies options that have and have not worked, and codifies what made the implementation successful.
Sustaining ideas – keeping the ideas going	An IMS can assist the embedding of ideas by outlining the need for an idea and providing a reminder of the problems faced before it came about.
Idea diffusion – spreading the ideas and the insights about them	By recording the ideas and the resulting action other areas facing a similar or parallel issue may be better able to see potential solutions.

(Excerpted from the Public Sector Innovation Toolkit, of the Government of Australia)

How an IMS is Different

An idea management system possesses the following advantages, which traditional systems lack:

An IMS is open to ideas from everyone in the organization, irrespective of their rank or division
Transparency and sharing of ideas becomes a force-multiplier
An IMS can allow even anonymous posting of improvement ideas, thus potentially reducing some of the inhibitions which prevent people to come forward with their ideas
A well-designed IMS serves as a database of problems, solutions, implementation approaches and lessons learnt; this is a huge asset for the organization which can spur further growth and innovation.

We shall explore success stories, and the implementation roadmap in a later post.

Does your organization have an Idea Management System? What is your experience with an IMS? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Thank you.

A shorter version of this article was published earlier: Let Ideas Flow

(this article itself was published originally on LinkedIn)