An Individual Contributor Has an Idea
Imagine that there are twenty teams working on a product.
It is often the case that the people “in the trenches” have ideas for either how to make the product a better product, or how to build the product better. What should they do?
The first question to ask is, why bother? If people are disengaged and see themselves as mercenaries, they will not bother: why help management to do things better when they alone will reap the benefits? If management behaves in a self-serving manner, then no one will be motivated to try to improve things.
That’s why the organizational culture is so crucial. The culture needs to be what we refer to as Humanistic-Encouraging if we are to expect that people will feel a desire to help the organization to do its best. That means that leaders have an interest in their people, and don’t view them as replaceable resources, but instead treat each one as an individual, treat them with respect, and are interested in their professional well being.
Assuming that people feel inspired to make suggestions for improvement, how do they do that?
There is of course the “employee suggestion box”. But let’s do better than that. After all, we all know that whoever reads those things is a clerical person and that most suggestions made in that way never get considered.
The most effective way to make a suggestion is to have a conversation with someone who can either advocate for the idea, if they like it, or—even better—someone who can put the proposed change in motion.
In other words, the suggestion needs to be proposed to someone who has leadership: influence.
This again comes back to the culture: if the behavior of leaders is Humanistic-Encouraging, then they will have an open-door. It will be possible to reach out to them, and suggestions will be met with open dialog, rather than a “great idea thanks” that ends the exchange.
Leaders are often busy, but being too busy for unexpected conversation is a toxic symptom of extreme dysfunction. It results from behavioral norms that favor recurring status meetings that fill up everyone’s calendar. That can be fixed.
Imagine that leaders were known to be receptive to ideas from everyone, and were entirely approachable and welcoming. People would feel empowered, and valued, and they would be collectively generating their best thoughts on how to improve the entire range of activity of the organization. That’s a powerful force.
Related Topics
The Organizational Culture Circumplex
This is the key diagnostic component of the Human Synergistics organizational culture model.