Just because you’ve always done things a certain way doesn’t mean that’s either the only, or best way to do them. The market is constantly changing, and so should you. Idea Management is an effective solution to several significant business challenges.
The thing about old-fashioned feedback is that it’s messy and imprecise. It tends to follow negative experiences and is rarely solution focused. If left unguided, it can become a forum for complaints and little else, at which point management will – either consciously or subconsciously – see it as a chore and start to avoid it.
This is a psychological term, referring to the diminished likelihood of individuals responding to an emergency if they think that someone else will do it. This also happens within businesses, when individuals feel they have no influence over the outcome of a product or service, so don’t see any point in contributing beyond what is required.
It might be that there are plenty of great ideas in the mix, but they’re simply never reaching key decision makers. As businesses grow and priorities become stretched, communication channels become more complex, meaning that more ideas get lost.
As engaged as your managers and executives might hope to be, it’s just a fact that they’re removed from the nitty-gritty, day-to-day issues that affect your team on the ground. When decision makers have one set of (often big picture) priorities, this can become the company focus, to the detriment of your actual workflow.
Idea Management is about tapping into valuable insights from your employees that may otherwise be lost within the daily shuffle. These are observations made by the people who live and breathe the function of your business, which can lead to direct, disruptive solutions to many of your company’s biggest issues.
While senior leadership may make the final call on critical decisions, team members at every level and on the front lines of your business are perfectly positioned to identify new ways of working, thinking about, and approaching your work. Ignoring this potential input does more than simply reduce your rate of innovation, it may keep you actively out of touch.