Make Idea Generation Part Of Everyday Work

Whenever there aren’t enough new products and features being introduced, people often blame management focus, the pressure for sales and service and the grind of product-building or just the culture.

“Management just wants sales and doesn’t value innovation.”

“We’re so wrapped up in execution, there’s no time for new idea generation.”

There’s a mistaken notion in some organizations that idea generation is something separate and apart from the sales and development processes. And the culture of your workplace is always an easy scapegoat. Even the word has a big, all-pervasive, ominous, permanent sound to it — something you can’t do much about. And it can’t defend itself.

You don’t need a special time or place or management permission to come up with new ideas.

Interactions with customers while selling and servicing existing products is a great time to find out shortcomings in your offerings. And while you’re building the products you designed months ago, you’ll come up with big ideas to make them better.

If you’re serious about seeing new things happen in your workplace, and you’re willing to do something about it, start by taking a look at the interactions among the people who work there, the kinds of ideas that are being discussed, the tools you have and the way they’re being used.

1. Generating ideas to fix things. Listen to the tone and content at meetings and other work discussions. When someone sees something wrong, does the conversation tend toward complaining and blaming, or on generating ideas to fix it?
2. Staying open for new input. During project status meetings, are people focused strictly on executing plans locked down some time ago, or is time also spent talking about challenges customers are having right now with your current offerings, features they’re finding attractive in competitors’ products and customer problems that aren’t being addressed by anyone’s products?  These meetings are a great time for these ideas to surface. Don’t miss the opportunity and don’t worry that talking about it will automatically delay your product intro. You can preserve new features that come out of these discussions for future iterations and enhancements.
3. Finding new tools to model and communicate. Do people have everything they need to easily share ideas and model prototypes of solutions to problems they see? There are new work-process applications being introduced every day. Do you have communication feedback tools in place to communicate regularly with customers?
4. Recycling and reusing work product.  What happens to prototypes and products that “didn’t work out?” Is there a process for going back to see what can be learned? Do people regularly consider these as starting points for future development of other versions? Do your associates bring in concepts and examples from other industries as metaphors and analogies and sources of learning that can be applied to the needs of your customers?

Idea generation is part and parcel of selling and project work. Making sure the right kinds of conversations are taking place — internally and with customers — can inject innovation into everything you’re doing.