Alan G. Robinson's Blog, page 2
June 19, 2014
Why Humility is a Prerequisite for Managers in Idea-Driven Organizations
We recently asked the leaders of two idea-driven companies what was the most important characteristic they looked for when hiring or promoting managers. Their surprising answer: Humility.
Inditex, best known for its Zara brand of “fast-fashion” stores, is headquartered in A Coruna, Spain, and is the world’s largest clothing company with over 6,000 stores in 70 countries. Zara’s business model is built around closely listening to customers and rapidly acting on the resulting information. It rel...
June 12, 2014
Want to Improve Your Organization? Start by Knowing What You are Doing
About fifteen years ago, I helped a medium sized residential homebuilder with development training for his management team. It was still relatively early in the lean movement era, and we met for two hours every Wednesday afternoon to discuss how lean philosophy and standard lean tools might apply to the company. The first topic in one of the early sessions was the importance of documenting work processes in order to establish standard practices from which improvements could be made. Wanting t...
June 5, 2014
Why Humility is a Prerequisite for Managers in Idea-Driven Organizations
We recently asked the leaders of two idea-driven companies what was the most important characteristic they looked for when hiring or promoting managers. Their surprising answer: Humility.
Inditex, best known for its Zara brand of “fast-fashion” stores, is headquartered in A Coruna, Spain, and is the world’s largest clothing company, with over 6,000 stores in 70 countries. Zara’s business model is built around closely listening to customers and rapidly acting on the resulting information. It re...
May 29, 2014
A High-Performing System Helps You Face An Uncertain Future With More Confidence
A few years ago the CEO of a health insurance company asked me to help him set up and launch a high-performing idea system. He knew that his industry was about to go through major changes – Obamacare was just coming down the pike, as were some big changes in Medicaid and Medicare — and his company was going to have to be ready for them. But the problem was that neither he nor anyone else knew what the specific changes would be.
All that CEO could do was to make his company as adaptable and fle...
May 22, 2014
The Most Important Number to Watch When Launching a High-Performing Idea System
A few years after helping a medium-sized insurance company launch its idea system, I happened to bump into the CEO. I asked him how his company’s idea system was going.
“It’s going very well,” he replied. (During the course of our brief conversation, it emerged that the system was getting approximately 25 implemented ideas per employee.) “In fact, if I tried to stop it now, I would probably have a rebellion on my hands!”
By contrast, at a large healthcare organization, we could not restrain the...
May 15, 2014
The Continuous Improvement (CI) Equation
Recently, just as the senior management team at a midsize Midwestern company was nearing a decision to set up and launch a high-performance idea system, the CEO expressed some last minute second thoughts.
The company had contacted me because its idea system (an online suggestion-box process) was getting less than an idea per person per year. The manager of continuous improvement knew the company could do much better, and had been urging the leadership team to make changes.
With the company’s cu...
May 9, 2014
The Idea System Comes Before the Culture Change
Sometimes, as a consultant, your client does not follow your advice. When setting up and launching a high-performing idea system, many leaders want to work on their organization’s culture first, before launching their idea system. They want to lead with the culture – that is, make the idea process voluntary and encouraged, and not part of the required work – in the hopes that when the culture “takes”, the ideas will naturally follow.
This is a flat-out mistake. At the very least, it will take...
May 1, 2014
Why J.P. Morgan Would Approve of How Idea-Driven Organizations Handle Pay, Perks and Privileges for Management
Peter Drucker once told us about an interesting investment rule that the financier J.P. Morgan had developed more than a century ago.
Morgan had observed an interesting pattern in his client companies. Those having excessive pay differences between levels in their hierarchies did not perform as well. Consequently, he would not invest in a company if pay differences from level to level were more than thirty percent.
Morgan had put his finger on something important. If differences between levels...
April 24, 2014
Capturing Employee Ideas in a Project-Based Environment
Not long ago, the owner of a medium sized software development firm asked me a very good question. “How does a high performance idea system work in a project environment where every project is different?” We discussed that in a project-based company like his there were lots of processes that could be improved, but his question made a good point. A project environment does have unique challenges for a high performance idea system, and there are several different tactics that can be used to int...
April 17, 2014
Layoffs and Employee Ideas
Perhaps the biggest fear expressed by employees when they hear that their company is planning a high-performing idea system, is that it will cause them or their colleagues to be laid off. Their fear is not unreasonable – we see it realized all the time.
For me, the most shocking instance remains the first time it happened to me. I was asked to help a local company of about 600 people that was in serious trouble. A quick tour of the production floor revealed the operation was very inefficient....
