English Spoken Here!An overview of motivation in the English speaking parts of the world

and a look at the aspirations of International Ideas Week

DiB Berlin 2011Andy BeddowsideasUK(formerly with Boots UK)

Tom DupreideasUK

(formerly with IBM)

Wisdom of the Dakota Indians

“When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount”

In modern Business, Education & Government, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as .............

• Buying a stronger whip.

• Changing riders.

• Threatening the horse with termination.

• Appointing a committee to study the horse.

• Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.

• Arranging a visit to other countries to see how others ride dead horses.

• Reclassifying the dead horse as "living impaired".

• Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

• Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

• Harness several dead horses together to increase the speed.

• Provide additional training to increase the dead horse's performance.

• Declaring that since the dead horse does not have to be fed it is less costly and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the organization.

and my favourite…

Promoting the dead horse to management!

Your Horse, Dead or Alive?

• To share with you of the motivational practice observed by your presenters over a number of years ‘in the business’ of idea collection.

• To look at some of the pitfalls on the road to motivation and lessons to be learned.

• To look at what others do to motivate.• To appreciate how ideas managers can shift the emphasis

of their programme to motivate the workforce.• To highlight learnings at each stage.

Myths & Misconceptions

Misconceptions about ideas and their collection programmes can sink your programme and kill motivation.

But since we don’t want to see your hard work go down the drain, we would like to start by clarifying a few points for you.

These ‘Ten Biggest Myths’ are adapted from Ideas Are Free by Alan Robinson & Dean Schroeder, to whom we are grateful.

Myth 1 - Big, breakthrough ideas are the ones needed to gain any real advantage.

Fact - Big ideas are often highly visible, and are therefore easily discovered and countered by competitors. On the other hand, most small ideas remain proprietary because there is no natural mechanism for them to migrate to competitors. Over time, small ideas accumulate into a tremendous competitive advantage that is sustainable; the kind of advantage managers should be striving for.

Motivation Lesson – Get managers and evaluators to understand this so as to motivate others.

Myth 2 - Managers should focus on getting big ideas – little ones aren’t worth the time

Fact - Small ideas enable an organisation to pay exceptional attention to detail. In many important aspects of business – such as customer service, responsiveness, quality, and managing costs – excellence means getting the details right. It is simply impossible to improve performance beyond a certain level without small ideas. A superior ability to handle details can allow an organisation to do things its competitors literally cannot do.

Motivation Lesson - When encouraging participation emphasise the high value of small ideas.

Myth 3 - Without rewards, people won’t give in ideas

Fact - Yes & No! People frequently offer ideas because they see problems or opportunities they want addressed. It is natural to want to make their work easier or less frustrating, to eliminate waste or to contribute to one’s work team, department or organisation. In this instance, the best reward an employee can get for his or her idea is to see it used. However, whilst some of the companies that get many ideas per employee in the world do not offer rewards for them, equally many operate successfully with a reward structure.

Motivation Lesson – Do not automatically assume rewards are necessary to motivate employees.

Myth 4 - Offering rewards based on the value of ideas is a good way to encourage ideas

Fact – Yes & No! Some companies that offer rewards for ideas get into trouble. The most common type of reward - a percentage of the value of the idea – can be counterproductive and can create a host of problems that few managers anticipate, including outright fraud and dishonesty. However, whilst there are many idea systems in the world that do not offer rewards for individual ideas, there are also many that operate successfully giving awards.

Motivation Lesson – Again, do not automatically assume rewards are necessary to motivate employees.

Myth 5 - Because of their knowledge & experience, managers are in the best position to

come up with ideasFact - Employees are the ones dealing directly with the

company’s products, services, systems and customers every day. They see a lot of things their bosses don’t. Because they are the ones actually doing the tasks, they often know better ways to cut costs, improve efficiency and satisfy customers than their managers do.

Motivation Lesson – Share this with employees. Explaining the value of their expertise will motivate them more.

Myth 6 - Systems based on suggestion box methods do not work

Fact – Yes & No! More than 100 years old, the suggestion box has become the method of choice for seeking employee ideas. Despite modern electronic evolutions the process is the same as it was in the 19th century and it does work!

Motivation Lesson –You will de-motivate employees if the submission method is too complex or too slow so use the method that sits most comfortably with your workforce.

Myth 7 - A big problem for managers is having to waste time dealing with lots of bad ideas

Fact - There is no such thing as a bad idea. A bad idea, given in good faith, means someone lacks information or knowledge.

Motivation Lesson – This represents a mentoring opportunity by pinpointing a specific training or development need. Sometimes a “bad” idea is a poor response to a very real problem. Managers who learn to see past the poor initial solution gain the ability to identify and solve more problems and teach their employees to be more effective problem-solvers. As employees learn, the “quality” of their ideas improves and their motivation increases.

Myth 8- The best thing to promote ideas is to give everyone creativity training

Fact - A great many companies have made the mistake of giving their employees creativity training, when their real bottleneck was that they couldn’t listen to and act on the ideas their employees already had.

Motivation Lesson - Most ideas are simply common-sense responses to problems and opportunities. Until a company can respond to the everyday ideas, creativity training will only cause even more frustration and de-motivate the workforce.

Myth 9 - An informal approach to getting ideas is most effective

Fact - Without a formal process for handling ideas, they can become more of a nuisance than a help. Not only does the employee who comes up with an idea have to figure out whom to take it to, but also that person has to figure out what to do with it.

Motivation Lesson - Because every idea is handled differently, ideas require more time and effort to deal with. Managers who advocate a completely informal idea process often do not realize how these actually discourage people from bringing up ideas.

Myth 10 - Ideas come from people who are creative and you can’t really teach creativity

Fact - Everyone can be creative in areas that matter to them, and every employee is capable of having ideas all the time. Besides, the majority of ideas are common sense responses to problems and opportunities that people spot.

Motivation Lesson – Most ideas don’t require much creativity and anyone can teach themselves how to spot more improvement opportunities and turn these into ideas. Emphasise this to your ‘audience’.

Motivational Avenues

We will now examine methods that can be used to motivate together with other aspects that influence motivation.

Posters

• Probably still the most used method of motivational communication for suggestion programmes.

• Motivation Lessons – Change regularly or they become wallpaper– Keep simple or the reader will lose interest– Make them amusing if possible – smiles can engage– Clear branding of the programme

Reduce Consumable

s use

In addition to your general improvement ideasIn addition to your general improvement ideas

We want your suggestions to challenge and We want your suggestions to challenge and reduce expense costsreduce expense costs

Are we discarding items that could

be used elsewhere?

Challenge waste of

resources

Can we get some

consumables cheaper?

Are stock levels correct?

– Are we ordering too

much?

Reduce postage costs

The Expense Cost Reduction Challenge will run fromThe Expense Cost Reduction Challenge will run from

December 2007 to March 2008December 2007 to March 2008

£3 voucher for each improvement accepted£3 voucher for each improvement accepted

A monthly prize for the best cost saving idea implemented A monthly prize for the best cost saving idea implemented

Do you know the cost of printing documents?

Kaizen means using our brains not our money to solve problems

£ £

Do you really need that

external visit?

Do not forget to select Expense Cost Reduction Challenge on your suggestion Do not forget to select Expense Cost Reduction Challenge on your suggestion

Supporting Business Objectives

• Health & Safety• Cost Cutting

– Travel– Printing– Consumables– Stock Levels– Promotional materials

• New Products• SecurityMotivation Lesson – All areas can benefit

ISMSISMS RPL TogetherRPL Together Promotion £3 for each ideaPromotion £3 for each idea

(prize for the best idea)(prize for the best idea)2121stst – 28 – 28thth January 2008! January 2008!

We want your ideas to continually improve Information SecurityWe want your ideas to continually improve Information Security

Each ISMS related Bright Idea accepted by a Scheme Representative will generate an initial award of £3. This

offer does not apply to subsequent awards for each idea

Making access to confidential documents impossible

Ideas to ensure all confidential material is secure

Access to correct information at the right time

Ideas to ensure the correct information is available

No 5S in the office = Chaos!

How can

We ensure

5s is second

Nature?

Reports

How can we

ensure our

reporting mechanisms

are correct?

Peer-To-Peer Recognition

• Peer-to-peer recognition is used by a number of organisations both within and separate to the suggestion scheme.

• By many it is seen as very ‘American’ and ‘cheesy’ and in one organisation a poll found over 50% of the workforce were opposed to its introduction.

• Motivation Lesson – This can increase motivation, but can be a turn off so use with caution.

Agendas

Get your programme onto a variety of agendas to show the workforce how involved it is with the business and so motivate their participation.– Management Briefings – all levels– Team meetings– Business process design– Feedback systems for product, event and processes– Training programmes– Employee surveys– Conferences

• Motivation Lesson – No exposure is bad exposure

Management

• Keep Senior Management involved:– Get them to make award presentations– Keep them informed of evaluation success/performance in their areas

• Keep the pressure on Evaluators. Make sure that they know senior management monitors performance.

• Motivation Lessons– Senior managers openly supporting the programme will encourage

participation. – Managers/Evaluators performance being monitored will keep

response rates acceptable and remove a key de-motivation factor.

Taking Advantage Of The Situation

• External influences can be used to advantage:– High inflation– High unemployment– Downsizing– Low labour turnover – Cash shortage

• Ignore the ‘doom and gloom’ merchants, add value to the business.

• Motivation Lesson – In a ‘recession’ situation, colleagues are already aware of the need to make savings – your programme is a ready made and hopefully well known route for this.

Recognition

• Recognition in connection with a suggestion programme can create goodwill amongst the workforce and showcase and publicise the achievements. This can take a number of forms:– Certificates or Awards for ideas– The public presentation of these

• Locally/Regionally/Nationally• At awards lunches• At awards dinners• Stand alone suggestion programme events or company wide events

• Motivation Lesson – Recognition works VERY well

One Standard Of Recognition

• Irrespective of giving awards or not

– Puts ideas on the same level as all other recognition worthy activity in the workplace

– Greater ‘equality’ of recognition

• Motivation Lesson – Establishing Suggestions as a core activity gives all involved confidence and this in turn aids motivation.

Publicise

Motivation Lesson – Smiling faces encourage others

Widen Idea Capture Options

• Remove any barriers that limit ‘type’ of idea• Make it clear that you will accept anything:

– Ideas that make money– Ideas that are nice to have– Feedback about the business

• Motivation Lesson – The simpler the system the easier it is to participate and more likely an individual will be motivated to submit an idea.

Ideas that save & create valuedd Value (Your Opportunity to contribute to our future success)

Your Feedbackake A Point (We will get this to the right person)

A better & easier place to workmprove The Workplace

(Nice to have – lets see what we can do)

Three Streams – One ProcessAI

MAIM – All Ideas Matter – The Boots Suggestion Programme

International Ideas Week

• Originated by ideasUK• Two fold purpose

– An annual opportunity for organisations to focus on ideas internally– An opportunity for a national organisation to promote the concept of

suggestion programmes in the workplace.

• Operated in UK now for a number of years with success related to the level of publicity.

• Plans for 2012 include a national on-line suggestion opportunity and radio and TV coverage.

• Motivation Lesson – Motivation can be driven at all levels.

Conclusions

• Motivation is not an elusive tool.

• The means to motivate are within your reach.

• Don’t delay, get out there and MOTIVATE.

Thank Youandy@ideasUK.comtom@ideasUK.com