Does Your Employer Encourage Your Ideas?

Ideas are interesting, mysterious, sometimes confusing creatures. They can rear their exciting heads at the oddest times, even while you are sleeping. Unless you have an incredible memory, you should always keep a journal, pad or some note paper and a pencil handy. You need not have a creative position, as holders of administrative jobs are often powerful sources of good ideas.

Often, seemingly brilliant ideas can dissipate as fast as they come, leaving you scratching your head in frustration at your inability to remember a thought that could change the world. Do not depend on your memory alone. Scribbling down an idea on paper will be there for you when you need it. Even blank paper is alright as long as it’s there when you need it.

As career tools, ideas can catapult you onto the fast track. They can also be an annoying source of frustration. Does your current employer encourage your ideas? If your company offers an open, creative environment, you may generate more ideas that merit consideration than for an employer that discourages or, worse, ignores employee ideas.

Remember, all it takes is one outstanding idea to change your career. Never quit. If you need motivation and support, you only need to consider Thomas A. Edison. After almost 10,000 failed experiments focused on making electricity light a bulb, he found the right combination. He never quit trying to make his ideas work. It is a wonderful thing for all of us that he never gave up. Think of generating ideas as good career tools, but also as great fun and stimulation.

Ideas Need Action to Achieve Success

An idea, regardless of how superior, is useless unless acted upon. Even the most innovative ideas need someone to take action to make them the world changers they may be. For example, you have some ideas about improving the administrative jobs at your employer. Not sharing or acting on them means they will never be implemented.

All the superlative “thinkers” of the world throughout history contributed little if they—or others—did not act on their ideas. Need convincing? Consider Bill Gates, Microsoft founder and billionaire. He might be remembered—or forgotten—as just another Harvard University dropout if he and Paul Allen never acted on their ideas for small, powerful, affordable computers with software that everyone could use successfully.

Does Your Employer Encourage New Business Ideas from Employees?

Veteran observers understand that it is valuable to have diverse people involved in the creative process. Unfortunately, this approach also fosters at least two problems. How to separate the potentially great ideas from those that are unworkable in the world of business? How does management encourage these ideas without discouraging employees whose ideas and suggestions are unworkable?

Writing for inma.org, author Sandy MacLeod, Vice President, Consumer Marketing and Strategy for the Toronto Star, offers suggestions to employers on methods to encourage employee ideas, without discouraging or stifling those willing to contribute to their employers.

To avoid discouraging employees, encouraging employers should consider asking questions of staff that they can answer themselves. Should you have this opportunity, you may come to same conclusions as senior management. Your ideas may—or may not—be viable and workable in your business environment. Administrative jobs and their duties can be challenging to fuel new ideas, since they tend to be viewed as cost, instead of profit, centers.

However, you can still exercise your creativity to put forth ideas that save money, always a “hot spot” of concern. While you may have difficulty imagining innovative ways to increase revenues, your ideas may improve efficiency and decrease cost, which typically increases profitability. Understand that these ideas generate notoriety from management and stockholders alike.

If you focus on improving your professional position, these ideas become highly valuable career tools. One of the most successful career tools to move you from the “dead end” to the “fast track” is to offer an idea that generates revenue or improves operational efficiency. Use this reality to accelerate success in your career.

Enlightened employers place great value on the ideas of their employees. Should you generate an idea that passes the varied tests of viability, workability, reasonability, simplicity, and projected positive effect on revenue and/or profitability, your employer will be thrilled—and probably encourage more of your creativity and innovation.

Should your current employer not encourage your innovative ideas, you should consider locating a new job and employer that offers this opportunity. Employers that follow a “closed door” policy regarding employee suggestions and ideas may have deeper, more strangulating issues, about which you should be concerned.

In 21st century business, those companies that steadfastly follow a policy of “this is the way we’ve always done it,” face—or will face—challenges that they may be unable to overcome. The business environment is almost constantly evolving, requiring innovation and creativity just to survive.

Those businesses, led by competent managers, that understand that outdistancing their competition by appearing to be identical to their competition is a doomed strategy. These employers and their management realize that their talented staff can offer some tantalizingly creative ideas that, when perfected, can lead to measurable success. Those employees that offer these ideas will enjoy equal success.

Source: http://www.inma.org/blogs/value-content/post.cfm/how-to-encourage-new-business-ideas-from-within