October 2003
In this issue:
Who's Bringing You Hot Ideas
and How are You Responding?
Pitching Ideas in Tinseltown
Tracking E-mail Reveals Real Leaders
Employees who introduce new ideas about enhancing management and business performance in organizations, make important contributions to the success of a company. Yet they are often unsung heroes, according to a recent study by Davenport, Prusak, and Wilson (HBR Feb. 2003). The authors call these people “idea practitioners” and interviewed 100 of them from various industries, to find out what their characteristics are, and how companies can better support their endeavours.
According to the study, “They are avid readers of management literature and enthusiastic participants in business conferences; many are friendly with business gurus. Once they've identified an idea that seems to hold promise, they tailor it to fit their organizations' specific needs. Next, they actively sell the idea--to senior executives, to the rank and file, to middle managers. And finally, they get the ball rolling by participating in small-scale experiments. But when those take off, they get out of the way and let others execute… The most successful idea practitioners are able to gear ideas to the issues executives care about and express them in terms of the key themes--such as innovation, efficiency, or effectiveness--that executives stress in their rhetoric.
Care and Feeding of an Idea Practitioner
Based on their interviews, the authors offer seven pieces of advice to employers to keep them happy (and keep them from leaving).
1. Recognize their existence.
Do you know who they are, or where to find them? They are often members of communities of practice, or working on grass-roots initiatives.
2. Carve out roles for them.
Ericsson, for example, has a group devoted to importing and implementing ideas relative to business improvement. Motorola appoints innovators to its Science Advisory Board. Companies such as GE ensure that business unit leaders of idea initiatives get promoted.
3. Give them license to pursue ideas.
Provide a framework of explicitly stated values and leadership-driven initiatives to work in.
4. Reward them…carefully.
Idea practitioners are motivated by the intellectual stimulation and excitement of turning ideas into action. The best motivation a leader can offer is to hear them out and provide visible support. The best reward is to give them public recognition when a valuable idea is successfully implemented. Financial rewards need to be handled expertly to avoid pitfalls.
5. Get into the ideas.
The greatest factor in determining the success of an idea, is the perception of CEO-level backing. It is vitally important that idea practitioners have the support of idea champions to help clear obstacles.
6. Run occasional interference to protect a worthy idea.
If idea practitioners don’t get the support they need, they may stop championing new ideas, or leave the company.
7. Create an idea-friendly culture
Leaders must take responsibility for providing a culture that lets ideas flourish, and encourages tolerance for failure. Not all ideas are going to work out. Success and failure provide opportunities for learning.
Idea practitioners are a valuable resource for organizations who shouldn't be taken for granted. As the authors point out, “Fresh ideas about management are more critical than ever to enhancing business performance, to motivating workers, and to revitalizing your organization.”
See also
“The Secrets of Successful Idea People”
for strategies on bringing ideas to life
“Who's Bringing You Hot Ideas And How Are You Responding?”
By: Davenport, Thomas H., Prusak, et al
Harvard Business Review, Feb 2003
What's the Big Idea? Creating and Capitalizing
on the Best New Management Thinking
by Thomas H. Davenport ,Laurence Prusak, et al
Buy the book at Amazon
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Pitching Ideas in Tinseltown
Researchers conducted a study of Hollywood pitchers and catchers as the basis to find out “how organizational decision makers actually assess the creative potential of others.” Here's what Stanford's Roderick Kramer and UC-Davis' Kimberly Elsbach discovered:
The more passionate the person pitching the idea, the more effective he or she was. And the better the pitcher was at drawing in the person on the other side of the table, the more likely he or she succeeded. This doesn’t mean the idea is a winner though. As Roberto Goizueta, Coca-Cola's CEO (at the time of the Coke Formula disaster in the mid 80s,) said in effect, there is nothing so dangerous as a good pitcher with no real talent.
The most successful pitchers were those who convinced the idea catchers that they had something to do with the crafting or improving of the idea itself. "A lot of naive pitchers we talked to assumed what was important was for them to be passionate and to get their concept across clearly," says Kramer, a former script writer and psychologist who is a professor of organizational behaviour at Stanford. "That's important, to be on fire about an idea. But the other thing was to what extent the catcher was engaged and also felt creative."
In fact, adds Kramer, the person hearing the idea "has to feel like [he/she] is drawn in and contributing. The more you can make the catcher think he came up with or helped improve a good idea — that [he/she], the suit, is creative — the better." Conversely, lecturers and zealots don’t succeed in selling their ideas
See also Pitching Ideas in Tinseltown
<www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/ob_pitchingideas.shtml>
"How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea", by Kimberly D. Elsbach,
Harvard Business Review, September 2003
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Tracking E-mail Reveals Real Leaders
Network analysis maps companies' informal structure.
Want to know how your organization really works -- who speaks to whom, who holds the power? Where the communities of practice are? Then study the flow of internal e-mail (not necessarily the content), say scientists at Hewlett-Packard.
They have developed a way to use e-mail exchanges to build a map of the connections between people. This map reveals the teams in which people actually work – which may differ from the one they are assigned to; who is at the heart of each sub-group; and who the unofficial de facto leaders are. (Idea practitioners?)
For the full story go to Nature News Service:
<http://www.nature.com/nsu/030317/030317-5.html>
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Happy creating,
Linda Naiman
