A client’s story
I was talking to a client a number of months ago who wanted to know what could be done to enable for more collaboration and sharing in the organization. In particular, he shared with me that the company had, about six months prior to our conversation, implemented a monthly innovation meeting. The goal was to have employees from across the organization come together to share innovative ideas in any number of areas, including: improving business processes, new products, or improve customer service.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t going quite as planned. Employees were getting together – but my client was suspicious it was for the free pizza and sodas! He shared one story in particular,
One of the customer service staff – we’ll call him Robert – had a great idea for a new product based on having casual conversations with customers. He came to the last innovation meeting and shared information about his idea at a very high level. When one of the product development staff – we’ll call her Jacklyn – commented that it sounded great and asked for more details, Robert immediately replied that it is his idea he is not about to share it so that someone else could take credit. After that, my client remarked, there was not much further discussion at the innovation meeting.
This was just one story. In the brief history of the monthly innovation meetings, there were many stories of lack of collaboration and sharing of ideas among staff.
In Part 2 we’ll share some of what’s wrong with the monthly innovation meetings.
