A Culture of Innovation 

It is important that organisations proactively encourage ideas and suggestions. Although employees tend to be the main source of new ideas, they can also come from the other stakeholders and can be a measure of stakeholder contribution. Dr Michael Gering and Professor Michael Kahn (2000) write “Traditionally, middle managers performed much of the innovation of the past. However, as fat is being cut away from organisations many companies are finding that the traditional area for innovation, middle management, is being reduced. Not that the past was particularly effective. As middle managers became conduits of instructions from the top and information from the bottom, something happened to their ability to innovate. However, with these layers removed, companies need to target future capacity in a systematic and planned manner”. A strategy for the generation of ideas from people outside of such organisational areas as middle management and ‘Product Development’ may be considered necessary or desirable if an organisation:

• Believes that these areas lead to innovation and ideas but in a more restricted manner, or, they are developing limited new products/services etc.

• Wishes to create a culture of creativity and innovation

• Wishes to tap into the ideas and creativity of all its staff and stakeholders

An effective management approach to the fostering of employee participation and a culture of innovation should be developed and institutionalised. Such a culture of creativity:

• Facilitates creative thinking at all levels of the organisation.

• Encourages staff to be creative in how they work and think about their jobs;

•   Collects staff ideas and evaluates them in relation to how they could be used and applied;

• Accepts failures and learns from mistakes;

• Has fun, experiments and plays with the way work is done and how ideas are generated.

In their research into best practices in continuous improvement, Mike Kaye (University of Portsmouth, UK) and Rosalyn Anderson (Hampshire County Council UK) (1999), found that 80% of organisations studied thought that the working culture within their organisation encouraged continuous improvement. This was influenced by:

• Open communications – company newsletters, improvement groups, teams and team meetings, use of e-mail, staff surveys;

• Spreading the work and raising staff awareness and understanding; and

• Training in quality concepts.

Kay and Anderson identified that 83% of organisations studied involved staff in identifying improvements and making changes. Staff were involved in the following ways:

• Performance reviews, annual appraisals and staff surveys;

• Ideas systems/suggestion schemes;

• Involvement in project work/teams, improvement programmes and groups, cross-functional teams, team meetings, and focus groups;

• Quality training;

• Audits;

• Use of flowcharting processes;

• Specific requests;

• Moving staff around departments;

• Customer complaints;

• Implementing an assessment model e.g. the European Business Excellence Model, the Baldrige Framework, or a quality improvement programme.

Staff involvement in providing ideas must have support that ‘follows through’, as it is important that those contributing ideas and suggestions are notified of the progress of their suggestions and are given reasons if suggestions are not going to be implemented.

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