Why Pursuing Big Ideas Is Killing Your Culture

Thousands of small ideas beat a few big ones every time

The best indicator of successfully developing a continuous improvement culture is your ability to engage people. Because “engagement is all about participation,” according to communications consultant David Sibbet, it is critical that you create a way for people to consistently participate in improvement activities. Creating an annual kaizen event calendar and rotating people on and off improvement teams won’t cut it. You must design a process for individuals to embed change as part of their daily work.

What works best are employee-driven idea systems that focus on small ideas but cultivate them every day in a visual, public way. Not because the ideas themselves are earth-shattering, but because the ability to get them done quickly and demonstrate continued progress is key to motivating people to think big, take risks, and work together to create positive change.

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Comments

Does it run counter to every improvement program?

"What works best are employee-driven idea systems that focus on small ideas but cultivate them every day in a visual, public way. "

Not that I disagree, but this almost sounds like it argues against every formal improvement "program" ever proposed since formal improvement advice favors the Pareto approach to improvement choices which usually leads to the "big win" approach.

Would be interested in your comparison of the view above with specific programs.

Small ideas:

A friend of mine held an hourly position within a large military manufacturing facility and developed a number of suggestions over a period of three years. A Suggestion Program was in full swing with analysis of each suggestion; material costs, design hours, construction costs and total pay-back during the first, and subsequent years of operation. The total amount of suggestion "Reward" dollars was approximately $23,000.00 over this three year span, and the projected savings of all his combined suggestions was well over seven million dollars taken over a five year period. He waited two years to evaluate the results. His next suggestion was quite a stunner, and did not require analysis at all. His final suggestion ? Implement my previous suggestions for a five year savings of seven million dollars. The moral of this story is: The satisfaction of one person when somone listens to him and takes his advice may count much more than the cost, or savings, of a suggestion reward for a project that goes unfulfilled.