Are Ideas Free?

A host of books have been published on company-wide improvement approaches. One of the first descriptions of the approach that makes Toyota and other Japanese firms successful with continuous improvement was kaizen, written by Masaaki Imai, published in 1986. Imai updated that work with gemba kaizen in 1997. Along the way there have been many good books about employee initiated everyday improvement and innovation. The latest is the book Ideas Are Free, by Alan G. Robinson, Dean M. Schroeder.

Robinson and Schoeder claim a company-wide practice of putting the small ideas into use will separate your firm from your competitors without tipping your hand as to what is making you more competitive. Here are their eight recommendations for an idea system:

1. Ideas are encouraged and welcomed.
2. Submitting ideas is simple.
3. Evaluation of ideas is quick and effective.
4. Feedback is timely, constructive and informative.
5. Implementation is rapid and smooth.
6. Ideas are reviewed for additional potential.
7. People are recognized, and success is celebrated.
8. Idea system performance is measured, reviewed and improved.

I have one quibble with the authors. They place too much emphasis on ideas and no attention on making assessments that lead to innovation. (There'll be another posting on just that point.) There are plenty of ideas available from our project team members and throughout our firms. Greg Howell and I have found the missing element to be what we call The Two Great Wastes: not listening and not speaking. None of this works without an environment that embraces the varied opinions and contributions of everyone. There must be attentive listening and unfettered speaking. It takes leadership to get both.

So much has been made of the opportunity line workers and project performers have for contributing ideas for improvement in their daily work. 15 years ago I worked at ABB Asea Brown Boveri. I wondered what the opportunity was for harnessing the inventiveness of our highly skilled engineers. So I did an experiment. I worked with 8 engineers. First, I taught them the standard problem-solving techniques. Then I challenged them as a group of 8 to come up with 20 adopted improvements each week. I further stipulated that the team didn't succeed unless each person had originated 1 adopted improvement in that week. They got off to a slow start. I remember the first week had fewer than 10 adopted improvements and 2 or 3 of the people didn't contribute one idea. But we kept at it. At the end of the month the team had over 100 adopted improvements with everyone meeting their weekly targets. At that point they became really innovative. The second month had even more adopted improvements. It was also at that time that ABB made major organizational changes resulting in me moving from Connecticut to Switzerland. The team was disbanded.

So are ideas free? I think not. While I'm a really big fan of continuous improvement systems, here in the USA we seem not to have the stick-to-it-ness to make these approaches successful. It takes a significant effort and rethinking of how we will manage our firms and our projects. That effort is not free. It at least comes with an opportunity cost if not a real investment in training and communication of company policy. These costs (or investments) are real. So you might ask, "Is it worth investing?" Without doubt. But take it on for strategic advantage as the authors of Ideas Are Free recommend.

For those of you ready to start here's my recommendation. One of the best guides to adopting continuous improvement is The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy kaizen, by Bunji Tozawa and Norman Bodek. Their approach works. One of the authors is by far the most authoritative person on the subject. I call Norman Bodek the godfather of the lean movement in the western world. He had Taiichi Ohno's and Shigeo Shingo's books on Toyota translated into English and published in the US. Norman's latest book is Kaikaku: The Power and Magic of Lean. He's written a history of the lean movement that presents in one place all the elements of the lean approach. It's sure to be a winner.

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