Why Employees Don’t Share Their Best Ideas (14 Barriers Leaders Miss)

So what we're going to talk about today comes from the fact that we have talked to many companies over the years who many, many, many, many who hate using management consultants. We totally agree with that. We're not management consultants. We think people. That's basically a dying service and people shouldn't be using them anymore.

But they continue to hire them. And the question is why? And one of the answers is often it's because they do not believe their own employees have good ideas. They feel like, oh, we have budget systems, we have strategic planning, we have incentives. And yet we never hear all these great ideas. So our people must be either maybe not that bright, or maybe they don't care, or maybe who knows what. And so they hire a management consultant to substitute for what they think are employees that don't have good ideas.

And then, of course, those consultants interview those very same people.

Yes.

And often get those ideas which they then present as their own.

Exactly. So we would like to discuss today the 14 reasons why employees who actually are passionate, creative, knowledgeable and good don't seem to be proffering the ideas that they're capable of offering the company. And with that, what do you think, Terri?

Wow. Without any further ado.

Without any further ado.

Well, we start with a big one. And that is there is no benefit to them either financially or career wise. Now some people will still do it, but given today's environment and sort of a perceived lack of loyalty in both directions. No benefit. Well, why should I bother? Particularly because along with no benefit, there is risk perceived at least often by proffering those very same ideas. And here's a couple of the risks. Number two on our list, when somebody offers an idea, it may end up costing a job or many jobs and that may be their neighbor's job or, or even their own job. And they don't want to cost people their jobs or get anybody in trouble.

So you know, that's a risk. Why do I need to raise my hand and give this good idea if bad things are potentially going to happen? Number three, they don't want to look foolish if they get it wrong. So maybe you're not confident about your idea, but so, you know, I don't. Again, why do I want to look, look foolish if my idea makes no sense or flip side of that is they don't want to embarrass their boss potentially if they get it right. Because oftentimes we feel like people don't want ideas. Bosses don't want ideas because they don't want their bad processes exposed. Obviously that's a very cynical view of the world and many, many bosses absolutely want those ideas, but some of them, not so much.

Number four on the hit parade is a lot of employees don't have access to the people who would decide about an idea. So they don't even quite know to whom they should go or what they should say. They can't just march into the CEO's office and say, hey boss or boss's boss's boss's boss. I've got this idea. So that's number four. They don't have access to people who could decide. Number five, there are a lot of people who are very creative and they see something that's correct, but they don't actually know how to analyze it and refine the idea. So it clearly meets the criteria that someone would lead them to approve the idea.

So they need help and they don't know how to get help in just the analysis, presentation and refinement of the idea.

And they might not want to ask.

For it and they certainly don't want to ask for it.

Back to that looking foolish thing.

Yeah, in fact, I think we wrote something about that using help. I. What's, what's the Beatles song?

Help, help, I need somebody.

I, I, need somebody. Right. It can't just be anybody.

You're like, you're gonna make me sing it, huh?

Hey. Our audience numbers might skyrocket and then six, many ideas, almost all require some collaboration with somebody. It might be just collaboration with someone in your unit or maybe with finance, or maybe you're doing something, you need operations to help you with it, or, I don't know, someone else doing the same job but in a different location. Collaborating can be extremely hard in large organizations. Often you don't. Again, you don't know who to go to to collaborate. And those people are on their own missions and manic work schedules, and they may just not have time for you. And so you don't get the collaboration that's critical to making the idea a good one.

And as we have found in a lot of our projects with companies, is that most companies don't do collaboration well at all, and therefore there's lots and lots of opportunity left on the table because of that. Okay, number seven is they just don't care or they're disengaged. I mean, it's kind of related to. There's no benefit. But sometimes even when there is a benefit, oh, you know, you might get a few bucks or a, you know, gift card to the local restaurant, but it's just not that important to me, particularly if it's something that doesn't make the employee's life better at work. If it's an idea, you know, related to somebody else's job, for example, why do I need to raise my hand and make a fuss over this? Number eight, this is a big one. People get used to the problems, and then they cease to see them unless somebody sort of really prods. So one of the things we recommend, and I think we just, we have talked about it recently in a podcast, is an interview, an entrance interview.

So before somebody sort of gets used to the problem, hit them up, because they will potentially see the problems early. And then people get used to them. But you have to, you have to work it to make sure that people don't get used to it. So you have to, you know, as a, as a manager, ask a lot of questions to people on a regular basis to get them thinking about, well, just because we order this blue paper, because a hundred years ago it made sense, there was a reason. Does it still make sense?

And that blue paper is based on a real story that's probably in our.

Book, probably Low-Hanging Fruit, 77 Ideas.

That would be it. The other thing that I think we talked about recently is while we don't believe in brainstorming for solutions and ideas, one technique you can use is brainstorming for problems to get people to think more broadly about what problems are.

Okay. Number nine is people aren't trained to do it. They're not told it's a priority, so they just don't, it just isn't on their list of to dos. You know, they have a job. It doesn't include raising your hand when you see a better way to do something. So you go in, you do your job, you do it well, then you go home and you don't raise your hand in between.

So number 10, decision makers change. So you have to start all over. Now in our book we have a short chapter called Corporate Whack a Mole which kind of describes this. So, you know, let's say you're, you know, a kind of mid level supervisor or manager. You've actually had this idea, you've had the will and desire and ability to work it. And you've been pitching a boss and maybe your boss's boss, and then your boss's boss, you know, gets transferred to another place or leaves the company, someone new takes over. And all the concerns that the first person had, those aren't the concerns anymore. Now they got a whole different set of concerns and priorities.

And now you got to kind of start over and you kind of go, ah, forget about it.

Yeah, you get tired.

Yeah, get tired. Number 11, nobody listens anyway.

Now this is, now you understand this personally as a non listener. Oh, what, what did you just say?

Very funny, as a non listener, but my hearing is excellent.

Just my listener, little suspect.

It probably comes from having these white things in my ears all the time. So one is nobody listens anyway. And this is different than the one about not caring or being disengaged, which might just be how you feel about your job. This is, I would want someone to listen. If someone listened, I'd be excited and motivated and interest. But I raised my hand enough times around here and see nothing change. So again, forget about it.

Forget about it.

You don't want to know, you don't want to, as one of our clients once said. And now, number 12, that's not my job. In fact, not only is it not my job, it is explicitly someone else's job. And so I see that there's something going on in the office or the business. It seems crazy to me. And as an outsider, I, I, I sort of see how you could fix it, but it's not what they're paying me for. And I don't even mean that as cynicism. It's kind of like, stay in your lane, stay in your box.

You're the here on the OR chart.

Don't step on someone else's toes.

Right. They must know what they're doing, mustn't they?

Mustn't they? But do they?

Yeah, but do they?

Okay, 13 lots of companies suffer from not having their teams really understand the big picture. So you're in your department, you know your department's role in a process, but you don't see that another part of the process is impacted by something you're doing. So if you had access, if you had understanding of an entire process, you would be able to see the good idea that would impact maybe somebody else, maybe not you, but it would still be a wonderful idea for the company. So you just don't see the big picture. And last but certainly not least is that only a few people are engaged in, you know, continuous improvement, or whatever your company likes to call it. And I guess this is related to it's someone else's job, but it is their job. And, you know, they're a handful of people and again, they're not doing the work they're doing, you know, their work, but they're not doing the processes that everybody else is doing. And so, you know, they only can see so much, no matter how well trained they are in the very Six Sigma, Kaizen, you know, whatever, all of those things.

So it doesn't. You are leaving. Companies are leaving gobs on the table if all they do is have a project management office or, you know, a project team working on improving the company.

And it reinforces the incorrect perception at the top that there's only a few people that are good. Oh, we always go to the same go to people. These are our bench. Whereas if you get more people involved more formally in projects, oh, we've discovered this person's really smart and that person's really engaged and, you know, whatever.

Yeah.

So those are our 14 reasons why companies perceive the senior people. And companies perceive that their people may not be capable, when in fact their people are very capable, but are not engaging the way you'd like. All of these can be addressed when you use the right overarching process that creates the incentives and the priorities and the collaboration and the assistance and the training. And when you do that, the results can be astonishing and don't require the use of some outside management consultant to tell you how to run your company.

Yeah, we have often been told our people don't have ideas but when we've actually worked with a company, there has never been a company where their employees didn't have lots and lots of ideas. It just isn't. Isn't realistic.

Yeah. And when we say lots, in 30 days, it might be 3,000 ideas. I mean, it isn't necessarily 3,000 good ones. No, no. But, you know, a thousand lots of good ones.

Yeah.

And the ones that aren't good, beautiful thing about that is everyone says, oh, we should be doing this, we should be doing that. And then they begin to realize, no, actually there's good reasons not to do those things. And so you create a really unified view of what makes sense for us to do what doesn't make sense for us to do.

I would say the number one thing is that you can very simply do is as a manager, is when you are walking around talking to your people, ask them constantly what gets in the way of them doing their jobs. I mean, that's a simple thing. It's not all the way to bright, as one of our clients used to say, but it will go a long way to. To raising the profile that you are looking for ways to improve and that it's safe to do that particularly, and.

This is the critical, unsaid half of that point, you then gotta follow up and do something. I mean, if nothing can be done, nothing can be done. But even then, if you see that person in the hallway three weeks later and you say, by the way, I looked into, I thought it was very cool, but you know, it turns out it's going to cost us a million dollars. But I love the thinking, bring me another one. Even. That'll get you a long way. And of course, if you actually change the thing and say, do you notice that weep changes? Fantastic. And then that'll get heard and spread.

Yeah, that spread thing is powerful. Okay, more fun later.

More fun later.

Or as Stevie the plumber says in fluffpeace, back to business.

Back to business. Bye. Bye.

Bye.

Thanks for listening. To learn how Harvest Earnings helps large companies overcome the bad practices, visit our website, harvesternings.com or email us at infoarvesternings.com.

Also, please subscribe or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a rating and a review. It really helps others discover the show. Until next time, I'm Terri Long.

And I'm Jeremy Eden. And now it's time for us to get back to work. Bye.