Honesty and innovation

Innovations aren’t just the technical knock-outs, dreamed up by the brightest brains on the planet. Innovation can also happen on your factory floor, sparked by your own people’s ideas – but creating the right conditions for that takes both courage and trust. It starts with realising and recognising that, through his or her efforts, every employee contributes to the basis of a successful organisation. 

Caught up in the everyday chaos, we tend to focus on the figures: volumes, start times, finish times, lead times, sales figures…and the list goes on. The numbers are clear, unequivocal and don’t lie. Nice and straightforward, right? But the figures don’t take your people (or you!) out of the comfort zone. Stop to ask yourself this: ‘How can I stimulate “out-of-the-box thinking” on the work floor without harming the efficiency?’

The answer to this question starts with awareness and taking an honest look at your organisation. ‘Where are we now – as a company in the market, and as a collaborative  team?’ And by that I don’t just mean the team of directors and the management team; I mean all teams, i.e. in all departments where colleagues work together with one another – at the heart of the action.

Being honest means admitting that we can’t do it all alone. If your people know where the company wants to be in a year’s time, if they are aware of one another’s personal traits and preferences and if they understand one another better, then they are more likely to stay motivated. If you give them recognition, they are more likely to be proactive – simply because they feel more involved, because they understand that they do more than just that one operational task and because they know they are an essential part of the bigger picture.

If you, as entrepreneur or manager, succeed in conveying this (e.g. during employee meetings), then you have taken the first major step towards developing innovation naturally. Innovation can be found in things like a different, more efficient method of packaging or preparing products, or in a new logistics routing. I wish you and your employees an honest and innovative future!

www.kennethsmit.com/koosminnema/