Here are some thoughts about helping your people overcome resistance to innovation and new ideas. After all, if we are not implementing new ideas, we are not making improvements. And generating and implementing ideas is a fundamental part of the growth of most organizations and workplaces. And people!

If we’re not getting more better faster than they are getting more better faster, then we’re getting less better or more worse.

My original thinking on this theme looked something like this, which I called, “Too Busy:”

But I also had this thought, that maybe there is not always direct resistance but that there can be procrastination and delay as that passive kind of resistance. So, this one became, “Maybe Tomorrow…”

So what do we do about this? How DO we implement new ideas?

Probably the very best idea is to persuade the wagon puller manager to actually LEAD and facilitate a session with the work team to ask for and share and polish ideas for improvement. After all, can anyone think of a workplace where the workers do not have any ideas for making improvements? (Not in my experience; there are always ideas.)

(a blog about facilitation of ideas – https://performancemanagementcompany.com/2017/07/03/facilitation-learning-and-motivation-the-supervisor/ )

A common perception is that managers are not interested in the ideas of workers, that improvements are not needed and that they drive the need for more work and potential errors and mistakes. Things may not work well, but they work and most bosses will generally meet their performance goals simply because those goals are set on existing parameters. The Square Wheels are a known entity and the wagon can be moved forward as expected.

By getting managers to facilitate, they can actively involve and engage and can more easily polish the workers’ ideas for making improvements and implementing change. And by allowing the workers to generate and share and package the ideas that benefit them in their work, we help drive intrinsic motivation and dramatically improve the probabilities of success.

“Nobody ever washes a rental car.” 

This is a reality of ownership, and by facilitating ideation, we share ownership and involvement and dynamically change the workplace environment and impact the culture of innovation.

A simple and so far free Square Wheels^® toolkit is, The Fix — Get it here.

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For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools.
Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant who is trying to retire!! He now lives in Cuenca, Ecuador.

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Learn more about Scott at his LinkedIn site.

Here is a link to a press release about The Search for The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine teambuilding exercise and its 30 years of positively impacting people and performance.

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