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Creating the Creative Climate - Part 10

For any kind of sustained program, one good system corresponds to the way you handle promotional or sales campaigns: For one week, or month, the whole communications effort aims at getting ideas on a particular production problem; the following week or other period, the objective becomes waste reduction. The next period may be on product improvement, or increasing selling effectiveness; another could be on plant safety. This way workers have specific targets to shoot at in their thinking, rather than the broad, amorphous "Give us ideas."

Every plant should, of course, make use of suggestion boxes. However, it would be a mistake to limit channels of idea-sug­gesting to the boxes, and it is also a mistake to assume that just be­cause the boxes are there and painted an attractive color, the workers will use them without further efforts on your part. Your communications program should include frequent reminders of the need for ideas, and should stress and re-stress the point that ideas are wanted and, if possible, will be rewarded.

One of the most difficult tasks in setting up any formal idea-seeking program is certainly that of arriving at suitable rewards and incentives for ideas submitted. On the one hand, there is the very real need for something to motivate workers to "give" more than just the minimum effort needed to hold their jobs; and on the other, there are all the complications of union agreements, the moral issues such as fairness and equitability of the reward, and, certainly, the company's ability to pay.

It may be, however, that motivating for creativity is being needlessly overcomplicated. We read and hear so much about im­pressive monetary rewards for new suggestions, methods, patents, etc. that we often forget there are other ways to appeal to people. When you are dealing with an individual who may be under your supervision, for example, you may find, with a little gentle prob­ing and a great deal of understanding, that money really isn't too important. Individual motivations differ. This means that you can use different incentives to spur people to think.

If, for example, your company morale is high and your esprit de corps is strong, it may be enough just to let workers know that you would appreciate their ideas on such and such a prob­lem. The only reward needed then will be recognition and per­haps praise for the idea-giver who succeeds, and sincere thanks for those who did not quite make it. On the other hand, if your plant morale is low, it may be that demonstrating some real crea­tive leadership can help raise morale to the point where it will become the factor that motivates for you.

Related terms include business online and business information system.