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Creating the Creative Climate - Part 12

Suggestions for stimulating idea production are many and varied. Some are simply communications techniques borrowed from advertising and editorial fields. Some companies have, how­ever, experimented with actions that can be taken, and here are a few of their ideas:

Idea Breaks. These can range all the way from daily or weekly half-hour sessions, where employees are encouraged to do nothing but sit and think, down to informal meetings wherein an idea-trained foreman calls his group together during the coffee break and presents a problem for them to "kick around." Such sessions may or may not employ some of the formal group creative tech­niques described in Chapter 10. A more ambitious type of idea break is that used in several large research organizations where researchers are theoretically free to spend up to 20 per cent of their paid time working on projects of their own choosing.

Experimental Facilities. Many companies have successfully en­couraged profitable developments through the expedient of offer­ing the use of such standing company facilities as laboratories, model shops, and machine shops for experimental work on new ideas related to company problems. This is usually tied in with the program of giving a percentage of company time for such work. In other cases, only the facilities are made available, and the worker, if he wants to use them, does so on his own time. Many workers are willing to do this, particularly if they know that the company will be generous in rewarding them for a suc­cessful development.

Discussion. Regular or periodic discussions of problems are, of course, a standard in-company communications technique. But the practice of setting them up on a scheduled basis, with the sole object of stimulating workers to produce ideas on company prob­lems, is well worth considering if a company needs or wants ideas. Closely related to this is the use many organizations make of the Brainstorming technique. They frankly admit that the ideas actu­ally produced in the Brainstorm session may be of secondary value. What they are after is the stimulation that Brainstorming a problem gives the participants to continue thinking about it ort their own.

Competition. Considering that Americans are basically a com­petitive people, it is surprising that more has not been done to encourage friendly competition among workers for ideas. It is fairly common to pit departments or sections or plants against one another in campaigns to reduce absenteeism or production re­jects or accidents. It should also be possible to develop similar competition to stimulate idea or improvement suggestions.

Display. Every plant has lobbies, entrances, bulletin boards, or other "dead" space that could be used for idea-stimulating dis­plays. For instance, a display of models of basic machinery and machinery modifications in your industry could easily tie in with the rewards for inventing such machinery. Another display might serve to encourage some of the more timid souls by tracing out a few of the ridiculous or impractical inventions of the past and demonstrating how applied creativity developed them into useful machines or products. Still another type of display could use photos or models from some of the "world of the future" maga­zine articles and features that are so popular today. This, if well planned, could serve to orient workers' minds toward the future and stimulate speculation on how your company's prod­ucts or services can be made to fit in.

Follow-up. No program of creative stimulation can be con­sidered complete unless it includes a planned system for follow-up and action on the ideas produced. This is so essential that it might even be wise to plan what you are going to do with ideas before you worry about how you are going to get them.

The follow-up cycle must provide for such factors as screening and evaluating ideas, determining suitable awards or rewards, and an air-tight, iron-clad, welded-to-the-floor procedure to make sure that some action—whether investigative or activating—is taken on every promising idea. Your company can generate a thousand million-dollar ideas, but until some action is taken, they will not be worth the paper they are listed on. And last, but cer­tainly not least, your follow-up system must provide for indi­vidually communicating with every worker on the ideas he sub­mits, whether they are accepted or rejected.

This worker communication, ideally, is best done in person. But where that is impractical, it should certainly be a highly personalized, individually written letter from some individual whom the worker will consider important in the company.

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