Employees good ideas are wasted on managers who are too threatened to implement them, right? Not really, according to new research and reported in an article in HBR by authors Elad Sherf, Subra Tangirala and Vijay Venklataramani (read it here). While employees’ do regularly get frustrated that it seems like their suggestions for improvement are ignored by their managers. Too often this is assumed to be because the managers are threatened by these ideas, but this new research indicates otherwise.
In fact the research has found two predominate reasons associated with the organisations putting the managers in impossible positions. These two hurdles are that managers are all too frequently not empowered to act on these good ideas, if they do act, they feel the pressure to deliver short term results rather than taking a longer term view.
Not having the autonomy to make change is just as frustrating for managers, who are often seen as “go betweens” who have to use clumsy and cumbersome centralised decision structures that show short term immediate results rather than looking for longer term sustainability.
Quoting from the article, “it is unreasonable to ask managers to solicit and encourage ideas and input from employees when they are not empowered themselves and are asked to focus on short-term outcomes.” Consequently it is important for senior management to instead give managers the required autonomy and allow time for great ideas to find their way from the front-line to the top management. Do your structures allow for nimble and innovative ideas, or are you more focused on bureaucracy and controls?
Avondale Business School (ABS) can help you with your organisational design, just contact Dr Warrick Long [email protected] to find out how.