From Publishers Weekly
Firms that take ideas seriously take their employees’ thinking seriously, and employees who think are employees who are alive. Thus argue Robinson and Schroeder, management academics and corporate creativity consultants. Ideas are the life force of corporations, they say, and managers who recognize this can increase profits and avoid budget cuts and layoffs. Kill employee ideas and what you have is a carcass of a company, a firm mired in bureaucracy and rote processes with a staff of dulled zombies. But ideas are just the tip of the iceberg. The key to a successful company, argue Robinson and Schroeder, is encouraging a corporate culture that swiftly recognizes and implements improvements. With that in mind, the authors focus on ideas as the catalyst of corporate change rather than the end itself. This book is thoroughly researched, with convincing facts and data (Toyota’s success, they say, is the result of an idea culture that takes one million ideas per year from its employees). It also lays out a blueprint for a corporate idea program from inspiration to implementation, along with some unexpected caveats (e.g., rewarding ideas tends to stifle them as people focus on the award rather than on the idea, and small ideas—leading to continuous, incremental improvement—are more valuable than large ones). For any manager interested in jolting a moribund workforce out of complacency, this is a clever, pragmatic guide to awakening both the front line and the bottom line. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Ever since Frederick Taylor advocated that it was management's job to "think" and the worker's job to "do," this perspective has been the basis for the policies, structures, and operating practices of most business organizations. Although this division between thinking and doing may have worked 100 years ago, it is severely limiting in today's environment, where it is the front-line worker who is in the best position to notice problems and suggest ideas. In example after example, the authors show how companies that encourage and implement the ideas of the entire workforce are the ones that come up with the most innovative and successful strategies. Contrary to past thinking on the subject, they make it clear that monetary rewards are not the best way to elicit ideas, and that emphasis on small ideas can be a more effective strategy than shooting for a "home run." The methods described show how to create an environment that encourages ideas, help employees develop knowledge and improve their problem-solving skills, and properly manage the ideas that are generated, including their larger implications. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
A worker in one of Europe's largest wireless communication companies showed his manager how to repair an error that was costing the company $30 million per year. A secretary at Grapevine Canyon Ranch proposed a simple change to pull the company's website to the top of search engines. These are just two of many examples in Ideas are Free that highlight the single best resource in a company - those frontline employees who can see those telling little details that escape managers. Based on extensive research with hundreds of companies around the world and in every major field, this practical book shows how to draw the most useful ideas from frontline employees and, in the process, significantly improve the atmosphere - and success quotient - of any organization. Ideas are Free is the definitive book on getting - and applying - business-transforming ideas from frontline employees, and will be required reading for Alan Robinson's televised course on PBS - The Business Channel.


Book Info
Text shows managers how to tap all the ideas their employees have and gain significant advantage over their competitors. DLC: Suggestion systems.


About the Author
Alan G. Robinson has been a consultant to more than a hundred companies in eleven countries. His recent clients have included Lucent Technologies, Heineken, the Federal Reserve Bank, Bose, Standard and Poors, Volkswagen, Toyota, Blue Shield, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (the largest financial services organization in the world), Lunt Silversmiths, Interbrew (the second largest brewer in the world), Fanuc (the Japanese robotics company), DCM (one of the largest conglomerates in India), Bemis, Leninetz (one of the largest companies in Russia), the Japan Industrial Training Association (responsible for the national training program required for millions of middle and upper managers in the country), Alcan, and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). He has served on the Board of Examiners of the United States’ Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Robinson is a frequent public speaker, who has given hundreds of executive seminars around the world, and has considerable media experience. He is on the faculty of the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts. His 1998 book, Corporate Creativity, was a finalist in the Financial Times/Booz Allen & Hamilton Global Best Business Book Awards and was named Book of the Year by the Academy of Human Resources Management. Dean M. Schroeder is an experienced international consultant whose client list includes such companies as Toyota, Siemens, Fifth Third Bank, Unilever, Girl Scouts of America, Hayworth, Cummins Engine, Panafon (the European wireless communications company), Dresser Industries, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), Halliburton and Good Shepherd Services. Schroeder is on the Board of Examiners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the Board of Directors of the American Creativity Association, and has served on several corporate boards. Before taking up an academic career, he was the founder of two successful midsize companies, and as an outside CEO, led turnarounds of two more. Schroeder is currently the Herbert and Agnes Schulz Professor of Management and the Director of the M.B.A. Program at Valparaiso University where he specializes in strategic management, the management of technology and change, and high performing organizations.


Excerpted from Ideas are Free: How the Idea Revolution is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations by Alan G. Robinson, Dean M. Schroeder, Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Copyright © 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
What will future generations say about the way we practice management today? What will they consider our most conspicuous failure? We believe they will accuse us of having squandered a tremendous resource by not listening to the ideas of front-line employees – the people performing the day-to-day tasks that keep their organizations functioning. Every day, all over the world, millions of working people see problems and opportunities that their managers don’t. With little chance to do anything about them, they are forced to watch helplessly as their organizations waste money, disappoint and lose customers, and miss opportunity after opportunity that to them are all too apparent. The intangible costs of the way we treat front-line employees are even greater. Who can put a price on how much a dysfunctional culture detracts from an organization’s performance and the quality of the lives of the people who work there? But a quiet revolution is underway – an idea revolution – led by managers and supervisors who, in a small but growing number of companies, are getting extraordinary numbers of useful ideas from their people. This book is about how these quiet revolutionaries do it, and how inspired supervisors and managers at any level in any organization can do the same. Why do we call this movement a revolution? We do so because its intent is to liberate employees from top to bottom, and to transform the way that organizations are run. For managers, revolutionary stirrings begin with the realization that employee ideas can have a huge impact on the performance of their units, and free them from time-consuming "fire-fighting". They can then focus on what they should be focusing on. For employees, management’s responsiveness to their ideas gives them a real chance to address many of the problems and opportunities they see on a daily basis, and to have a personal impact on the performance of their organizations. They become committed revolutionaries too. And everyone’s work becomes much more rewarding and less stressful. The idea revolution changes the nature of the relationship between managers and their employees. As Ray Winter, President of BIC North America observed about the effect of his company’s idea system on the corporate culture, "This system has taught my managers real respect for their employees. My managers have learned that their employees can make them look awfully good, if they only let them". This comment could easily be taken to mean that it doesn’t take much – other than receptiveness on the part of management – to get large numbers of ideas from employees. But it took BIC years of experimentation and learning to discover how to tap this potential, just as it did the other companies we discuss in this book. There is a lot to learn, much of which is counterintuitive. Managers often have to reverse their assumptions about why people give in ideas, and which ones are really important. Very little has been published on how organizations can set about getting large numbers of ideas from their front-line employees. Ideas Are Free was written to fill this void. The concepts and advice in it are based on our own firsthand research in hundreds of organizations around the world, and we have tested and refined them in well over a hundred more. These range in size from small family businesses to large multinational organizations. They operate in many different cultures and countries, and represent diverse sectors of the economy, including financial services, retailing, health care, manufacturing, hospitality, agriculture, publishing, high-technology, transportation and logistics, telecommunications, not-for-profit and government. While we have studied or worked with organizations that were already leading the world in managing employee ideas, we have also conducted research in, and helped many more whose initiatives had not been so successful. Being able to contrast the excellent performers with the mediocre and poor, across such a diverse set of businesses and situations, has allowed us to develop a good understanding of the principles involved in managing ideas.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A worker in one of Europe's largest wireless communication companies showed his manager how to repair an error that was costing the company $30 million per year. A secretary at Grapevine Canyon Ranch proposed a simple change to pull the company's website to the top of search engines. These are just two of many examples in Ideas are Free that highlight the single best resource in a company - those frontline employees who can see those telling little details that escape managers. Based on extensive research with hundreds of companies around the world and in every major field, this practical book shows how to draw the most useful ideas from frontline employees and, in the process, significantly improve the atmosphere - and success quotient - of any organization. Ideas are Free is the definitive book on getting - and applying - business-transforming ideas from frontline employees, and will be required reading for Alan Robinson's televised course on PBS - The Business Channel.

SYNOPSIS

Robinson (University of Massachusetts) and Schroeder (Valparaiso University) demonstrate the value of eliciting ideas for cutting costs and improving operations from employees working on the frontline, suggest implementing those ideas is the best way to gain employee trust, and show how employee ideas improve both performance and the culture of the organization. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

Front-line workers have long known they have the real scoop on the day-to-day operations of their organization. But this concept has escaped many managers, who have therefore been unable to use their employees' insights to help cut costs, improve service, and achieve greater efficiency. So management professors Robinson (Univ. of Massachusetts; Corporate Creativity) and Schroeder (Valparaiso Univ.) have teamed up for an energetic examination of the "idea revolution" framework. They show how organizations can move away from the scientific management model that expects workers to do instead of think and accept a culture that values the experience, creativity, and ideas of the rank and file. They address the fundamentals of idea programs and reward schemes-how to implement and nourish them and then keep them from running amok. The authors' research took them to 150 different businesses and organizations in 17 countries, and the numerous illustrations drawn from these contacts lend animation to an already interesting topic. Recommended for all business collections.-Carol J. Elsen, Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Soundview Executive Book Summaries

At a Massachusetts Department of Correction facility, a guard proposed a change in the way pictures were taken of new inmates. Instead of using film, why not use digital cameras and store the images in a database? Across the department's 16 correctional facilities, this idea saved $56,000 the first year in film alone.

When accounting for oil purchases, a staffer in a regional distribution center at Deutsche Post, the German post office, noticed that the company was paying too much for the engine oil for its trucks. Drivers were buying oil at roadside service stations, paying the equivalent of $8.50 per liter. After some research, he found that Deutsche Post could buy the oil in bulk for a quarter of the price and proposed that it do so. Today, the idea is being implemented at distribution centers across Germany. With tens of thousands of diesel trucks and vans on the road, Deutsche Post will save millions of euros every year.

A Quiet Revolution
A quiet revolution is underway - an idea revolution - led by managers and supervisors who, in a small but growing number of companies, have learned how to listen systematically to their employees. With each implemented idea, performance improves in some way. Some time or money is saved, someone's job becomes a little easier, the customer experience is enhanced, or the organization is improved in some other way. With large numbers of ideas coming in, performance improves dramatically. And as employees see their ideas used, they know they are having an impact on their organization and become more engaged in their work.

This quiet revolution liberates people and transforms the way that organizations are run, and it changes the nature of the relationship between managers and their employees. While still president of BIC Corp., Ray Winter observed the following about the effect of his company's idea system on the corporate culture: "This system has taught my managers real respect for their employees. My managers have learned that their employees can make them look awfully good, if they only let them."

Ideas are the engine of progress. They improve people's lives by creating better ways to do things. They build and grow successful organizations and keep them healthy and prosperous. Without the ability to get new ideas, an organization stagnates and declines, and eventually will be eliminated by competitors who do have fresh ideas.

An idea begins when a person becomes aware of a problem or opportunity, however small. Most ideas are common sense. They don't require particular insight or much creativity.

Leading Indicators
CEO of Wainwright Industries Don Wainwright believes that most business leaders manage from financial measures - that is, lagging indicators that impart mostly historical information. On the other hand, the most important indicator he uses is the number of ideas implemented in the previous week. To him, this is the best leading indicator of his company's future performance. If he gets this number right, a great deal will follow.