Increase Meeting Productivity: The Idea Parking Lot

Many meetings fail at generating desired outcomes because of lack of structure. If a clear agenda isn’t presented, and followed, expectations are not clear and it becomes easy to divert from the original goal.

One way to help facilitate meetings that don’t get derailed is by using an idea parking lot.

The idea parking lot is where you put any discussions or topics that arise, but aren’t pertinent to the task at hand. This is sometimes called “tabling” the conversation. When you “park” an idea, you’re recognizing that the contribution is important but isn’t relevant to the meeting topic.

However, if you park an idea and never retrieve it, the person who provided the input feels devalued, often resulting in a decrease in performance.

To take this metaphor further, I propose both short-term and long-term parking.

Short-term parking

This parking lot is for conversations and ideas that need to be retrieved in order to successfully evaluate or complete the team’s original charge or goal. This parking lot is often a bit more chaotic, as ideas are coming in and out more frequently, and can easily take up unnecessary time in your meetings if you don’t curb them quickly. With ideas that are related to the task at hand, but not essential given the meeting agenda, it’s important to short-term park the conversation to meet the original meeting objectives and then retrieve the idea shortly thereafter.

Long-term parking

This parking lot is for conversations and ideas that need to be retrieved after the original goal is met. If an idea comes up that is an important contribution, but isn’t necessary to complete the team’s original charge, put it in long-term parking. Make sure the person whose idea is being parked knows a time and a place to bring the conversation back to the surface.

This general structure helps you recognize contributions from each team member, while still keeping the meeting on track and accomplishing goals.

Three Tips for Cultivating an Innovative Workforce: Attracting and Retaining Talent

Turn-over and the inability to attract innovative employees are two problems that plague many organizations and stunt business growth. Cultivating an environment that rewards entrepreneurial thinking—or intrapreneurship—is one key change a company can make towards keeping and attracting proactive and forward-thinking employees.

Here are three tips to help.

Tip 1: Provide time and space for innovation.

If you want employees to come up with new ideas, you need to give them time to create without penalty and during standard business hours. One of the most well-known examples of this practice is Google, who gives employees 20% of their work week to use creating ideas for Google-related products and services.

Doing this communicates to employees that you value their time and insight—that you welcome their ideas and encourage them to be active participants in the organization. In turn this produces a work environment where employees feel invested in the company and its success.

Tip 2: Generate a process for idea submission.

A lot of companies will provide time for innovation, but then leave employees wondering the proper way to actually communicate their ideas. Providing employees with a process for submitting or pitching their ideas lets them know what information needs to be presented, what research needs to be done, and gives direction for execution. This framework also can reduce time spent evaluating ideas, as only those ideas that are a bit more fleshed out will make it to the presentation stage. (Note: This doesn’t mean that quick, spur of the moment ideas aren’t valuable—in fact, sometimes they are the best ideas. But providing a venue for those, separate from the formal pitch, is essential and perhaps a precursor to the presentation.)

An example of a company who does this well is DreamWorks. At DreamWorks, employees at all levels can get education on how to pitch an idea. successfully—a program that encourages creation from all employees, not matter what their job role or title.

Tip 3: Reward the process, not the result.

One sure-fire way to squash innovation is to penalize employees if ideas don’t work out. Do not view this as wasted time. Instead, view this as time when an employee was actively participating in the betterment of the company. When you give employees permission to fail, they are willing to be more creative—more innovative and risky—with their thinking. This can often lead to the best ideas.

A great example of rewarding the process comes from Calgon who, upon advice from Alan Weiss of Summit Consulting Group, created a “Best Idea That Didn’t Work” award, giving respect to the process, and not the end result.

Innovation and Participation Killers: Three Phrases Leaders Should Never Use

Creating a culture that breeds and nurtures innovation is important in today’s global economy. Employees are increasingly mobile, and Generation Y and Z employees, in particular, aren’t afraid to leave and find new jobs if they don’t feel valued.

If you want to retain good employees, attract talent, and cultivate an environment of participation, creativity and innovation, DO NOT use these three phrases.

Stick to your job. That’s not in your job description.

Want to make an employee feel that they have no use beyond their immediate job description? These phrases kill any organizational buy-in and stop any incentive the employee had to think of ideas outside of their immediate scope. This tells employees that their thoughts have no value to the organization as a whole, and that the only thing that is important is their singular function.

Instead, ask questions.

  • How do you see this idea fitting in with your current charge?
  • How do you see this idea expanding your responsibilities?
  • How do you see this idea benefiting the organization as a whole?

Asking questions gets employees to make the connections on their own, that you might want to make for them. It also can give you enhanced understanding of the employee’s vision and how it can contribute to the greater goal.

We don’t have the resources.

This phrase is commonly used by managers without regard to the consequences. When you tell an employee this, you’re also communicating that his idea isn’t worth exploring or that her contribution isn’t good enough to warrant consideration. Managers that want to increase innovation find a way to provide resources for promising and invested employees, or encourage the employee to find the resources for him or herself. They also know that creativity thrives in the face of constraint.

Instead, issue a challenge.

I don’t have the resources immediately at my disposal to approve this today; however, why don’t we think of a couple of ways we could rearrange our priorities to make your idea a possibility.

or

I like this idea and want to think about how it fits into our overall strategy a bit more. Come up with a few solutions for how we could integrate this idea within our current operational plan and let’s meet tomorrow to discuss.

This lets the employee know that you do value the idea, and that you want to consider how the idea could come to fruition. It also encourages the employee to invest more time in his or her idea, which will increase buy-in to the organization and to your leadership.

That’s not the way we do things here.

Want to make an employee feel like she’s on an island and not a part of the team? Use this phrase. Telling an employee that he doesn’t know the way things are done communicates two negative things: (1) that he doesn’t know the organization well and that he should, and (2) that outside ideas, perspectives and innovations are not welcome.

Although organizations have rules and policies, it doesn’t mean that they should never be re-examined. Maybe this is the time and place to do that introspection.

Instead, encourage integration.

In the past we’ve approached this idea from a XYZ perspective. However, I think this new idea has promise. Let’s see how we can integrate your solution with our existing operations to improve the organization as a whole.

You can also challenge the employee to think of those means of integration and bring them to you for a conversation.

Remember, as a leader your team’s success is your success. Foster an environment where creativity and innovation can thrive and watch your team succeed.

Repurposing: Using Established Processes for Creativity and Results

For the second year, renowned evolutionary theorists met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for the now-annual Festival of Bad Ah-Hoc Hypotheses (BAH-Fest). Here, researchers use traditional scientific methods and processes to develop satirical theories. The winner of the 2014 BAH-Fest presented a theory of how belly fat in middle-aged men evolved for floatation purposes to save his family from drowning.

I read an article by Angela Chin in the December 1, 2014 Wall Street Journal about this event and, aside from being amused, realized that there is a deeper lesson in this event—the repurposing of traditional methods for creativity and refinement.

In business, we have the tendency to take ourselves too seriously and often become unilaterally focused on a single objective—or the bottom line—that we miss the bigger picture.

Researchers and scientists often fall prey to this same behavior.

BAH-Fest is a way to shake off the traditional paradigmatic approaches and go back to basics—focusing on the scientific method and presenting sound (albeit satirical) research.

This mental shift to satire, while still remaining true to methodological roots, allows researchers to break from a one-track focus and give a presentation at an event which expands a greater goal of science—to bring about understanding, and, where appropriate, societal change.

I imagine that the “real” work from participants benefits immensely from this creative mental break, and brings about a renewed focus and clarity.

This can be replicated in your organization.

  • Where have your employees lost sight of the bigger picture?
  • What processes aren’t being followed well and are causing lapses in productivity?
  • How can you repurpose a process or system in your organization to unleash creativity?

Think about how you can create an outlet for innovation. By doing so, you can get back to basics and reunite your employees around the bigger goal or vision and expedite forward progress.

Need help? Let’s communicate about it.

The Most Overlooked Mission

Whether you’re presenting an idea within an organization or you’re pitching to an organization, there’s one thing that you should be sure to look at that is often overlooked: the mission statement.

An organization’s mission statement is a statement of why that business exists–it’s purpose, it’s core, it’s focus. Mission statements often guide decision-making in organizations, serving as a compass directing action.

If you’re not looking at a company’s mission statement before you pitch your idea, you’re missing out on a valuable source of information to help you craft your messaging.

You could also be missing an opportunity to recognize shared ambitions and build a relationship.

I teach a university course on communication and entrepreneurial thinking. This doesn’t focus on teaching students to be entrepreneurs, but rather to think like entrepreneurs and communicate their ideas effectively. Before I take students through the idea generation process they have to first identify an organization and get to know its mission, vision and values. Knowing this information enables them to better cultivate ideas and craft messaging that will ultimately go into a pitch.

This process is the same whether you work for an organization and you want to pitch an idea to management, or if you are a business owner presenting a proposal to a potential client.

In short, you need to know your audience. And the mission statement is a good place to start.

Learning Through Doing: The Process Matters

Equifinality means that there are many paths to the same end—in business, that there are multiple ways to reach a final goal.

Think of navigating from Times Square to Lincoln Center. There are many different ways you can get from point A to point B, and many different methods of transportation to get you between points. Depending on traffic, subway schedules, weather and other assorted factors, one way is likely faster than the others.

But in taking that one way—say on this given day it’s a taxi—you’re missing out on many other possible discoveries and observations that walking or taking public transportation would’ve presented

If you’re focusing on cultivating a culture of innovation and developing your employees, those potential discoveries and observations are key to growth.

A fatal flaw that many managers make is assuming that their ideas or processes are always the best—the most efficient—and therefore need to be continually executed.

In organizations there are many ways to accomplish a single task. Yes, some may be more efficient than others, but often times an employee’s learning process in accomplishing a task is just as important as the task itself.

Note: In a previous blog I talked about three phrases that leaders should never use if they want to encourage innovation and participation. One of these phrases, “That’s now how we do things around here,” is also very applicable to the concepts this post.

What to Do When Someone Says “It’s Not Possible”

I live in one of the “luxury” apartment buildings in Manhattan. And for 90%+ of the people who live in this building, they get to enjoy the full luxury experience. For me, however, it’s a little different.

I live on the side of the building that touches a major retailer’s loading dock and storage facility. Each day and night I’m accosted by noises that transfer, making it sound like pallets are being dragged and dropped literally above my head. The physics of sound transfer are astonishing. This happens all hours of the day and night, making a full-night’s rest a wishful thought.

For four months I’ve put in complaints, made suggestions for change, offered potential solutions, and all have fallen on deaf ears. After realizing that the building management has no capacity to implement change, I went directly to the property manager. I wrote to him, offering suggestions, including a rent reduction or credit until I could be moved into the same-size unit in a different building location.

After not receiving a response for eight days, I re-sent a message asking him to give me the courtesy of a response. His first line: “Hi Jill–a rent reduction is not possible.”

Not possible? That combination of words is not readily in my vocabulary.

The grammatically-literal me wanted to write back, “I urge you to consult a dictionary for the meaning of the word ‘possible’.” Or, “What you mean to say is that it is possible, but that you’re not willing to consider it.” But I held my tongue (or fingers in this case).

Telling someone that something is “not possible” is a dangerous action.

Unfortunately, business managers do it all too often.

When you tell someone that something is “not possible” you will typically get one of two reactions:

  1. The person will be even more determined to prove you wrong. –or–
  2. The person’s spirit will be broken.

Both of these positions take away from workplace productivity.

In the first, you have an employee focused on the wrong things–restoring equity, looking for a new job, or focusing so hard on what is “not possible” that other tasks fall by the wayside.

With the second, you get an employee who feels under-valued, under-appreciated, or, worse, under-utilized. By saying something is “not possible” you’re telling someone that his or her thoughts aren’t  worth merit, that the innovation isn’t worth consideration, and that he or she shouldn’t bring new ideas to the table.

If you’re going to use the words “not possible” or if you catch them slipping out, here is a simple fix.

Add “unless…” to your sentence.

“It’s not possible unless you/I/we can find a way to [reduce the budget by X amount].”

This phrase shows the employee some cause and effect, and also challenges the employee to be creative about a way to reduce the budget. Many new ideas could come to the surface from this simple addition.

Don’t discourage innovation by using limiting language. Instead, let your employees help you rethink what is possible.

For those curious on where my story goes, I did respond back, inviting him, or whoever makes the decisions on what is “possible”, to stay in my unit (or the now-vacant-because-of-the-noise unit next to me). We will see what happens. To be continued…