LEARNING TO LAUNCH
Innovations at Work
MGMT 2275 — Unit 2 Project
Learning how to enhance your creativity is one thing, but what about the next step — what about actually putting this creative thinking into practice?
I’m sure we all notice problems in our personal lives constantly. “Why have they done it that way?” or “Who thought that was a good idea?” It’s easy to critique the solutions that we see every day, as every one of us offers a unique set of strengths, experiences, knowledge, and understanding to deal with problems differently. That said, noticing these issues can still be especially frustrating in a workplace. It’s even worse when it’s a job you actually like, but something is just not quite working.
This phenomenon is happening to me currently, as I’ve noticed a vital problem in my workplace. Honestly, this job is relatively straightforward and fun as it’s at a VR studio — which contributes majorly to why I enjoy working there. This, however, has left room for employees to slack off and do the bare minimum. It’s funny how the ‘easiest’ jobs can sometimes be the hardest ones to do right, hey?
The problem at work
Digging into this problem a bit further, it seems that an absence of commitment to one’s job could be stemming from multiple areas in my workplace. Off the top of my head, my coworkers and I could be suffering from unclear roles and responsibilities, limited management, or insufficient training. But what’s the actual problem that I want to focus on to put my creativity into practice at work? Simply, I believe this issue can be summed up as the following;
How do I mitigate a lack of job-related accountability in my workplace?
I’ve narrowed the root problem down to this question to use the creative process to solve because it best encapsulates the attitudes that I’ve been noticing from the employees at my workplace. A lack of job-related accountability is shown in measures such as delivering subpar work, showing up late, and low employee motivation. Therefore, these will be the types of actions that my innovative solution should work towards improving.
Then, to understand this problem further, I created a mind map to organize my thoughts and see how they are all interrelated. This represents the Explore stage of the Creative Process. This is shown here:
50 potential solutions
With this analysis in hand, I could move on to the next stage of the Creative Process; Ideation. The key strategies I employed to generate so many ways to solve a lack of job-related accountability included collaboration, further exploration, and changing my surroundings.
Specifically, I collaborated by brainstorming and talking about this problem with my partner and friends. I explored by pinpointing the root causes of the problem and developing direct solutions, and by ‘role-storming,’ by placing myself in the worker’s, management’s, and the customer’s positions. And I changed my surroundings by walking away from the problem multiple times and coming back to it. The most useful strategy, I found, was ‘role-storming’ because it broadened my perspectives and gave me multiple directions from which to come up with solutions.
As a result of these methods, I developed 50 unique solutions, mind mapped on the image below:
Choosing the best one
But now came the hard part — how do I choose which solution to implement? It was time for the next step in the Creative Process, Select. I needed criteria to rank the strength of my ideas. So I came up with the following five criteria, with the end goal of mitigating the lack of job-related accountability at the center:
- What parties (employees, management, customers, or otherwise) are involved in this solution? (i.e.; Does it require the collaboration of too many parties?)
- What is the main benefit to all parties involved in this solution?
- What is the total cost of this solution?
- How does the cost compare to the perceived benefit of this solution? (i.e., The benefit has to outweigh the cost.)
- How will this solution benefit the company culture of the workplace?
With the criteria in place, I could now properly judge and rank my 50 ideas. I subconsciously also considered questions such as, “How long will this solution take to implement?” and “How involved is management in this solution?” These were not included in my top five criteria, although important, as I discovered they didn’t apply to every solution.
So, without further ado — my top solutions.
- Management sets and communicates clear expectations. This solution was ranked my top one because it would, directly and indirectly, benefit all parties, as employees would be able to work towards specific expectations more effectively. Knowledge is the first step. This solution also has a relatively low cost, with a high perceived benefit.
- Utilize team meetings for clear communication. This solution earned second place because it positively involves both employees and management, igniting better communication in the workplace. This also has a relatively low cost with a high perceived benefit.
- Have regular one-on-one management and employee “check-ins.” This solution came up next, as it benefited each employee individually. The aspect of personalized communication between management and employees made this solution stand out, but it did not rank first as its cost (specifically, labour) is slightly higher than the first two.
(And as a bonus, the worst solution:)
50. Allow the team to decide on repercussions for poor performance. I think I may have been inspired by Big Brother…
How I’m going to do it
With my best solution in hand, having management set and communicating clear expectations, I now needed to Plan. Personally, I found the best method to create a plan was working backward as I could use my deadline (November 20) and calculate what timeline was realistic for every step necessary based on the total time available. With that in mind, I developed the following implementation plan:
Nov. 1: Select the best, innovative solution to implement.
Nov. 5: Schedule a meeting with my manager.
Nov. 10: Evaluate and write down what I consider to be the company’s objectives and goals and what expectations I have had clearly communicated to me in preparation for the meeting.
Nov. 12: Discuss with my coworkers what expectations have been communicated with them and how they would want expectations communicated with them in preparation for the meeting.
Nov. 14: Compile this information into a Word document for my manager.
Nov. 14–16: Meet with my manager to discuss the selected problem and my innovative solution. Explain why I believe this would help the problem and share the information that I’ve compiled.
Nov. 17: Suggestion for my manager — Select three clear expectations for all employees to uphold in the workplace.
Nov. 19: Suggestion for my manager — Hold or plan a team meeting to discuss these three clear expectations.
Nov. 20: Suggestion for my manager — Post these expectations using a written or visual method in the staff break room.
The biggest challenge to consider in this plan was clearly communicating to my manager the importance of my innovative solution and convincing her to make the changes necessary for implementation. On the flip side, this plan gave me the personal opportunity to learn from my coworkers about their understanding of the workplace and its associated expectations.
Putting the plan into action
With my problem understood, my best solution generated and selected, and a plan of attack — now I had to do the scary step; Implementation. This meant taking risks and learning to overcome any obstacles that I faced. In the execution of my plan, two major setbacks I met were not being able to lock down a specific meeting date with my manager and knowing less about the company’s overall goals and objectives than I originally thought.
But despite these unexpected flaws in my plan, I was determined to keep the momentum going. I overcame these obstacles by remembering that the creative process is iterative and revisiting the Explore stage to find ways to overcome them.
The challenge of not confirming a meeting date forced me to further explore the purpose of this implementation to better understand all aspects of the problem and if other resources were available, such as meeting outside of regular work hours. Similarly, the problem of having a lack of existing knowledge allowed me to recognize other resources available to me, my coworkers, to find this information.
With these new adjustments, I could better see my plan through. I won’t lie — the implementation was far from perfect. Set deadlines were shifted (first later and then earlier with an unexpected meeting with my manager!) and I had to learn to take alternative approaches to see my plan to fruition, but nonetheless, it was seen through.
But was it successful?
With my plan completed, it’s now time to evaluate how successful my innovative solution has been. This represents the ‘last’ step (remember, the creative process is iterative) of the process, Assess. Same as in the Select stage, I need some criteria. To assess my solution's success, I am using the following:
- Has management communicated their specific expectations to the team?
Yes! This was the biggest criterion to evaluate the plan’s success, as it signifies that the manager has both set expectations and communicated them clearly to the team. This is the first critical step to mitigating the lack of job-related accountability.
- Are my coworkers taking initiative in the workplace (i.e., Doing more than the norm, preparing things in advance, etc.)?
Somewhat. I have already noticed that coworkers have begun doing small tasks without being asked. This is likely because the communication of expectations has reminded the team of our personal responsibilities. Although this shows the beginning of my coworkers taking initiative, it is important to note that this attitude needs to persist beyond the first little while to have my solution be successful.
- Are my coworkers and I working better as a team? (i.e., Is there a sense of a common goal in the workplace resulting from personal accountability?)
Somewhat. Both the communication of expectations and the questions I was asking previously sparked conversation about employee responsibilities throughout the team. This is the beginning of better communication, but it doesn’t mean that everyone is totally working better as a team.
- Has the team started earning better tips? (Have I?)*
Unsure. This criterion will need to be evaluated over the long term.
So, was my innovative solution a success? Yes!… but there is room for improvement.
My solution has sparked positive change toward mitigating the lack of job-related accountability in my workplace employees, but it may have some flaws with long-term utility. After this implementation, I can see the additional benefit of restarting the creative process for this problem. A lack of job-related accountability is not a “one and done” problem but instead something that needs to be continually improved as it is a mentality within the workplace.
I believe that my innovative solution could be improved by assessing the setbacks and obstacles I faced during my innovative solution’s implementation and restarting the creative process from the Explore stage with these in mind to improve my solution. For example, I could explore the problem again and consider all my available resources — including the newly communicated expectations to generate a new, even better solution to implement.
