Dear Gijs,
is there a question here?
Are you suggesting we have such a system on this LIST?
Perhaps this is a good idea considering how low we are on innovation
from the bottom.
Cheers and greetings from a sunny winterday in Berlin and all the best
for your work in China... which reminds me, have you seen
http://www.westkreuz-verlag.de/de/Practicing-Open-Space-Our-First-Ten-Years-E-Book
which also contains a chinese version (among german, english, french,
spanish and polish)of a CEO that has used OST for more than 10 years in
his outfit and what it did to it...talking about courage!
mmp
On 26.11.2013 12:27, Gijs Van Wezel Mega Int'l wrote:
“It takes guts to be democratic and give employees more control, but the
payoff is happiness and engagement.”
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20131125-sparking-innovation-from-bottom
Roberto Henriquez had an intriguing idea. The 30-year-old information
technology project manager thought he and his IBM colleagues could work
more efficiently if they had an app enabling them.
Normally, he would need approval from a senior-level review board for
such an idea. But not this time.
Instead, he quickly received the blessing — and financial backing — of
his peers through a new “corporate crowdfunding” system in IBM’s
internal IT organisation.
Not every investment decision has to be made by a director or vice
president. — Francoise LeGoues
Henriquez’s idea was pitted against other proposed projects seeking
funding from employees in the IT group. Each of the more than 300
participants — from entry-level workers to vice presidents — received
$2,000 to invest over an eight-week period*. *Then, through the
crowdfunding system, Henriquez managed to raise a total of $20,000, and
after a few months of development and testing, project managers started
using his app.
The experience was empowering for Henriquez, who is based in Bratislava,
Slovakia. “I don’t feel like I work for IBM; I feel like this is my
company,” he said.
That’s music to the ears of IBM executives who hope the iFundIT project
will engage employees and spark more innovation from the bottom up.
*Getting employees engaged*
Employee engagement is a pressing issue for most companies these days.
In a study of 142 countries, Gallup found that only 13% of employees
worldwide are engaged in their work. The percentages vary widely by
nation, with 30% of workers in America saying they are engaged; 24% in
Australia; 17% in the UK; 15% in Germany; 9% in India; and just 6% in China.
One possible solution to this problem: more egalitarian workplaces where
employees feel they have more control over decisions, such as IBM’s
iFundIT program.
“Companies need to be more compatible with this democratic age of the
Internet and social media that we live in now,” said Traci Fenton, chief
executive officer of St. Louis and London-based WorldBlu, which provides
consulting services for creating “freedom-centred” workplaces.
“Organisational democracy means decentralizing power and recognising
that good ideas are everywhere in the workplace.”
Seeking employee input may slow some types of decision-making, but
Fenton believes it could speed up the execution process because workers
would feel more invested after having their say. “Of course, companies
only want to do this if they’re sure they’re going to act on a group
decision,” she said. “If they don’t follow through, they’ve done more
harm than good.”
WorldBlu compiles an annual list of the world’s “most democratic
workplaces” based on such factors as being transparent and accountable,
sharing power, and giving employees meaningful choices. The biggest
obstacles to workplace democracy are executive ego and ignorance, Fenton
said.
“Some people simply don’t want to give up control; others fear what they
don’t understand,” she said.
A democratic workplace has cross-generational appeal, although IBM
believes its crowdfunding project will especially resonate with
millennials, who are used to airing their views in blogs and social
media and believe they deserve to be heard at work, too. Millennials is
a term used to describe the generation of people born between about 1980
and 2000.
*Small workforce, big voice*
Some companies with a small workforce are going even further and giving
employees a voice in some very major decisions. When DreamHost’s
founders decided in 2011 to recruit the first CEO for the Los
Angeles-based Web hosting firm, they let employees vote on the
finalists. More recently, its 165 workers voted on the company’s health
benefits plan.
“We feel that by letting our employees make the decision after they know
how much different benefit packages will cost, we’re empowering them and
encouraging them to stay with the company,” said Ed Wesley, director of
organisational development and learning. “It takes guts to be democratic
and give employees more control, but the payoff is happiness and
engagement.”
Companies like DreamHost and Menlo Innovations, a software company in
Ann Arbor, Michigan, also are opening the financial books to their
employees to guide their decision-making. “Our goal is for the staff to
make decisions about where we spend money, but they need to understand
the big financial picture of the company first,” said Rich Sheridan, the
CEO at Menlo, which has about 50 full-time and temporary workers. //
Already, Menlo gets 15 to 25 workers involved in assessing a job
candidate as he or she goes through interviews and tryouts. “We work in
pairs so we want to see evidence of kindergarten skills, whether they
can play well with our employees,” Sheridan said.
Of course, it’s easier to democratise small businesses than
multinationals with thousands of workers scattered around the globe. But
IBM shows that even a company with more than 430,000 employees in 170
countries can give at least some of them more decision-making authority.
“We need to flatten the organisation; not every investment decision
has to be made by a director or vice president,” said Francoise LeGoues,
the head of IBM’s CIOLab and creator of iFundIT. “We want collaborative
innovation. How do we ensure that young people’s ideas get attention and
that someone in Bangalore connects with someone in New York?”
Eligible projects must be related to internal information technology,
although they could also be applied to products, such as IBM’s social
software platform for businesses. “It has to be a small project,”
LeGoues said. “These won’t be large, multi-year projects like a redesign
of the entire HR system, for example.”
About 160 projects were submitted during the first two crowdfunding
rounds this year, with 20 reaching their funding target of between
$10,000 and $30,000. Funded projects included Influence of Communities
from China (search results based on influence, not popularity) and reMap
from the UK (a collaborative outlining tool to organise and share
information across teams of all sizes).
“The level of excitement and participation has surprised me,” LeGoues
said. “People have even begun running internal campaigns to try to get
others to spend money on their projects. This is really a game changer
in the way people think about what it means to be an IBMer.”
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