Where do we get some of the innovative ideas or solution to our pressing problems? – Not the office for sure, right?
How often the solution is driven by a similar problem and solution that is from a different market or a domain? – more often than you think!
Some of the great ideas are inspired from an entirely unrelated industry or environment. How organizations put people and teams into buckets or “boxes” with no room for the people to go outside the “box” to get a idea or even a solution.
In this article, we will focus on understanding how to manage people within the boxes to ensure focus while allowing out of box ideas to brew up.
Lets explore some of the common ideas in software world.
Scrum Development
The Scrum development framework is now commonly used agile development process, especially when developing new products or ideas. Scrum originally used in manufacturing firms in the automotive, photocopier and printer industries.
Most Scrum roles and processes align with the “scrum” in rugby, where the team regroups to decide the next strategy before passing the ball to restart play
Lean Development
The manufacturing industry first applied Lean Development, a product development approach now common in the startup ecosystem, before it was adapted for software delivery.
Just like above two examples, there are many other processes, tools and even products built based on ideas implemented in a different industry.
Then how do we think employees can come up with innovative ideas to help business when they are “boxed” into groups?
Organization Inherent “Boxing” approach
Almost all organizations typically create groups and subgroups (Business Units) to make it easy to manage and control.
This approach boxes people into groups or subgroups, preventing them from connecting across groups to discuss ideas or solutions.
This approach of “boxing” will stifle the innovations, as some of the breakthrough processes, solutions come from a domain or market that you are not involved in.
Alternatively, you can solve a problem in a market you’re not directly involved in more effectively than those who have been in it for a long time—a flexibility not possible with the ‘Boxing’ approach.
Cost of “Boxing” people into group
When organizations “Box” people into groups and do not have the appropriate culture, the indirect cost it incurs is too high. The teams in such environment will be disjointed and disconnected.
The teams will have longer turnaround time, too much rework effort for any solution or idea the organization wants to build and focus on.
The technical debt collected by the teams will also be high, thereby leading to lot of unwanted efforts to get back to normal state of project or development.
What are the factors or symptoms of “Boxing” that you can notice?
Factors that stifle organizational innovations due to “Boxing”
Lack of Communication
An organization suffering with “Boxing” problem, will have no or zero communication across departments. They will measure and control every discussion to ensure their department avoids any problems or issues.
The discussions also will never be around the benefits of solution but rather about the team / people who have proposed it.
Diverse Solution Knowledge base
The teams will not have diverse ideas or solution to a problem, but rather they all align to one single person/teams’ solution and have not debate about pros/cons.
Lack of Fresh Perspective
Getting a new solution approach or idea will be too difficult and faced with resistance. They will view any fresh perspective as incomplete or lacking a full understanding of the problem—unless it comes from a well-known team or member.”
Conclusion
Although organizations group employees into business units and subgroups to manage at scale, they should also have a process that allows these groups to think outside the box. The organization environment should allow a process and tools for ideas to get different perspectives allowing them to solve their problems with unique and innovative solutions.
