CROWDSOURCING IDEAS FOR IMPROVEMENTS AND INNOVATIONS Willy A. Sussland

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Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, is looking for substantial improvements of the company’s organizational efficiencies. So, he launched the “Simplicity Sprint”, a program that solicits ideas from its personnel of 174’000 on how to simplify things. It is an interesting example of crowdsourcing.

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We used to look to the senior management to initiate programs of improvements and of innovations. Then, senior management appointed special teams to do so. Some companies allow their people to take time off to come up with something striking. Getting ideas from the personnel and from partners via also via crowdsourcing offers interesting prospects.

CROWDSOURCING IDEAS FOR IMPROVEMENTS AND INNOVATIONS

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Willy A. Sussland

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“When the going gets tough, the tough ones get going”.

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According to a CNBC article of 07/31/22, Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, ?launched the “Simplicity Sprint”, a program whose title clearly indicates that the company needs to simplify things swiftly and substantially. The “Google Geist” survey had shown that the personnel gives the company poor marks for the management of pay, of promotions, and of execution. According to the aforementioned article, Google’s company-wide crowdsourcing program is designed to create a culture that is better focused on products and on customers.

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Managing a booming business may have led some companies to proliferate procedures, controls, and committees. Now, grappling with the third global crisis, managers may be ducking threats and building protection-walls, and thusly they may be adding to the organization’s complicatedness.

“Business-complexity has increased by over six times

during the last six decades” BCG’s Yves Morieux

Busting bloated bureaucracy and cutting down costs and delays such as caused by unnecessary complications is not a new issue. Morieux & Tollman’s “The Six Simple Rules” shows how to manage complexity and complicatedness. (1) ?Prof. Gary Hamel and several other authors have posted many articles on the subject. However, the systemic shifts that shake up the business environment scale the need to achieve radical results also on this issue.

To cut down organizational complicatedness, CEOs can consider launching a program of organizational transformation. However, studies by several consultants have shown that over 70% of such programs fail to produce the expected results. Moreover, this may not be the right time to engage is such a heavy and ?longwinded ?program. (2)

So, to raise the shrewdness, the suppleness, and the swiftness of their organization, CEOs can follow the example set by Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai with the “Simplicity Sprint”.?

Let me jot-down a few ideas on crowdsourcing TO START A DISCUSSION.

First off, surveys generally ask a very broad audience to comment on broad issues. Conversely, crowdsourcing targets the audience of the people that are directly concerned with the issue. In this case the crowdsourcing targets the personnel at the different levels and in the different functions, and some of the company’s principal external partners.

Crowdsourcing is a means to achieve real and relevant results.?To this effect, like all organizational programs, crowdsourcing needs to be simple and yet stimulating as suggested hereafter.

-a- The purpose the crowdsourcing is to leverage the intelligence of the targeted respondents on issues that are of critical importance to this company, and then to build on the responses in order to devise the fitting measures or to launch a program of organizational transformation.?

Crowdsourcing must duly take into account the mindset, the mood, and the competencies of the targeted audience as well as their likely influence on the responses they will submit. In some cases the first run of the crowdsourcing could collect spontaneous feedback from individuals on issues such as organizational efficiencies. Then, the results of the first run could help to focus a second run specific questions aimed at specific parts of the organization. The second run could be implemented in the frame of group-discussions.

-b- The crowdsourcing should show who and how the responses will be collected, evaluated, and recognized. For example, the CEO and his/her executive committee can appoint a special committee to run the crowdsourcing, and to processes the results?

-c- The specially appointed committee may be charged by the CEO and by his/her executive committee to conceive the specific means or to develop an organizational transformation program in order to achieve the improvements and/or the performing innovations articulated in the purpose of the crowdsourcing.

-d- The CEO and his/her executive committee will decide and deploy the specific means?or the organizational program that have been retained.

-e- The CEO and his/her executive committee or the specially appointed committee should inform the personnel on the results achieved as a result of the crowdsourcing.

As already mentioned, the crowdsourcing program can address the different levels and/or the different functions with specific questions.

For example, the senior management could be asked to evaluate the proficiency of strategy and operations agility, and the boldness of collective creativity, and to indicate the constraints that stymie performances.

The middle-management could be asked to indicate problems that affect the performances of the personnel, of key processes, of key partners.?

The front-lines could be asked to indicate problems that affect personal relations within their team, with other teams, with the hierarchy, and their effects on their commitment, cooperation, and on their collectively creativity.?

Of course, crowdsourcing need not be confined to the company’s personnel. Selected significant suppliers and core customers have knowledge and know-how that are complementary to the ones owned by the company. As appropriate they should be invited to participate in crowdsourcing on issues of common interest to them as well as to the company.

Moreover, crowdsourcing need not be confined to identifying and to solving organizational problems. Crowdsourcing can very effectively draw on the intelligence and on the imagination of people to suggest new improvements and to spark all sorts of innovations.

First and foremost crowdsourcing is done by people, with people, for people.

In the past, part of the personnel and some managers hesitated to participate in crowdsourcing concerning the company performances. This is no longer the case. Now, for the most part people want to participate, it raises the interest in their position and in their association with the company. Moreover, increasingly people need to understand how the company operates, how it performs, so as not to be surprised by massive organizational changes.

Crowdsourcing is often seen as a separate, solitary event. In my forthcoming book, I show how to keep a continuous an invigorating flow of well-structured and of informal ?interchanges on the 4 vectors of communications, namely: top-down, bottom-up, inside-out, outside-in. The quality and the frequency of such 4-D interchanges fuel the commitment, the cooperation, and the collective creativity §that enable the company to sustain superior performances.

(1)?Y. Morieux & P. Tollman “Six Simple Rules?? HBRP 2014

(2)??L. Faeste & J. Hemerling ??Transformation” BCG 2016

Nota bene: see my next article on LinkedIn: “Tackling Turbulent T