Acknowledge employee ideas,
even if you don’t use them. In any
job, you get ideas, and
they’re good ideas, but they
might not work, or they
might not make sense.
It’s just making sure when
you get ideas, you thank
them and say, ‘You know
what, that was a great idea,
and this is what we are
going to do.’ Or, just be
frank with them and say,
‘Hey, I really liked your creativity and your thought
process, but, in our world
and the way we work with
our customer in this scenario, this probably isn’t
going to work for us. But,
this has given us an idea to
do something else.’
So, making sure that even if
you don’t use their idea —because you’re not going to
use them all — you have to
make sure they understand
why you didn’t and that you
are going to utilize it, and it
might have made you think
about a different idea you
hadn’t even thought of. It’s
the ones when you dismiss
and you don’t say anything
about it — a lot of companies have idea boxes and
those types of things. When
you don’t acknowledge anything, then that’s when people stop because then they’re
going, ‘They didn’t say anything about that, so obviously, they don’t think I have
that great of an idea. So I’m
not going to do that anymore.’ You can’t do that.
That’s a bad day.
HOW TO REACH: DANTOM Systems Inc., (866) 536-2376 or www.dantomsystems.com