Read up. One other element is reading about the industry — where it’s going and who’s coming up with new ideas and who’s succeeding. You know you can learn from your competition as to, ‘Oh yeah, that’s a good idea. We should take that idea and modify it.’ There’s nothing shameful about seeing a good idea and then learning from that, even if it’s a competitor. That’s part of it. It’s education, not only where you want to be, because obviously you can’t define where you want to be in three years, unless you know, more or less, where the industry is going to be and the market’s going to be, so education of where the analysts think it’s going and then also what your competitors are doing as a part of that.
Review people for innovation. Creating a culture is the most important thing. Have the leaders constantly remind the people in the business that innovation is what you’re looking for and that’s how you’re going to be rewarded when you’re reviewed.
For example, in the review process, usually you have an evaluation system of grades or points or whatever, and you’re getting four or five out of these five areas. One of those areas could be innovation, and they know they’re being reviewed officially for that versus just the other traditional things that they get reviewed for.
Basically, have you changed anything? You know or you don’t know. You know if you’ve changed something or if you haven’t changed something. For example, having projects be cash-flow positive — you may have come up with or negotiated with a customer a new way of dealing with how they’re paying for the modules, and you work that out with the supplier, and the customer and everyone is happy, and we end up getting paid quicker. That’s a change — something we’ve never done before — and it worked to our benefit. That’s easily notable. Whereas if you went six months and nothing you did was carried over to other project managers and other parts of the business, then you probably didn’t do anything to change or improve the system. It’s obvious when somebody does something that’s new and has a good idea because it’s carried out throughout the whole organization, versus just doing their own job and nobody else is affected by it.
Also we do 360-degree reviews, so we have people who work for you and who you work for review you, and then sometimes people not in your department. They generally see the changes because they’re affected by them, as well.
Then [employees] know that, ‘I didn’t do well on that, and it’s affecting my salary and my ability to be promoted, and it’s important to the company, so I need to prioritize that myself.’ So that creation of a culture through action and constant reminder is a very important way to do that.
How to reach: Borrego Solar Systems Inc., (888) 898-6273 or www.borregosolar.com