Barriers to Innovation in the Workplace

FrDougal

Hi All,

I have just started a new job and I am interested in encouraging my team members to come forward with any innovative ideas they may have.

Can I ask employees what they feel are the barriers to expressing their ideas in the workplace and what changes they feel should be implemented in order to reduce or remove these barriers?

If you require any further clarity on this question, please let me know.

Thanks in Advance for all responses.

Wanderer2010

The main barriers in my experience, as someone who has tried to change through innovation and been the receiver of such changes, are:

1. People who don't want to change and said people being respected by the boss. Even if that person is a c0ck, if you have a great idea to save time and money and the alpha just doesn't like you, your idea is history. You need to have the ear and the backing of senior management before anything changes.

2. Politics and how you get on with everyone.
In fact its ALL politics!

peasant

FrDougal wrote: »

Hi All,

I have just started a new job and I am interested in encouraging my team members to come forward with any innovative ideas they may have.

You might want to give them a while to build up the trust that any good ideas they might have actually benefit them also and don't just make the new hire look good

rtron

Maybe start by breaking things up into two meetings: 1 by identifying the problems or areas that could be improved.People like to complain rather than solve things first :-)
Then 2 let a discussion happen on how to implement processes to help the areas identified.

TimeToShine

1- Older and longer term employers who are comfortable don't necessarily want change.

2- Young people think change happens instantly rather than being a product of a collective concentrated effort and a lot of time under good leadership.

Your job is to convince the old timers that their contribution helps their bottom line while tempering the newer employees' expectations. Fail here and you'll have both sets of people rolling their eyes every time you use the term "innovation in the work place" and "barriers to innovation".

Del2005

It all depends on how long the company has been operating. Mine has gone through several "innovations" but the jobs the same with just a different name for things and usually more work. I'm sure in new companies innovations can work but large organisations they don't.

Diziet

It is always better to use positive language - ask for ideas rather than barriers. Create a system to work through what can be implemented. Lear by example and barriers will start to fall. 
Asking people to list barriers rapidly becomes a complaining session, and, unless you can solve these problems, does not add value.