When you think of the typical workplace hierarchy, you probably imagine titles and job responsibilities.
“John is the CEO, he’s the boss.”
“Sarah is the Marketing Manager, she heads up the branding of our business and works closely with sales.”
The modern workplace is designed like the military, with a rigid chain of command people must report to. While this can work to improve efficiency, it can kill creativity if you don’t encourage your co-workers and employees to share without fear of consequences.
Google: A Case Study in Flat Management
Google has a CEO, Marketing Managers, and the same chain of command that your business does, but they do one critical thing differently than most companies: Google encourages — hell, they demand — that their workers share new ideas with co-workers and managers, moving promising thoughts up the chain with killer efficiency.
No politics. What I mean is you can share an idea with higher-ups without fear of retribution if they don’t see the long or short term value in it. How are you encouraging workers to do the same to boost the efficiency of your business with respect to the social nets?
Here’s a battle plan you can roll out quickly and painlessly:
- Decriminalize Thought. If you’re going to encourage the free sharing of ideas with everyone, employees have to feel completely safe and insulated from retaliation. Hold a meeting to make it known you expect good ideas to be shared, and clearly define the rewards for good ideas, while stating that all ideas are encouraged — regardless of their immediate value.
- Empower Your PR Machine. Your business has people serving at different posts, right? Engineers, maybe, or marketing and sales people? Create a PR position for each of these departments to share (either internally or using free tools like Twitter and blogs). How valuable would it be for each of your departments to be regarded as genuine, thoughtful experts in their respective fields? You can make this happen by tasking each team to create a weekly blog post and encouraging workers to use a single Twitter/Facebook profile to engage followers and customers (*Make sure to outline what is, and what is not, acceptable for sharing).
You can boost the productivity of your business by tapping into the creativity of your workforce. People want to be empowered and feel that their ideas mean something, that they helped contribute to the success of a product, a sale, or just the betterment of the place they spend 8+ hours each day.
Now don’t forget the most important part of this plan — implementation!
Tech Obsessed Since Age 5 - Meet Joe Mescher
Joe Mescher is a behavioral advertising professional and Digital Marketing Evangelist, a Michigan State Spartan and half of the team responsible for a set of fraternal twins born October 11, 2012. He lives in Burlington, VT.