Many people in an organization have good ideas how to make things better. Some people have the power to execute on it, others don’t. Some people know if this idea fits in the overall strategy, others don’t.

It’s worth to take every idea serious and evaluate against business objectives and value to the company. Companies who only implement change ideas coming from top management, are losing a lot of potential.

Three processes are important in this context:

1. Idea Gathering
2. Initiative Prioritization
3. MasterPlan Integration

Process 1 - Idea Gathering

The first process ensures that people are motivated to raise good ideas for business improvement to higher management. Usually it’s the people on the ground who really know the problems and who know what can be done. The way this process is structured and how people are motivated to really submit their ideas, strongly depends on the company culture. At this point I would like to warn using a motivation tactics I’ve seen fail in many companies: Putting money incentives on ideas. The goal is to create a culture of innovation - money usually poisons innovation. People will start requesting money for everything good they do for the company. It’s better to make this part of the general attitude of employees and reward good attitude through annual bonus and promotions.

For the second process it’s crucial that all relevant business units are involved. As every department has their own specific motivations that can differ largely from the overall company objective it’s crucial that the priorities are negotiated between all business units. Prioritization will be based on predefined criteria, e.g. benefit, total effort, risk, etc.

An interesting outcome of the first prioritization meeting is often the awareness how much time has been spend in the past on non-value adding activities. Executives are often surprised to see the real priorities of the business.

Process 3 - Masterplan Integration

A prioritized business improvement idea is nothing worth without successful implementation. Once an idea is prioritized, it needs to find its place in the MasterPlan. In this steps dependencies, linkages and implications with other running and planned projects need to be assessed. How many resources do we have available? How many change projects can we run at the same time without over stretching the organization? What change initiative should be possibly outsourced to get it implemented faster than internal resources allow.

The main focus of this step should be on a risk assessment. I’ve seen many organizations that tried to change too fast and risked leaving behind a quite frustrated work force.