Today at DEMO, Derrick Mains talked about the ‘virtual suggestion box.’ As many organizations wrestle with applying social media tools in their business arena, one area jumps right out: How about bringing “idea management” methodology to the traditional suggestion box?
Specifically, how about taking the old wooden suggestion box to the next level –to both enable and create employee engagement?
The origin of suggestion boxes and suggestion systems is lost in the mists of history. Originally, they were simple ways of soliciting ideas from the bottom of an organization (now known by such terms as ‘frontline intelligence’) and from the entire organization (now known as ‘collective intelligence’ and ‘crowdsourcing’). They were methods of transmitting those ideas to the top, while still allowing the top to retain its authority.
In 1721, for example, the eighth shogun in Japan, Yoshimune Tokumagawa, had a small box called the meyasubako placed at the entrance to his castle. On the box was written: “Make your ideas known. Rewards given for ideas that are accepted.” Of course, this was the only way for citizens to make suggestions because policy suggestions made directly to the shogun were punishable by decapitation.
In the West, suggestion box mythology holds that the first recorded suggestion program was implemented by the British Navy in 1770. Like in Japan, the mere mention of an idea that directly contradicted a captain or admiral was likely to be punished by death (although the British preferred hanging over decapitation). Nevertheless, the British Navy saw the great benefit of soliciting frontline intelligence from its sailors.
Denny Dumbarton, a Scottish shipbuilder, realized that to be effective, ideas on slips of paper needed to be part of an overall system. In 1871, he began what he claimed was the first industrial suggestion system in Great Britain. He gave cash awards for each successful suggestion. In addition, ten pounds, a very significant sum back then, was awarded for every fifth successful suggestion. All suggestions were evaluated by a two person committee consisting of a member of the engineering department and a person outside the company.
There are so many ideas any CEO could borrow from this. We no longer need slips of paper to be engaged, but we could still use the great incentive. As for that call to action, “Make your ideas known. Rewards given…” it is still very appropriate for a socially-connected workplace.
This is a three-part series on the evolution of the suggestion box.
We are so proud to announce our launch at DEMO Spring conference today in Palm Springs.
The 6-minute presentation at 11.00 am was available on several feeds –the Ubergizmo live blog, Facebook, and via a broad spectrum of tweets.
GreenNurture’s CEO, Derrick Mains talked of the central concept of GreenNurture’s application as the “virtual suggestion box” – and its tie-in with sustainability. As he stated (in today’s Phoenix Business Journal), “We’re essentially launching a new market segment.”
DEMO is obviously an exceptional launch pad. (Go see why.) “As a start-up company, we could not think of a better way to introduce our technology than launching live at the DEMO Spring 2010 conference among the ranks of such previous DEMO presenters and technology giants as Salesforce.com, E*Trade and Symantec,” noted Mains.
All life depends on water on our big “blue planet”, and while Earth is covered with it, only 1% of all the water on the Earth is actually drinkable.
Because of this, many feel that water will be the next ‘peak oil’ – water scarcity is no longer an issue that effects just the desert southwest, especially in times of drought, in the United States. The good news is that, when we understand and appreciate the importance of water — conserving it and protecting it — we can put less stress on our available water resources and make every drop count.
We tend to take for granted our access to safe, plentiful drinking water from our tap. UNICEF estimates that “over 900 million lack access to it and nearly half of those people are children.” This is why UNICEF is expanding its Tap Project nationwide for 2010. After debuting in New York City just three years ago, the Tap Project concept has caught on.
As part of World Water Week (which runs from March 21 through 27th) UNICEF is conducting the Tap Project to help raise funds for water, sanitation and hygiene programs. They are asking restaurants to sign up to participate and diners to donate $1 to UNICEF for the glass of tap water they usually enjoy for free. Restaurants and patrons can also donate online.
Funds UNICEF collects through the 2010 Tap Project will go to countries and areas UNICEF has identified as among the most in need, including Haiti.
“Clean Water for a Healthy World” is the theme for World Water Day 2010 (March 22nd). The overall goal of the World Water Day 2010 campaign is “to raise the profile of water quality at the political level so that water quality considerations are made alongside those of water quantity.”
In the US, our own water infrastructure received failing grades from the American Society of Civil Engineers last year. By being informed and having a voice in your local, regional and national water issues, businesses and individuals can help ensure safe drinking water for our future generations here at home.
In the workplace, businesses engaged in water conservation can not only save money, but make significant contributions to our secure water future. Learn more about water issues. Start with making every drop count.
Take back your tap and contact your local utility company or water management district/water management board for water conservation and water protection tips that are most useful for your community.
No doubt, you don’t often come across the word ‘visceral’ in the same sentence as ’sustainability.’
Over here at GreenNurture, we often talk about micro-sustainability, but as for this visceral stuff, it’s certainly making people do a double take on what they could be doing on a small scale.
Since we posted this on SlideShare yesterday, it has been viewed more than a thousand times. In fact we had a message from SlideShare to say they liked it so much they had put it up on their home page, yesterday. We thought you’d enjoy it here as well!
Everyone is aware of how social media has taken the Internet by storm.
Facebook, the leading social media application, grew from 20 million US users in October 2007 to 103 million US users, about one third of the entire population, in January 2010.But not everyone is embracing it.
Today’s front page of the Arizona Republic ( “social media raise red flags for employers“) worries that “bosses have struggled with managing employees’ Internet access at work since e-mail and web browsers became part of the daily grind,” the article stated the additional fear driven by social media technology:
“The explosion of social media, which encourage users to spend a moment here and a moment there all day long, has given workers even more reason to use their office computers for personal activity.”
But is it really so bad? Will social media be merely another distraction to already distracted employees further reducing productivity?
There are three reasons why this fear is misplaced. You shouldn’t fear social media.:
Welcome to the developing fields of collective intelligence and collaboration science. And welcome to the use of social media tools in the daily fabric of business.
James T. Lincoln, the founder of Lincoln Electric Company, and one of the pioneers in employee engagement programs, succinctly stated the problem in 1946, saying that“Management, if it is to be the best obtainable, must be the collective intelligence of the whole organization.” (Yes, people actually had some useful ideas prior to social media!)
To harness this “collective intelligence,” Lincoln designed an “incentive management” system that enabled Lincoln to become and remain for more than 100 years the world’s largest manufacturer of arc-welding equipment and supplies.
A major limiting factor in the development (and exercise) of “collective intelligence,” however, was the limitations of paper and face-to-face communication systems.
Fast forward 50 years — the rise of the Internet. It’s how hundreds of millions communicate and collaborate on a scale previously unimaginable, leading scientists to focus on the processes of communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing that take place among all these connected individuals.
Take for instance what Dr. Thomas Malone, Director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence observes about intelligence gathering,:
“With new information technologies—especially the Internet—it is now possible to harness the intelligence of huge numbers of people . . . however, we need to understand what the possibilities are in a much deeper way than we do so far. The time has come make collective intelligence a topic of serious academic study.”
What does all this have to do with social media technology? Simply put, social media is the prime engine driving the rise of collective intelligence and collaboration networks. More and more businesses are turning to social media tools and methods to build internal communication tools that build on the strengths of applications like Facebook. Starbucks has been using a social media approach in My Starbucks Idea to ask customers for ‘big ideas, little ideas, revolutionary ideas.’ Services such as Idea Scale help a company tap into such ideas from the community.
Most CEOs have received advanced education in business processes which allow them to design successful manufacturing or sales outcomes. But few have received any training in fields of knowledge that will be necessary to understand how to deliberately design what MIT researcher Peter Gloor calls Collaborative Knowledge Networks leading to Knowledge Flow Optimization. Knowledge of how to use social media tools will be a critical part of know-how to create these new processes.
Fortunately businesses won’t have to spend much on training. Facebook users aged 55+ grew 922.7% in the last year, to 10% of all Facebook users. Amazingly, the 35-54 age group, (29%) is now the single largest demographic, replacing the 18-24 demographic, which was the largest (at 40%) at the beginning of 2009. It grew from 7M to 30M, while the 18-24 grew from 17M to 26M.
Businesses should not fear social media tools. Rather, they should embrace them as valuable ways to channel the collective intelligence of their employees.
So, all you CEOs out there, it is up to you to harness the power of social media to … start the conversation.
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