Listen to the ideas of your employees, they can be useful.

Imagine that you are a top manager of a leading match producers in the 20th century and a low-level factory worker wants a meeting with you claiming that he has an idea that can save you millions in the production costs. Would you take the time to set a meeting to listen to what the person that could be a total lunatic has to say? Probably not. So didn’t senior managers at Swan, one of the most iconic match producers. At least at first. Fortunately for the world innovation, some employees are determined to have their ideas heard even when their managers are not reaching out to them or are not receptive to proactive employees trying to share their ideas. Story has it that Swan management after a few months of the employee pressuring for a meeting has finally agreed to offer him a few minutes of their precious time. Of course, they did not treat the meeting seriously, looking forward for a good laugh. But to their surprise what they heard was actually a ‘million dollars’ idea. Since the Swan matches were extremely easy to start, why keeping the sandpaper strike on both sides and not to keep it just on one to save on production costs? Crazy? Doesn’t sound so. But simple and in fact revolutionary. The story has turned with time into a management legend and there is a lack of real records of the events and the specific financial value of the idea. But it is undisputable that the idea was implemented, and Swan matches are still characterised by a single sandpaper strike saving the business millions.

This idea was very simple and straightforward to implement. Those will happen rarely and often what you will gather from employees will require further work or will just guide discussion into direction of pain points that could present great opportunities for new solutions. But in fact, it’s your employees that know your company best and have the biggest potential to spot opportunities and ideas for innovation. Make sure that you will reach out and engage them in the innovation, and under no circumstances do not discourage their enthusiasm by smashing they idea right away or not giving it a thought. Most of revolutionary ideas sound crazy at first and you never know who in your company can be sitting on your firm’s next ‘million-dollar idea’. So, whenever you can, ideate with your team and spark their interest in doing so!