(Pulse optional)
I'm fairly sure that we could negotiate these agents down to 20% commission for referrals. It would make business sense to push this further with my colleagues. But as someone with the "employee" mentality and a very busy employee, I don't have any incentive to follow up on this.
In fact, I have a disincentive to do it. Investigating this further would cost me valuable time (which I don't have available) and take away resourcesI have at my disposal to do other things. Ultimatelyit would allow our company (ie. someone else) to growtheir wealth. I wouldn't grow my wealth, unlessthrough kudos or some self-promotion. Ergo I can'tfollow up on what's essentially a good idea.
How should a successful and smart business owner act to prevent something like the above taking place? Whatkind of system or tool would help him to catch thewonderful ideas that spring from the creativeimaginations of his employees or colleagues in a spider's web for later investigation rather than allow them to fall on infertile soil? There needs to be a way to throw out an idea and know it'll be stored and evaluated instead of fighting to have it assigned to someone (with the resentment that might generate from an overburdened co-worker). A think tank. An ideas box. With the option to submit ideas anonymously if you like.We need a way to slot the projected revenue or saving (both the same really...call it 'money benefit', nahtoost aid, call it 'gift', a 'windfall' since it was hanging there all along and just needed to be dislodged (like the discovery of JIT in Japan where re-examining the old accounting assumptions suddenly freed up huge sums of money as if from nowhere; the discovered money, revealed money) into a list ofpriorities of good ideas. To see which forces its way to the top category of "Definitely One to be FollowedUp". How could this ladder work? How can we calculate the benefit? Financially? Other intangible elements?Goodwill towards employees or stakeholders or customers? How can the cost of just about ANY actionbe measured in advance to determine the cost to the org? That seems to me to be vital: that anorganisation should know exactly what each hour of each employee's time costs (salary, health benefits,costs of not having them do their routine operationalwork etc) and be able to quickly evaluate where best to assign them. In fact, that can at least be measured. The more difficult problem is to measure the estimated benefit that is assumed to be balancing on the other side of the scale, though when all is saidand done it may be revealed to have been a complete waste of time ad therefore a loss-maker. What we needis a magic ball than simply gives plays with themassive amounts of data it is collecting and can spitout a yes or no answer as to whether to proceed or not.Do we need computer programs that allow us to quickly weigh the pros and cons of every small step?
Literally the smallest, seemingly insignificant things. Do I sharpen this pencil now or wait until it's really blunt and dulled? Should all pencils be banned in this org as timewasting? Should we outsource the pencil sharpening to a 'desk attendant' who comes around and tops up supplies ofpaper clips, checks staplers are full, that printers and photocopiers have enough paper? If you combinedall the minutes that the office working people in one country spend searching for stationery, for rubber bands or glue stick, then how many minutes would you be talking about? Thousands? Millions?
How many minutes do we spend in vain searching for a document on their hard disk drive either because someone else has stored it according to a mental system that we either do not understand (because it's (a) above our comprehension or, more often, (b) very stupid) or because we cannot ourselves remember what storage system we were using when we decided the criteria we used in deciding where to put it.
Staff training on "how to categorize and file' could save an org a lot of money in terms of employee minutes frittered away. There is a strong case here for 'enforcing' or at the very least encouraging similar systems. In this case it's a similar system of storage. Let's widen it to "similar systems of setting up your computer" should be enforced. Some organizations already do this eg. we all must adhere to the standard format of verdana 10 and the email signature set up 'just so'. All employees should be forced to learn the keyboard shortcuts, how to cut and paste unformatted my sister's own reaction when I told her about it: "Thanks! That's something that'd been driving me mad for years!") Becoming scientific about such things, rather than leaving them to the whims of each personality or character is how to build a strong organization. But does it kill creativity? Or does it actually allow it more? How can such 'mechanization' of the org take place without it leading to a disillusioned, despondent workforce, who are perfectly capable of thinking for themselves but lack the authority to do so? Because not taking such routes of mechanization, as cold as they may seem, might lead to the company's eventual demise. In other words, perhaps the company can't afford NOT to enforce such mechanization!
How would you measure the 'revealed money' that results from the "use the keyboard shortcuts" rule above?
BENEFITS OF TAKING THIS ACTION COSTS OF TAKING THISACTION
0.25 seconds saved per keystroke saved = $18,000
Goodwill feeling of training with colleagues (scale of 1 - 10)
Hourly cost of the trainer Hourly cost of the staff (user should be able to enter this as hourly or daily or annual salary)
Costs of staff being trained and not performing their operational duties
Overheads: rent, light, heat
Intangible costs:Resentful workforce (provide helpful Qs to help you determine this on a scale of 1 - 10).How are labour relations at the moment?How open is your staff to change on a scale of 1 - 10?(provide helpful Qs to help you determine this)
Is now a good time to implement change in general?
Is now a good time to implement this change?
Cost of mistakes being made as a result of implementing this change = $ XXXCost of brainstorming, measuring, calculating,estimating all this data and the criteria that allfactor into this table = $ XXXRESULT: + $18,000 per annum
The example above is easily calculated because the duration of a keystroke can be measured. Consider instead a vaguer and amorphous project.
Like whether to develop a new product or not and that over a six month period or imagine a 5 year long project. Very difficult to know what to measure, what not, and whether things will creep out of control, thus makin gall calculations irrelevant. (Although with a spreadsheet of course the calculation could simply bere-done again)Maybe we need a system that allows that measurement to be done quickly. Guidelines.
But there are surely always organizations out ther ewho have done what we have done. How can organizations share valuable knowledge without revealing their identity and also without divulging secrets to their competitors?
How could you force an organization t ogive instead of taking, taking, taking once inside such a communal sharing space. Once any step or idea can be evaluated, it can easily be seen which ones bring large rewards and which are simply good ideas but not worth implementing (or at least not now). Promising the employee 10% to 50% of any resulting benefit. Praise!
CATEGORIES
Implement now!
Definitely One to be Followed Up
Investigate further
Implement at a later stage
Scrap it
(what downsides? That employees see how much moneytheir ocmpany s making? That they realsie the value of their own actions and that this might overly empower them? They would bcome more skilled negotiators when discussing their next raise, being able to point at the dollar value they have contributed to the org)
What do you think? How can such ideas be harnessed? Add a comment here or email me at mouseloveselephant at yahoo dot com
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