How to unlock ‘our greatest asset’

Many organisational leaders claim that their people are their greatest asset. Yet, most efforts to improve performance are done ‘to people’, rather than giving greater opportunities for people to contribute in ways they see fit. In this post, we present three different options that each place the contribution of people at the forefront of organisational development, and consider how to choose the right method.

Crowdsourcing ideas

This method involves presenting specific problems or opportunities to a large group of employees, encouraging them to contribute their ideas and solutions. Crowdsourcing can be run online, through workshops, or even with a ‘Dragons Den’, spanning short or extended periods.

Organisations employing this approach can harness the creativity and unique perspectives of individuals across various departments and levels. They can identify novel solutions to complex problems, often hidden within traditional hierarchical structures. As a neat by-product, people learn about other parts of the business, enhancing their own team and roles.

Crowdsourcing is highly adaptable, applicable at small and large scale, and can be managed centrally, or dispersed. It is best applied where you can define the characteristics of the problem or opportunity you wish to address, and seek to progress only a handful of ideas from a wide range of ideas with different qualities.

Challenge-based innovation

Challenge-based innovation involves rallying people to contribute towards a specific future scenario or direction, inspiring them to contribute innovative ideas, trials and actions that drive the organisation forward.

To implement challenge-based innovation effectively, leaders must communicate an ambitious, compelling, tangible, and time-bound goal to go after. In addition, it’s also necessary to provide the necessary resources, and freedom to support creative endeavours. Recognising and rewarding innovative contributions encourages employees to think outside the box and share their insights. By linking individual efforts to the broader mission, organisations combine top-down direction, with bottom-up ingenuity and passion, which drives transformative change.

Challenge-based innovation is suitable for larger scale challenges that need multiple activities underway across many parts of an organisation, all contributing towards an outcome everyone has in common. They often lead to improvements and also innovation.

Appreciative Audits

Appreciative audits offer a positive and proactive approach to assessing organisational processes and practices. Broadening beyond a limited focus on weaknesses, appreciative audits highlight strengths and successes within the organisation that can be amplified and adopted more widely.

Conducting appreciative audits involves collaborative sessions where teams reflect on successful projects, effective strategies, and positive outcomes. This method not only taps into collective intelligence but also reinforces a positive organisational culture. By learning from past successes, organisations can identify patterns and replicate effective approaches for sustained growth.

Appreciative audits are suitable where specific improvements or subjects for improvement are not clearly identifiable. They focus on improvement ideas rather than new ways of working, and can be organised and deployed on both small and large scales.

Choosing your method

Crowdsourcing ideas, promoting challenge-based innovation, and conducting appreciative audits, are three effective methods to harness the diverse perspectives and insights of employees. The key to optimising each lies in determining which method is the most suitable for a particular organisational context.

For example, if the organisation needs:

• Creativity - if you want to open up creativity and create novel perspectives on new or longstanding questions, well then crowdsourcing is the better option of these three.

• Alignment - if the need is rather to create alignment between individuals, groups, department, and other units, then challenge based innovation offers up great potency for convening diverse and dispersed stakeholders around a common goal, and go after it with intrinsic motivation.

• To build on what’s already working - appreciative audits looking to the past to find what is working, what should be shared and scaled, and what is to be celebrated. As such, it’s a tool more suited for ‘lessons learned’, rather than creating something anew.

A careful evaluation of these methods against the organisation's unique needs will guide leaders in choosing the most effective strategy, ensuring a tailored approach that resonates with the collective intelligence of their workforce. By making informed decisions, organisations can not only navigate challenges more effectively but also access the power, wisdom and capabilities of their greatest asset.