Alan G. Robinson's Blog

Supervisors are the people directly responsible for coordinating how work gets done, how a company’s goals and strategies are achieved through daily actions, and how routine improvements are accomplished. For most employees, their supervisor is the primary representative of their company – he or she is the most immediate human manifestation of their employer. Consequently, Are they being supported and empowered to do their jobs in the most effective and efficient ways, or are they required to...

Amidst immense global and societal change, it is clear that citizens around the world are expecting more from their governments. Never has this increased expectation been more clear than in the wake of the Ebola crisis. Healthcare professionals, lay citizens, and politicians alike are all raising serious concerns about public healthcare systems and their perceived inefficiencies.

In the face of the global Ebola outbreak, it has become obvious that public health agencies tasked with providing g...

Last week, Dean Schroeder and I were working in Sweden, studying the idea initiatives of government agencies at all levels, from Kommuns (the equivalent of county governments) to national level institutions like the Tax Authority, the Defense Department, and Immigration. Almost everywhere, the same concern came up: What can we do, as leaders in a government setting, to get our employees and managers on board with our front-line idea systems? One recommendation that resonated with them was to...

A couple of weeks ago, I came across an interesting idea. It’s a simple tactic that can be particularly helpful in newly launched idea programs, or programs that are struggling to get support from supervisors and managers.

The tactic comes from Mary Jo Caldwell, the director of the continuous improvement (CI) effort for the State of Minnesota. The state’s CI program is relatively new, and vastly underfunded. Caldwell and her staff of two rely more on moral suasion and “selling” than on top adm...

A few days ago, I was talking with the CEO of a large company in New England with almost 15,000 employees. A couple of years ago, he had started an idea system, and although things were progressing well, he felt that some members of his leadership team and a significant percentage of his managers weren’t yet on board with the system, and were only paying lip service to it.

He had been gradually trying to hold them more accountable, among other things by incorporating the number of ideas per pe...

A few days ago, I was talking with the CEO of a large company in New England with almost 15,000 employees. A couple of years ago, he had started an idea system, and although things were progressing well, he felt that some members of his leadership team and a significant percentage of his managers weren’t yet on board with the system, and were only paying lip service to it.

He had been gradually trying to hold them more accountable, among other things by incorporating the number of ideas per pe...

One of my favorite sayings about innovation comes from Curtis Carlson, CEO of SRI International, “Top-down innovation is orderly but dumb, bottom-up innovation is chaotic but smart.” His observation is now informally known as “Carlson’s Law.”

As readers of this blog already know, the same is also true of improvement, but for today, I would like to focus on innovation.

The best evidence I am aware of for Carlson’s Law comes from a study conducted by Sam Stern, a professor at Oregon State Univers...

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to spend some time with Mark Dolsen, the president of TRQSS. TRQSS is a Windsor, Ontario-based tier one supplier to Toyota and other car makers. The company is a division of Tokia Rika out of Japan, and makes seat-belt assemblies and various automobile switches.

Over the past few years, Mark has led an ambitious program to consolidate work being done in several separate locations into a single building. In the process, work flow was streamlined and produ...

When an organization starts a high-performing idea system, rarely is there a shortage of ideas. Ideas come from problems, and people are already aware of many obvious problems and opportunities. They just haven’t had the chance to correct them before.

But after a while – six months, nine months, a year, depending on the circumstances – no matter how much they encourage their people, the most common concern we hear from managers is “Our people seem to be running out of ideas.”

No idea system sta...

There is no one best way to start up a high performance idea system, but when comparing those that thrive with those that struggle an important distinction emerges. The initiatives that flourish and grow are in organizations that approached the process with an eye toward learning. There is a lot to know about how to manage ideas, much of which runs counter to the way most of us have learned to manage. The story of Mark Lewis, President of Woodfold Manufacturing, an Oregon-based maker of wood...