What role does innovation play in your job?

For many of us, innovation is just not on the daily agenda. First there are all those important meetings that you must attend. This is followed by priority interruptions. Then the unexpected, but consistently appearing, emergency fire fighting. By now the day is shot and you are staying late to review correspondence, read reports, write reports and prepare for tomorrows important meetings.

You begin to feel like a hamster on a tread mill, running faster and getting to the same place you started the day before. You tell yourself tomorrow will be different, and then it comes, and then it goes with no change.

What would happen if you went to the boss and asked if you could block out a portion of your day to work on improvements for your daily work?  Let me know how this works out for you.

Now you have a block of time to begin the review of your own daily work or not. If you do, ask:

What do you do all day?

Why are these things necessary to do?

                Why is that?

                Why is that?

                Why is that?

                Why is that?

Who are your customers?

What problems do the jobs you perform solve for your customers?

You may have questions of your own, please include them. As you gather answers you are investigating your job. The activities that you do daily as part of the routine are now being questioned.  You are breaking out of your complacency and looking at what has become routine over time with fresh eyes.

With all of this investigation, problems will begin to appear. Choose a problem that affects the daily work and document it as clearly as possible. If others perform the same job as you, review what you see as the problem with them. Ask them to help clarify the problem with you. Ask your boss if the problem has been clearly defined and understood. You may choose to include your customer in the conversation if the problem impacts the outputs you pass on to them.

Why start with what you do? Typically you have the highest level of knowledge and insight into the work. After all you are performing the job.  Making changes to your own work by applying creative ideas will provide the experience of innovating. Implementing many small innovations that impact the daily work will form the basis of a discipline of continual improvement. You will learn how to apply the tools we will talk about in future blogs through firsthand experience.  Your confidence will be bolstered by your own successes. Hopefully your boss will also recognize the effort and improvements you have implemented.

Now you can begin to visualize the ideal solution to that problem you have selected to resolve.

Ask yourself; what would perfection look like?

Please comment on this blog, you can also email me; leanthoughtstarter@gmail.com

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