My Innovative Organization
From Innovationclass
My Innovative Organization
Creating and maintaining an organization of twenty-five people that is continually innovative would be a hard task to oversee in any field of business, culture, etc. To look at it on the level of a for-profit business is probably the easiest way to imagine trying to manage, though.
To make this happen, the business will need to begin with a thorough search for employees who exhibit positive attitudes. The employees will also need to enjoy being challenged, embrace changes in their work environment and be open to working hard with other individuals who they may or may not like in a personal relationship. Thus, it would be important to have a strong hiring manager in the early phase, but for a company this small it would not be critical to have a permanent HR position, unless the company saw substantial growth in the future. This company’s hiring process would be innovative in that not only would the applicant be evaluated based upon his or her resume and formal interview but also, team interviews by the firm’s other employees would be mandatory. This is because as the firm begins to accumulate good people, it would be important to keep those people involved and interested in the future of the business. Involving employees, at least on some level, in the hiring of new employees, would help develop the employees’ sense of how important they are to the firm. It would show that not only are their day-to-day activities crucial for success, but their input and expectations for new employees are considered, as well.
Overall, there would not be a lot of structure to the firm with regard to titles of employees. In such a small organization it seems that it would be more prohibitive to have people battle amongst themselves for a few, coveted “top” titles. Instead, depending on what the organization was in business for, it would be more fun to have employees self-develop and then group-approve their own descriptive job titles that were relevant to the kinds of tasks they performed for the firm. Of course, there would be about 4 or 5 employees who were considered “top-management” because someone has to run the business and occasionally guide and make decisions for the group, but overall, a more democratic business style would be the structure.
The democratic structure will be foundational to the business’ values and goals. Allowing employees the opportunity to voice their ideas among co-workers on all subjects concerning the firm would give each employee a sense of empowerment and importance. No one would feel like their role was limited to completion of their own tasks and that their input, otherwise, is unimportant to the firm. To facilitate openness and interaction there would be weekly meetings to discuss issues of business and anything else that comes up. In addition to meetings, the firm would keep an online message board that employees could contribute to, as they saw fit, on a variety of topics including both work and non-work related topics, within reason. The message board would be unique, though, because it would be made available to the public to allow for a more broad exchange of ideas and interaction outside the company (Note: the public board would be censored to protect trade secrets, confidential business ideas, etc).
The firm’s physical location and structure would also play an important role in creating and maintaining an innovative environment of business. It would be located in a large city (probably New York City) because there are many stimuli to give employees ideas and inspiration. The office would be located on a higher, large floor of an office building. The main work areas all would be situated along the outside of the floor so that everyone had the opportunity to look out the window while working. Everyone would have their own workspace/desk that he or she could personalize, but there would, also, be group work areas. Employees could choose to use the individual or group spaces to work as they saw fit relative to whatever project was at hand. Since all the offices and workspaces would be along the windows, the more central, interior part of the office floor would have communal things like an employee kitchen, copy room, restroom, etc. The décor of the office would be modern, trendy and fun. The idea would be to make employees feel excited, honored and like it was fun to be at work. It would be a place that was decorated so that one wanted to bring friends and family to the office to show off how “cool” their workplace is.
In order for the firm to become and remain innovative, it will be important for everyone to remain open-minded, communicative and aware of his or her surroundings. The democratic processes of the business will enable this firm to become and remain innovative. It will never become a dictatorship because that would crush the free-flow of ideas that are so important for any firm to recognize changes in the market place and the need to change with the times to remain competitive.
