"There is no shame in not knowing...the shame lies in not finding out" - Russian Proverb

What makes up a good idea management system?  Obviously, coming up with great ideas...or "finding solutions."  But shouldn't you apply just as much effort into making sure you have the right problem...or "finding problems?" 

Making sure you understand and define the problem you are attempting to solve is the first step (some would say the MOST important step) in the problem solving model.  For a brief refresher on the problem solving concept, here is the Think For A Change, LLC. Idea Management Model:


Notice the first section...Problem Identification.  How can you go to step 2, or Idea Generation, if you don't have a good handle on what you are trying to solve?

There are a number of methods and techniques surrounding problem identification including: 5 Why's, Ishikawa (Fishbone) Diagramming, Mind Mapping, Customer Ethnography, Voice of the Customer, etc..  These are all great tools for getting to the root cause of the problem.  You should also have a number of things that you have identified that are holding your business back.  Every good leader has a list of issues he or she would love to solve in order to improve things.

So...you are asking..."why is this all important?"  Because I find that there are many organizations who continually ask employees, vendors, customers or anyone else who will listen, for solutions to problems that may not actually be the organization's real problems.  What's worse, sometimes they ask for solutions to problems that have already been solved.  Now you are saying, and most likely rather incredulously, "We certainly do not ask for solutions to problems that are already solved."  Really? 

Well...isn't that what you are doing by having your suggestion box hanging in the break room?  Or with that "Click Here to Submit Your Idea" button on your website?  You are essentially asking people to "come up with ideas to improve the company" or maybe the super-well-defined, "give us ideas on how to save money" or my personal favorite, "how can we generate more sales?"  Not really focused is it?  If you're lucky, you'll get about 200 worthless ideas for every 1 idea that might have some real business benefit.  But mostly, you'll get stuff that has little to no impact on your organization.

So, how do we make this situation better?  Targeted idea campaigns. 

Once you have a solid understanding of the problem you'd like to solve, you can organize your target idea generation audience around solving a specific idea challenge.  Now, instead of getting ideas like, "Add low-fat vanilla creamer to the breakroom" you get ideas like, "draft a photographic product features/measurements binder for salespeople to share with potential customers."  That is, if your targeted idea challenge was about "helping customers make better decisions on sizing requirements at the time of ordering."   Detail wins the game here.  If you want specific, actionable ideas...you need to be specific and detailed in the question you are asking.

With this approach, you also avoid "idea burnout" where people just throw out the ten things that bother them the most and then they stop contributing because they are out of ideas.  With a more focused approach, you can limit the number of idea challenges running at any given time.  You can also keep the problem finding exercises staggered and therefore, the search for solutions continuous.  You keep the ordinary idea contributor engaged by having them think about specific issues/problems.

Here is a "Next Practices" alert...I have worked with some organizations that have separate teams who search for problems to hand off to other teams that search for solutions who sometimes come up with new problems which they hand back to...well you get it...its circular.  In fact, all good idea and innovation management programs are circular and continuous. 

So...are you Problem Finding or Solution Finding or BOTH!?!?!