‘Gain-Storming’ Social Innovation Management

Customer complaints and feedback management have been my life for the past 15 years in one way or another and it is what I am best at.

Early in my career, I was directly involved in managing escalated customer complaints and was naturally presented with numerous opportunities to improve business processes and products. After trying to get a few ideas up to the right decision makers, I became frustrated with how poorly managed customer and employee improvement ideas were being managed, so the management of ideas and the promotion of creativity became my focus.

Stepping back and reflecting, inviting managing and processing ideas per se, are clearly only a component of an overall innovation management mix. Many opportunities do not come in the form of an idea, so need to be analysed at their source and translated into an opportunity.

This makes the positioning of the feedback mechanism important with respect to what it is you invite the community to contribute. For Insurance Australia Group, Dave and I focused on idea management. We now however agree that many improvement opportunities were missed simply because:

• it was not explicitly communicated to initiators that ANY feedback was welcome, or
• initiators were unable to translate other feedback into an idea or improvement opportunity, which loops back to the first point.

Teaching people to translate say, a complaint into an improvement opportunity is not practical in terms of the provision of a feedback tool. We can, through the community drive a culture of creativity and provide a safe environment for people to articulate their thoughts, whatever they may be, and leave it to the business (and the back-end process) to facilitate the translation.

This approach drives increased participation and conversation as there is no set criteria to restrict insight…it’s becomes an open forum where all forms of feedback are invited.

We have been so steeped in this stuff now for years, in varying capacities and from different perspectives, it’s about time for KMSystems and Gain Storming to collaborate outside of the corporate walls.

Since our first meeting back in 2006, Dave and I have designed, developed, tested, promoted and rolled out various iterations of feedback systems. We have systematically assessed each of our key, potential competitors and watched how their offerings have evolved; looking at what works best and applying that to what we already know to develop what we believe represents end-to-end, online feedback management in it’s most advantageous embodiment.

We are still doing some testing and assessments and will keep you updated once we’re live.

The innovation management platform David Abrahams and I designed and built has earned Insurance Australia Group the 2009 Australian Business Award for Innovation.

Not bad for a bespoke system. Why has it pushed aside other more established and well funded innovation management platform providers, like the Salesforce and Deloitte offerings?

Well, here’s why:

• it was custom designed for the corporate environment
• it is truly end-to-end, being that it manages all aspects of innovation from idea initiation to idea management, reporting and as a carrier of the creative culture
• it is easy to use for initiators and for the business – simplicity has always been my key requirement and once any aspect looked like it was going to be too difficult for participants, it was back to the pub with the butchers paper and crayons for a review and revise session over a beer or three with Dave
• it is easy on the eye with simple and descriptive icons
• its in built processes drive accountability in the business, so no idea gets filed away in someones desk never to see the light of day again
• it recognises creative effort through reporting and community tools
• the business owns the data
• the system delivers approx 95% self sufficiency in terms of changing the look and feel and function/structure

So, nice award, now…what are the risks?

…it’s not just a system, it’s a culture

The main risk is that without the right community manager, the initial momentum and excitement will be gradually diluted. The person or team adminstering the tool are also responsible for promoting/marketing the tool, feeding back relevant information to participants and the business in always changing and interesting ways.

That person or team need to be the very visible face of the tool so that the community have a human link to the platform.

…it can be harder to keep employees interested and motivated than your customers

This is very much a self-promotion thing and if your adminsitrators are the modest, shy and retiring types…the system is doomed. Building and driving a culture of creativity across any large organisation requires energetic and motivated individuals who aren’t scared to constantly promote themselves and the system.

Customers catch fleeting glimpses of your marketing strategies, however employees are a captive audience and as such, things get familaiar, tired and staid quickly. Keeping the culture fresh….also applies to the system itself…

…keep it fresh

Another significant risk which I alluded to in the previous post, is that the business does not accept the need to fund the evolution of the system itself. In terms of web technologies, the system I designed for IAG is quite dated today and there are significant opportunities to improve user experience and back-end functions.

This is about keeping the technology aligned to what participants are experiencing in the web space outside of the work environment; with web technologies improving so quickly, it doesn’t take long for participants to make the distinction between old technologies and new. If you fall over here, you will lose your audience very quickly.

Having said all that, congrats to IAG, hope you can win again next year.

It’s been a while since I wrote about idea management platforms; lots has changed and new opportunities to improve have been revealed since then in terms of technologies, processes and web community behaviours.

The first system I designed was a category driven platform that worked like this:

Add an idea (Idea Initiator):

1. select a category for your idea

2. select a sub-category (based on previous selection)…etc as relevant

3. add a title for the idea

4. describe the idea

5. submit the idea

6. receive confirmation email

Managing the ideas (Category Owner):

1. assign a category to a dedicated category owner

2. recieve email notification – (time to action clock starts ticking)

3. reviewes idea and contacts initiator for more detail as required

4. applies appropriate action to idea

5. initiator receives notification of action/comments applied to idea

6. action & comments are posted for community view & comment

>>Opportunities to improve:

In time sensitive environments like call centres, taking time to find the right category for your idea can be time consuming and distracting. I have observed that the most relevant, customer-focussed ideas come from areas where there is direct contact with the customer, but often those flashes of raw brilliance while the customer is on the phone or facing you, can be diluted by the time you dig through the category tree and arrive at the description section.

Looking at the Category Ownership aspect, the opportunity to improve provides for increased flexibility, visibility and accountability around the way ideas are managed and shared within that community.

This improvement can be enabled through the use of tagging.

At a high-level, this is the way tagging can make it quicker and easier for the idea initiator to articulate the opportunity to improve.

Add an idea (Idea Initiator):

1. input the description of your idea

2. submit

Meanwhile, throughout the business, interested parties have ’subscribed’ themselves to certain keywords/phrases that are relevant to their part of the business and for which they would like to receive alerts should an idea come though that contains those keywords or phrases in its description.

Managing the ideas (Category Owner):

1. subscribe to keywords/phrases of interest

2. receive notification of match/es

3. comment and/or take ownership of idea

4. apply relevant action and comments

This way, categories are flexible and actually determined by initiator input, as opposed to being dictated by the system.

Additionally, anyone in the business can ’subscribe’  to any keyword or phrase, giving more people more visibility of ideas that are coming through. Criteria can be set in the system to indicate which subscriber each idea is most relevant to based on their subscriptions and where they sit in the business.

Once someone decides to take ownership of an idea, the rest of the business gets immediate visibility of that fact and can interact directly with the owner in need.

In terms of system design and architecture, this model is a significant improvement. It is true web2.0 in the way content is driven and managed by the entire community, rather than constricing input to architectural design, organisational structure and categorisation.

After obtaining funding and support to develop the initial system, the challenge for the innovation/community manager will be to get the improved system across the line. A forward thinking decsion maker/wallet holder, will have no hesitation approving the new system, and in fact will be open to ongoing system enhancements and improvements as web technologies and communities dictate. I do however feel for those of you who had to struggle to get your initial system approved; this is a change piece that you have to work through and gain support for.

I have developed detailed mock-ups of an improved system that operates as described, if you want to know more about the design and processes, email me: ericimbs@gmail.com