A company can sometimes be a complex creature; lots of departments, lots of employees in those departments and lots of different departmental objectives.
Therefore, ideas and innovation can be impeded as these separate departments vie for attention.
However, as owners we can undertake a couple of simple strategies that will help us to minimise these detrimental effects, generate ideas and align departmental objectives.
1.
Suggestion box: This should be common practice for companies who want to provide departments, and employees within those departments, with a platform to express ideas.
The suggestions should be limited to improving efficiencies, cost reductions, and overall internal improvements.
Does customer service feel they need to have better resources and support to service customers? Do sales and marketing see a need for better quality products, but have been thwarted by engineering? There are a number of issues that often go unnoticed or ignored.
This idea may be an old one, but it works.
It helps get the drive for ideas and innovation off the ground, and helps set the stage for the separate departments and employees to become more comfortable with similar programs in the future.
2.
Interdepartmental audits: Having employees audit other departments is an excellent way to bring fresh ideas to old problems.
This approach helps to eliminate the problem of some employees not being able to come forward with suggestions in certain departments.
It's well known that employees that feel unable to bring up issues, will often discuss them with co-workers.
This allows them to do just that, and gets these issues down on record.
Continuous improvement through these mechanisms, allows companies to continually upgrade their processes, customer service requirements, improve efficiencies and reduce costs.
Continuous improvement is no longer just a catchy phrase.
It's a complete philosophy that starts from within the company and extends outward to client and account management.
Whether it's the sales and marketing department, or the customer service department, both must be able to bring issues to the table that management is open to addressing.