[OSList] sparking innovation from bottom

[Michael M Pannwitz]

Dear Gijs,
is there a question here?
Are you suggesting we have such a system on this LIST?
Perhaps this is a good idea considering how low we are on innovation 
from the bottom.
Cheers and greetings from a sunny winterday in Berlin and all the best 
for your work in China... which reminds me, have you seen
> http://www.westkreuz-verlag.de/de/Practicing-Open-Space-Our-First-Ten-Years-E-Book

which also contains a chinese version (among german, english, french, 
spanish and polish)of a CEO that has used OST for more than 10 years in 
his outfit and what it did to it...talking about courage!
mmp

On 26.11.2013 12:27, Gijs Van Wezel Mega Int'l wrote:
> “It takes guts to be democratic and give employees more control, but the
> payoff is happiness and engagement.”
>
> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20131125-sparking-innovation-from-bottom
>
> Roberto Henriquez had an intriguing idea. The 30-year-old information
> technology project manager thought he and his IBM colleagues could work
> more efficiently if they had an app enabling them.
>
> Normally, he would need approval from a senior-level review board for
> such an idea. But not this time.
>
> Instead, he quickly received the blessing — and financial backing — of
> his peers through a new “corporate crowdfunding” system in IBM’s
> internal IT organisation.
>
> Not every investment decision has to be made by a director or vice
> president. — Francoise LeGoues
>
> Henriquez’s idea was pitted against other proposed projects seeking
> funding from employees in the IT group. Each of the more than 300
> participants — from entry-level workers to vice presidents — received
> $2,000 to invest over an eight-week period*. *Then, through the
> crowdfunding system, Henriquez managed to raise a total of $20,000, and
> after a few months of development and testing, project managers started
> using his app.
>
> The experience was empowering for Henriquez, who is based in Bratislava,
> Slovakia. “I don’t feel like I work for IBM; I feel like this is my
> company,” he said.
>
> That’s music to the ears of IBM executives who hope the iFundIT project
> will engage employees and spark more innovation from the bottom up.
>
> *Getting employees engaged*
>
> Employee engagement is a pressing issue for most companies these days.
> In a study of 142 countries, Gallup found that only 13% of employees
> worldwide are engaged in their work. The percentages vary widely by
> nation, with 30% of workers in America saying they are engaged; 24% in
> Australia; 17% in the UK; 15% in Germany; 9% in India; and just 6% in China.
>
> One possible solution to this problem: more egalitarian workplaces where
> employees feel they have more control over decisions, such as IBM’s
> iFundIT program.
>
> “Companies need to be more compatible with this democratic age of the
> Internet and social media that we live in now,” said Traci Fenton, chief
> executive officer of St. Louis and London-based WorldBlu, which provides
> consulting services for creating “freedom-centred” workplaces.
> “Organisational democracy means decentralizing power and recognising
> that good ideas are everywhere in the workplace.”
>
> Seeking employee input may slow some types of decision-making, but
> Fenton believes it could speed up the execution process because workers
> would feel more invested after having their say. “Of course, companies
> only want to do this if they’re sure they’re going to act on a group
> decision,” she said. “If they don’t follow through, they’ve done more
> harm than good.”
>
> WorldBlu compiles an annual list of the world’s “most democratic
> workplaces” based on such factors as being transparent and accountable,
> sharing power, and giving employees meaningful choices. The biggest
> obstacles to workplace democracy are executive ego and ignorance, Fenton
> said.
>
> “Some people simply don’t want to give up control; others fear what they
> don’t understand,” she said.
>
> A democratic workplace has cross-generational appeal, although IBM
> believes its crowdfunding project will especially resonate with
> millennials, who are used to airing their views in blogs and social
> media and believe they deserve to be heard at work, too. Millennials is
> a term used to describe the generation of people born between about 1980
> and 2000.
>
> *Small workforce, big voice*
>
> Some companies with a small workforce are going even further and giving
> employees a voice in some very major decisions. When DreamHost’s
> founders decided in 2011 to recruit the first CEO for the Los
> Angeles-based Web hosting firm, they let employees vote on the
> finalists. More recently, its 165 workers voted on the company’s health
> benefits plan.
>
> “We feel that by letting our employees make the decision after they know
> how much different benefit packages will cost, we’re empowering them and
> encouraging them to stay with the company,” said Ed Wesley, director of
> organisational development and learning. “It takes guts to be democratic
> and give employees more control, but the payoff is happiness and
> engagement.”
>
> Companies like DreamHost and Menlo Innovations, a software company in
> Ann Arbor, Michigan, also are opening the financial books to their
> employees to guide their decision-making. “Our goal is for the staff to
> make decisions about where we spend money, but they need to understand
> the big financial picture of the company first,” said Rich Sheridan, the
> CEO at Menlo, which has about 50 full-time and temporary workers. //
>
> Already, Menlo gets 15 to 25 workers involved in assessing a job
> candidate as he or she goes through interviews and tryouts. “We work in
> pairs so we want to see evidence of kindergarten skills, whether they
> can play well with our employees,” Sheridan said.
>
> Of course, it’s easier to democratise small businesses than
> multinationals with thousands of workers scattered around the globe. But
> IBM shows that even a company with more than 430,000 employees in 170
> countries can give at least some of them more decision-making authority.
>
>   “We need to flatten the organisation; not every investment decision
> has to be made by a director or vice president,” said Francoise LeGoues,
> the head of IBM’s CIOLab and creator of iFundIT. “We want collaborative
> innovation. How do we ensure that young people’s ideas get attention and
> that someone in Bangalore connects with someone in New York?”
>
> Eligible projects must be related to internal information technology,
> although they could also be applied to products, such as IBM’s social
> software platform for businesses. “It has to be a small project,”
> LeGoues said. “These won’t be large, multi-year projects like a redesign
> of the entire HR system, for example.”
>
> About 160 projects were submitted during the first two crowdfunding
> rounds this year, with 20 reaching their funding target of between
> $10,000 and $30,000. Funded projects included Influence of Communities
> from China (search results based on influence, not popularity) and reMap
> from the UK (a collaborative outlining tool to organise and share
> information across teams of all sizes).
>
> “The level of excitement and participation has surprised me,” LeGoues
> said. “People have even begun running internal campaigns to try to get
> others to spend money on their projects. This is really a game changer
> in the way people think about what it means to be an IBMer.”
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> OSList mailing list
> To post send emails to OSList at lists.openspacetech.org
> To unsubscribe send an email to OSList-leave at lists.openspacetech.org
> To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
> http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
>

-- 
Michael M Pannwitz
Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin, Germany
++49 - 30-772 8000



Check out the Open Space World Map presently showing 420 resident Open 
Space Workers in 72 countries working in a total of 143 countries 
worldwide: www.openspaceworldmap.org