How to Foster Adoption of Your Ideation Program

There are a whole host of innovation and idea management platforms out there, including Vocoli. If your organization buys into an ideation (idea generation) platform, that’s a great initial step. But then comes the real challenge: How do you foster adoption of the process and system (i.e. make sure people use it) and market it internally?

After all, if it’s bought and never really used, that’s a loss for the organization. So once you've done all the research and determined what set of features will work best for your organization, how do you make sure the platform is actually adopted by the employees? This is a brief guide.

Getting People to Listen to You

We've talked before about this topic and, from a research standpoint, it typically comes down to four aspects: authority, empathy, collegiality, and education.

In the case of adopting a new platform at work -- which typically also involves a new set of workflow -- authority might be the most important one of these. In this context, it would essentially mean “top-down buy-in,” which can sound like a buzzword but is important. It means that senior management has to show that this is a legitimate priority, and not just a fad. If it’s something that’s talked about for its initial two weeks of roll-out and then not referenced again, base-line employees will also start to forget about it.

To gain authority, reference the new platform in three to six months’ worth of all-hands meetings, and to make sure that 2-3 ideas tangibly go from submission to execution in the first half-year of having the program. This will make the program resonate with employees more.

Robert Cialdini has done research on gaining influence -- similar in concept to getting people to listen to you -- and found six key factors; the only term that overlaps both the “listen to you” research and the “influence” research is, in fact, authority. It’s a crucial concept, especially for buy-in and adoption within a hierarchical organization. (One of Cialdini’s other concepts is “consistency,” which would speak to the multiple references of the platform by senior management.)

Ease of Use

Dr. Elaine Young of the Stiller School of Business at Champlain College makes an important point in a recent LinkedIn post: to get true adoption of a new concept, be it a CRM tool or an idea platform, you have to show ease of use.

That’s only logical. No one is going to actively use something that requires a lengthy log-in process or a confusing series of routing actions.

In a similar vein, John Maeda -- considered a ‘design demigod’ for his work with Kleiner Perkins and eBay -- has argued that the increase of technology in recent years has made people seek simplicity and ease of use even more.

Think about this: two of the most successful websites of the last 15 years, Amazon and Google, are essentially powered by rectangular boxes where you type what you need more information about. It’s the essence of simplicity.

Thankfully, here at Vocoli, we do this “ease of use” concept pretty well (or so we like to think). Most people can offer single sign-in and integration with pre-existing software (we do that as well), but we think our features list is fairly well-rounded to boot. When we work on new enhancements to Vocoli, often the first question is about ease of use, because we understand people are incredibly busy with their pre-existing tasks -- so learning a new system has to be extremely intuitive.

Internal Marketing

There are standard things you can do internally market a new idea platform -- e-mail blasts to staff, webinar demos of the process, user guides available on your Intranet (we’ll help you write those, as well), and the like.

We do recommend the above idea, though -- make sure that, for at least six months, the new idea platform is referenced by senior management in some form of communications / all hands meetings, just to keep the basic idea fresh. Also make sure that as ideas begin routing, 2-3 become tangibly executed on. This is something that senior management can then point to as “This idea went through the platform in the way it was designed and now it’s an actual aspect of your organization!” There is often no better marketing than previous success.

Depending on who “owns” innovation in your specific organization, there is another thing you could consider: tie the implementation of a new platform together with manager training and/or performance reviews. What we mean by this: when you train managers, encourage them on the new idea platform, and explain it as a way that their direct reports can feel more empowered and cut through some of the pre-existing hierarchy. Similarly, encourage managers that, when doing performance reviews, they should mention the new platform as a concept to embrace in terms of pushing forward ideas or looking to get involved in other aspects of the company.

That would both improve a manager’s toolkit in terms of communicating with their direct reports, as well as add an element of “Here’s something you could do moving forward” to performance reviews (which periodically can feel like too much review).

Overall

To achieve success with an idea/innovation management program at your company, focus on these areas:

• Make sure the platform you select is easy to use and integrate with pre-existing elements of an org (the before piece)
• Develop a strategy around top-down buy-in both in terms of consistency (repeated acknowledgement of the platform) and successes (some ideas running the full course and becoming implemented, hence being seen as “wins”)
• Consider your internal marketing approach and, in so doing, think about ideas around getting people to listen to you and gaining influence.

What you’re ultimately trying to avoid here is a “tree falls in the forest” context: you bought a brand-new, splashy software tool / platform to foster idea generation and innovation, and … six months later, no one is using it. If you’re committed to the idea for a year thinking about the above, you can make it a cornerstone part of your organization.