Readers will discover how government can be radically improved by harnessing the power of ideas from frontline workers, the people who directly serve the public. Whether people want more government or less, everyone wants efficient government. But most innovation efforts try to change the very nature of government-such as dismantling bureaucracy or privatizing services-and thus they usually fail. Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder accept government on its own terms and simply ask how some existing organizations are dramatically improving their performance. What they found is that the best innovations come not from the top down but from the bottom up. Drawing on their study of seventy government organizations and interviews with nearly 1,000 people in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, and Sweden, they found that the most innovative agencies and offices solicited and implemented ideas from frontline workers, the people who directly serve the public. These often modest, pragmatic improvements can have a huge cumulative effect. For example, the Denver Department of Excise and Licenses was able to cut its average wait time from an hour and forty minutes to just seven minutes. Robinson and Schroeder offer a comprehensive guide for systematically collecting, evaluating, and implementing game-changing frontline ideas. Reading group discussion guide available in book.

Practical Innovation in Government: How Front-Line Leaders Are Transforming Public-Sector Organizations

Business & Money

Robinson, Alan G.

Schroeder, Dean M.

Management & Leadership

Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Product Description 
Too many organizations are overlooking, or even suppressing, their single most powerful source of growth and innovation. And it’s right under their noses. The frontline employees who interact directly with your customers, make your products, and provide your services have unparalleled insights into where problems exist and what improvements and new offerings would have the most impact.\nIn this follow-up to their bestseller 
Ideas Are Free, Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder show how to align every part of an organization around generating and implementing employee ideas and offer dozens of examples of what a tremendous competitive advantage this can offer. Their advice will enable leaders to build organizations capable of implementing 20, 50, or even 100 ideas per employee per year.\nCiting organizations from around the world, they explain what’s needed to put together a management team that can lead the type of organization that embraces grassroots ideas and describe the strategies, policies, and practices that enable them. They detail exactly how high-performing idea processes work and how to design one for your organization. 
 There’s constant pressure today to do more with less. But cutting wages and benefits and pushing people to work harder with fewer resources can go only so far. Ironically, the best solution resides with the very people who have been bearing the brunt of these measures. With Robinson and Schroeder’s advice, you can unleash a constant stream of great ideas that will strengthen every facet of your organization. 
 Review 
“ 
The Idea-Driven Organization is so reasonable that the magnitude of its change message is easy to miss. The richness of the examples from all over the world make it fun to read, and the authors convincingly demonstrate the power of incorporating frontline thinking into your organization.”\n—Marshall Goldsmith, author of the New York Times bestsellers Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There 
 “As leaders, we need to create an environment that effectively draws employee ideas out and empowers implementation. 
 The Idea-Driven Organization provides a practical map on how to get there.”\n—Jeff Nagel, CEO, NBTY Inc. 
 “Robinson and Schroeder have written a manifesto that might very well spark a revolution. They show us how the ideas generated by the knowledge and creativity of frontline employees can help any organization, large or small, public or private, become more efficient, more productive, more innovative. I say let the revolution begin!”\n—Stan Rosenberg, Massachusetts Senate Majority Leader 
 “All outcomes measures are influenced by one critical factor: the number of employee ideas implemented by the frontline employees themselves. Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder present research findings in many companies and industries that clearly confirm this but also explain how great leaders make it happen.”\n—John Toussaint, former CEO, ThedaCare, and author of On the Mend and Potent Medicine 
 “The idea-driven organization is one that steadfastly listens to its people to ensure the organization remains safe, responsible, productive, and continuously improving. Robinson and Schroeder provide an insightful guide for leaders who are vested in engaging the minds of their frontline employees.”\n—Kevin S. Crutchfield, Chairman and CEO, Alpha Natural Resources 
 “No one has captured the rationale and how-tos for achieving business results through frontline involvement as elegantly and convincingly as Schroeder and Robinson have. Learning how to unleash the significant power of ideas is quite possibly the most important leadership skill needed today.”\n—Karen Martin, author of The Outstanding Organization 
 “ 
The Idea-Driven Organization does not focus on some consultant-created magic formula but offers practical concepts for promoting employee ideas that you can read and implement on your own. This book is indispensable for any leader who wants to tr

The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas

Business Culture

A worker in one of Europe's largest wireless communication companies showed his manager how to repair an error that was costing the company $30 million per year. A secretary at Grapevine Canyon Ranch proposed a simple change to pull the company's website to the top of search engines. These are just two of many examples in ""Ideas Are Free that highlight the single best resource in a company--those frontline employees who can see those telling little details that escape managers. Based on extensive research with hundreds of companies around the world and in every major field, this practical book shows how to draw the most useful ideas from frontline employees and, in the process, significantly improve the atmosphere--and success quotient--of any organization.

Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations

The fact is, because they're the ones actually doing the day-to-day work front-line employees see a great many problems and opportunities that their managers don't. But most organizations do very poorly at tapping into this extraordinary potential source of revenue-enhancing, savings-generating ideas. Ideas Are Free sets out a roadmap for totally integrating ideas and idea management into the way companies are structured and operate. Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder draw on their ten years experience with more than three hundred organizations in fifteen countries to show precisely how to design a system to take advantage of this virtually free, perpetually renewing font of innovation. Robinson and Schroeder deal with two fundamental principles of managing ideas that are highly counterintuitive - the importance of going after small ideas rather than big ones, and the problems with the most common reward schemes and how to avoid them. They describe how to make ideas part of everyone's job, and how to set up and run an effective process for handling ideas-how to take a good idea system and make it great. And they show how good idea systems have a profound impact on an organization's culture. At the end of each chapter they provide "Guerrilla Tactics for the Idea Revolutionary", actions to promote ideas that any manager can take on his or her own authority, and that require little or no resources.

Too many organizations are overlooking, or even suppressing, their single most powerful source of growth and innovation. And it’s right under their noses. The frontline employees who interact directly with your customers, make your products, and provide your services have unparalleled insights into where problems exist and what improvements and new offerings would have the most impact. In this follow-up to their bestseller Ideas Are Free, Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder show how to align every part of an organization around generating and implementing employee ideas and offer dozens of examples of what a tremendous competitive advantage this can offer. Their advice will enable leaders to build organizations capable of implementing 20, 50, or even 100 ideas per employee per year. Citing organizations from around the world, they explain what’s needed to put together a management team that can lead the type of organization that embraces grassroots ideas and describe the strategies, policies, and practices that enable them. They detail exactly how high-performing idea processes work and how to design one for your organization. There’s constant pressure today to do more with less. But cutting wages and benefits and pushing people to work harder with fewer resources can go only so far. Ironically, the best solution resides with the very people who have been bearing the brunt of these measures. With Robinson and Schroeder’s advice, you can unleash a constant stream of great ideas that will strengthen every facet of your organization.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Schroeder, Dean M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Schroeder, Dean M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Schroeder, Dean M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Practical Innovation in Government: How Front-Line Leaders Are Transforming Public-Sector Organizations

The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas

Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations

Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations

The Idea-Driven Organization: Unlocking the Power in Bottom-Up Ideas