Nearly
a decade ago, when Sudhir met me, he was a depressed young man, a victim of the
explosion of the IT bubble. With his dreams of entrepreneurship shattered and
business back to its ground state, he became an epitome of pessimism. Just
encouraging him to redeem his self-esteem, I suggested to him several ways to use
his knowledge and skills to reopen the corridors of his business.
“You
should be able to make a couple of crores in a year if you do it honestly and
passionately” I said.
He
looked into my eyes penetratingly.
“Great
Sir! If that is possible, why are you not doing it?”
I
smiled. “Doing business is not my cup of Tea. I am just an idea manager. I can
help in generating ideas and facilitate navigation of those ideas safely and
productively so that they fructify and bear fruits. But…..Business….. I am not
that stuff.”
Idea
Management is both an art and a science. On the concluding note of its profile,
it also carries a post script: “Add -common sense!” Culturing
and mentoring ideas is not every one’s ball game. It requires certain specific
emotional and professional skills.
“Great
minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people”
said Eleanor Roosevelt.
In
any organizational set up, everyone can have ideas. Ideas may be flowing
downstream the canals of the brain, and sometimes may flood and drive an
individual to a level of madness. Sometimes an idea may strike you from nowhere
and one might have “wow” experience. One might even feel standing at the top of
Mt. Everest, having conquered it through an intellectual labour. That doesn’t
mean the person can incubate those ideas and deliver their intent. It requires
strategic thinking skills which drive synergy of thoughts and synthesis of
processes, products, objectives, markets and their futuristic trends.
Specialized skills are required to cognize the DNA of these ideas, their
relevance, positioning, integration, their impact on the existing ideas and
their practices It is also important to examine in hindsight, the possible
outcomes of their incubation, navigation and management; and this requires a
pragmatic insight into the existing status of the business and its environment
- and hence a competent ‘Thinking Head.’
Some
issues relating to Idea Management at an organizational level are:
a.
Often
most ideas are born out of subjective experiences, and contextual wisdom; hence
they might need a re-positioning to a
broader base for a collective consideration of its macro and micro impacts; and
then enabling them to manifest into a ‘shared vision’, even if it is in a
smaller scale.
b.
Quite
often Ideas come with a huge burden of passion and resultant emotional
hangovers and hence might have to be ‘sanitized’ to become really pragmatic.
c.
Ideas
with marginal value addition and scale may not have a productive and profitable
outcome. Hence, they often carry just a book value. Sometimes they are by-products
of observations of a crisis and may only have an effervescent life.
d.
Ideas
may need to be “cultured” and “mentored” – to ensure their social and ethical acceptability
and their strength in fighting ‘brands’ – that have forced “learned helplessness” in the markets and its
consumers, whose thoughts and consumer behaviour, are bottled into occult mindsets
e.
The
‘life cycle’ of an idea needs to be understood and examined before its
effective implementation to consider its stability and sustainability.
In
several organizations, “Project feasibility studies” do consider certain
components of the above. Nevertheless, projects are considered more on
operational and fiscal domains and not as an “idea culture” proposition.
Discussions,
brain-storming and critical reviews in organizations may contribute to the
deliberations in culturing ideas, but they don’t take the ownership of this
specific process. And finally when something goes wrong, one could find almost ninety-percent
of the participants coming with the comment “I told you long back”, “ I know it
will not work”, and ‘who listens to me?” and several other statements claiming
their total dissociation with the entire process. A group of “idea managers’ in
IMT could as well take the ownership and responsibility in lieu of the above.
On
certain occasions, in organizations where the ‘will’ of the ‘powers that be’
alone operates, ideas are pushed into the gullets of the ‘geese’ in the
organization, expecting them to ‘hatch golden eggs’ sooner than later. And
finally when things don’t work, the geese are sacrificed as ‘betrayers’ of
confidence. A professional IMT can avoid
such excesses in organizations as intermediaries for idea process management.
Every
organization, sensitive to its future, would need a set of people who will be
their “idea managers” – who will be the architects and artisans of the future
of the organization, if it must ensure its growth without compromising on its
sustainability.
Idea
Managers will not only be having “foresight” as well as “insight” of the change
dynamics, but also will be ‘strategists’ who would control the design and
furtherance of ideas into the process flow of the organizations.
Why
do organizations need these ‘cool heads’ ?
1.
Market
forces and new markets will force organizations of all types to be continuously
evolving and competing.
2.
Speed
of irrelevance of knowledge, skills, processes, products and life styles would
be continuously producing new generations of consumers and hence would call for continuous reinvention of
products and systems.
3.
With
the life cycle of processes and products declining fast, organizations will
have to periodically discover themselves and learn from the myths of phoenix
birds. (Taking a re-birth from their own ashes)
4.
Sharpening
the axe on a day to day basis will put huge pressure on all business systems as
that alone would help in cost-cutting in cost conscious markets.
5.
Integrated
thinking and dynamic thinking would be the tools and instruments for enterprise
management of all new as well as old organizations.
6.
Re-engineering
the human-ware of old organizations will be more difficult than installing new
structures.
All
these and more would need effective deliberations of ‘Think-Tanks’ on a routine
basis.
The
idea management team, an affiliate of the Think-Tank, will house expertise from
different structural lines of the organization, with its head playing a unique
leadership role. He should be interacting only with ‘top-level’ management so
that leakage of ideas do not lead to policy crisis, piracy or “disruption” in
the latent process.
Idea-management
team in an organization is a preventive shield against unpredicted
‘catastrophes’. They also slowly develop a culture within themselves to seek
‘alternatives’ in moments of crises.
In
the introduction to his book “The Future of (Almost) Everything” Patrick Dixon,
cautions against the risks of ‘Institutional Blindness’ of all organizations as
a possible challenge to their growth. His caution deserves both attention and
action.
To
enlighten themselves to a futuristic path, there is a compelling need for every
organization to be a ‘Learning Organization.’ Peter Senge outlines the features
of Learning Organizations as “Organizations where people continuously expand
their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive
patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free and
where people are continually learning how to learn together.”
The
future holds promise for such organizations and the objective of the “Idea
Management Team” should be to achieve this goal.
Organizations,
planning for their future strategies, should, therefore, answer the question –
“ Is Idea Management an option or an institutional obligation?”
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