Speaking Out Loud

I was reading an article about the cost of people not feeling comfortable speaking up with their ideas. The article said that companies risk losing ideas by not making their employees feel comfortable about giving their ideas, no matter how crazy the ideas might seem. In my experience this happens a lot and the eventual, "Oh I thought of that two months ago, but didn't want to say anything," comment just makes it worse. While I participated in Odyssey of the Mind members of my group, myself included, would often see things at the final competition that they had thought about but not said out loud. By keeping those ideas to themselves they deprived our team the possibility to "piggy back" ideas off of that idea.

Knowing that people might not always feel comfortable giving ideas seemed like a strange thing to me when I worked with Odyssey of the Mind. However, after my internship this summer I have seen that often times the people with the best ideas are the people who are out on the floor working on the product or working in the area that is being changed. The people I worked with this summer felt comfortable talking to me, rather than management, about ideas they had for improving their work area.

Providing people with a comfortable way to present ideas would be helpful to companies with a large amount of employees. The article suggests setting up a service where employees can give their ideas without leaving their name. I think that idea could be useful for companies with many employees, however for small groups a different approach would be needed.