A few months ago I wrote about my meeting with Rex Lee, a nice conversation during which we talked about what he implemented at Bell Canada, he showed me a few projects and, above all, he explained me the vision that was behind all that. Among those tools and projects was ID-ah ! , their ideas management system.

No need to repeat what I said in my former post. But I’m coming back to this topic because Rex just sent me thr pdf of an interview he gave to Business Digest. The document being for (paying) suscribers only I was about to make a short excerpt here when Rew finally get the authorization to publish it. So I relay it, hoping you’ll find it useful.L’article étant payant j’allais vous en faire un petit résumé lorsque Rex a eu l’autorisation de le publier. Je relaie donc en espérant que vous y trouverez votre bonheur.

Some thoughts before you start reading my favorite collaboration director…

• Company’s problems are not only company’s problems : they are everybody’s problems and everybody has to find solutions together.

• Governance is about aligning ideas with corporate issues and not about the presumption some people more be more revelant than others : someone from the IT dept may have very good ideas about marketing., his freedom of speech may not be restricted to IT isses.

• It’s essential to determine at the very beginning of the project what ideas would become. Here, people know best ideas will be presented to top managers. It gives credibility, it helps changing minds, and above all, it’s the evidence of a necessary transparence that improves motivation.

• Votes and “wisdom of crowds” are not enough. The most disruptive ideas seldom meet people’s attention. So they have to be identified “manally” and give them as many chances to be exploited than those that got the most voted ones.

• First of all it’s about cultural change, it needs leaders and it takes time to happen.

• Tools are important but they are the last step. It must not make forget the human side of the project. “don’t think that a technical solution can resolve a problem that’s fundamentally a human one;[...] it can take the organization’s pulse, but you need to go further to change the corporateculture to one of collaboration…being responsive to what [employees] have to say, and carrying out real actions”

• You may have noticed how we started with ideas management to end with collaboration. At first sight it may be surprising that a collaboraiton director may be so involved into innovation, creativity, problem solving. It’s because, and I had the confirmation of that during our conversation, Rex and I share the same vision according to which, today, collaboration is “finding together innovative solutions to problems”.

Enjoy your reading !

Tags: bell , collaboration , culture , ID-ah! , Innovation , innovation collaborative , résolution de problèmes

change change management cultural change