Hack:
How to Identify, Influence, Focus and Meet Employees’ Needs for Innovation?

A question

Before talking about a solution, someone may ask me a question: “do employees have needs for innovation?”

Yes. According to Maslow‘s hierarchy of needs theory, or Alderfer's ERG theory, all employees have growth needs. In my view, so-called growth needs should mean that employees hope to constantly gain new knowledge, new experiences, new opportunities, new challenges, new jobs, new achievements, and new satisfactions. In short, growth needs can be equal to needs for innovation on an individual level.

A review

Now let’s start with a review of three-tier management.

First, what is the assumption about human nature behind this three-tier management?

It is basically Maslow‘s hierarchy of needs theory, or Alderfer's ERG theory (for the sake of convenience to express, I tend to adopt the latter).

It mainly includes four key points as follows:

1 Every employee has three types of needs, namely, existence needs, relatedness needs, and growth needs.

2 There is a bottom-up hierarchical order among three types of needs above, from existence needs to relatedness needs to growth needs.

3 Three tiers of needs are always an indivisible whole and coexist with every employee.

4 At any given time, every employee has a prepotent need that has the greatest influence over his or her actions, and that will vary among individuals

Second, three-tier management has correspondingly following four characteristics:

1 Corresponding to three types of needs, there are three types of managements, that is, management of rules, management of emotions, and management of innovations.

2 Corresponding to a bottom-up hierarchical order among three types of needs, there also is a bottom-up hierarchical order among three types of managements, from management of rules, to management of emotions, to management of innovations. Or in other words, management of rules is used to satisfy employees’ existence needs, management of emotions is used to satisfy employees’ relatedness needs, and management of innovations is used to satisfy employees’ growth needs.

3 Corresponding to an indivisible whole comprised by three tiers of needs, three tiers of managements also form an indivisible whole, or the smooth integration of three tiers of managements, to satisfy all employees’ needs.

4 Corresponding to having a prepotent need for every employee, each company, at any given time, should take one of three tiers of managements as its priority. Meanwhile, two other tiers of managements should comply or match with that priority.

Given the above review, it is obvious that three-tier management is truly human-centred management, namely, meeting-human needs-centred management.

If you want to know more about three-tier management, please see my post “A natural and flexible ‘three-tier management’”.

How to identify employees’ needs for innovation?

As previously mentioned, every employee has a prepotent need that has the greatest influence over his or her actions, so there are three basic models of employees’ needs for innovation:

Model 1: as one employee’s prepotent need is existence needs, his or her relatedness needs and growth needs (namely, needs for innovation), in such a case, is less important for individual development than existence needs.

Corresponding to model 1, management of rules should dominate this employee’s three-tier management. At the same time, both management of emotions and management of innovations should comply or match with management of rules being priority.

Model 2: as one employee’s prepotent need is relatedness needs, his or her existence needs and growth needs (namely, needs for innovation), in such a case, is less important for individual development than relatedness needs.

Corresponding to model 2, management of emotions should dominate this employee’s three-tier management. At the same time, both management of rules and management of innovations should comply or match with management of emotions being priority.

Model 3: as one employee’s prepotent need is growth needs (namely, needs for innovation), his or her existence needs and relatedness needs, in such a case, is less important for individual development than growth needs (namely, needs for innovation).

Corresponding to model 3, management of innovations should dominate this employee’s three-tier management. At the same time, both management of rules and management of emotions should comply or match with management of innovations being priority.

Apparently, with one employee’s prepotent need moving up Maslow‘s or Alderfer's hierarchy of needs from bottom to top, his or her needs for innovation (namely, growth needs) would get more and more important, specially in model 3.

In other words, the most important reason why management of innovations is catching much more attention than both management of rules and management of emotions is that with economic development and rising standards of living, employees’ existence needs and relatedness needs have already met well.

Here it is necessary to notice two points: one is that under model 1 and model 2, since employees’ needs for innovation (namely, growth needs) are not their prepotent need, too often it is overlooked by companies. The other is that in general, not like high-tech companies, within low-end manufacturing and services sections, needs for innovation are not the prepotent to the vast majority of employees, but it would not be paradoxical for a few of them, who have very strong desire to innovate, to focus on it. Thus, companies should provide some room for them to release potential to innovate.

How to influence employees’ needs for innovation?

Maslow has identified his five needs that must be addressed in a hierarchical order, but also thought these needs were mostly psychological in nature, and different people would place different weightings on their needs. For example, under certain culture, one person, who is striving to satisfy their existence needs, seems able to focus on growth needs (namely, needs for innovation).

So companies need to establish an innovative culture to arouse, inspire, encourage and influence employees’ needs for innovation.

Such innovative organizational culture/climate mainly involves encouragement of risk-taking and idea generation, openness to novel and unusual ideas, fair and supportive evaluation of new ideas, recognition and reward of creativity, collaborative idea flow across an organization, the importance of the interactions between supervisors and subordinates, diversity in team members’ backgrounds, some degree of pressure, giving employees autonomy, being somewhat paradoxical, having intrinsic motivation, self-confidence and introversion, identifying innovative leaders, and so on.

How to focus on employees’ needs for innovation?

“Focusing on employees’ needs for innovation” refers to that within three-tier management, in the case of model 3, as employees’ prepotent need is growth needs (namely, needs for innovation), both management of rules and management of emotions should comply or match with management of innovations being priority.

For instance, the chief purpose of management of rules, in model C, is to help create an effective and efficient management of innovations, so companies must try to reduce unnecessary intermediate levels in designing organization structure, and have more stresses on outcome than process in performance appraising.

The primary purpose of management of emotions, in model C, is to help create an effective and efficient management of innovations too, so companies must truly respect different ideas, share information among employees and sections, give candid criticism, if necessary, and maintain smooth communication.

How to meet employees’ needs for innovation?

Based on my own observation in many years, there usually are some weaknesses in human nature to keep employees away from innovations, such as the fear of fail and taking risk, avoiding humiliation or losing face in open discussion, supervisors having a swelled head in front of subordinates, and lacking self confidence when speaking to authority figures or experts.

To overcome the aforementioned weaknesses in human nature and to meet employees’ needs for innovations, I have invented two different kinds of forms of organizational structure, that is, “Yin-Yang Organization for Innovation” and “A Reasonable Tripartite Contest for Innovation”. I hope you will be interested in clicking at them:

http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/yin-yang-organization-innovation

http://www.managementexchange.com/hack/reasonable-tripartite-contest-innovation