Discussion Question

Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings.

Respond to two or more of your colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

· Select a question offered by your colleague that he/she did not use and suggest potential ways that your colleague or the organization might drive innovation and overcome the barriers and status quo.

· Compare your colleague’s findings to those of others and your own. If you see similarities, explain why the status quo might appear similar across different workplaces and industries. Do not limit your responses solely to budgetary or resourcing constraints.

· Identify any challenges at a colleague’s workplace that seem unique or that you have not encountered before. Offer your ideas about why you think those are important and which discovery skill from Dyer, et al., would best enable your colleague and/or the organization to drive innovation and overcome the barriers and status quo. Be sure to provide your rationale for your choice.

· Offer your insights to your colleague about the value of this process and importance of using it to identify opportunities for innovation or opportunities to challenge the status quo.

Must use Responses Template below for each Colleague

Question Not Used by Colleague with Suggestions

Comparison of Colleagues Findings with Others and Your Own

Colleagues Workplace Unique Challenges. Use Dyer, et. Al., Rational

Insights to Colleagues on Value of the Process

APA References

1st Colleague to Respond to:

When it comes to my place of employment, I believe there are a few status quos that could be changed/improved, from the day to day tasks I deal with to little things that could be done differently. With having this in mind, I have come up with the following:

Ten Questions That Challenge the status Quo at Your Current Workplace

– Why is it not as easy for employees whom are not supervisors/leaders to have a say in change?

– How can we improve what is discussed during team meetings?

– What would it take for us to get a day for paperwork without being penalized?

– What can we do to improve our outcomes with our clients?

– How can we better show improvement in gained and developed skills?

– How can we increase the support provided by higher ups?

– How can we work on better managing time?

– Why do we make it difficult for employees to move up in this work field?

– How can we increase profit within each department?

– How can we increase productivity among employees?

One Question for Further Analysis and Importance

After thinking and reading through my questions, I would feel that the best question I choose for further analysis and importance is the first one, which is: Why is it not as easy for employees whom are not supervisors/leaders to have a say in change?. I personally feel that this question takes place within each of the other questions I chose. The questions I chose originated from the perspective of a third party view, but also from my own perspective as a current employee. As a current employee within agency and department, I find that over time, it has not been easy to be heard. I’ll either receive a smart ass reply or be surpassed. It is not to say that others’ opinions are not accounted for, but it is occurs at a very minimum. I believe that if this were not a question, more innovation would take place. Having this question posed and better explored would be something of going against the status quo.

One discovery skill from Dyer, et al. (2009) to Overcome Creativity Barriers

I believe that with my posed selected question, that all of the discovery skills in the article, The Innovator’s DNA (Dyer, et al.,2009) would fit in some sort of way to assist in increasing innovation. I think that the skills do fit most jobs and innovations and changes within not only the work field but within our personal life as well.

For this discussion I have chosen the discovery skill of number 4, which is experimenting. Again, like my chosen question, I believe that the skill of experimenting incorporates the other skills of associating, questioning, observing, and networking. We are always experimenting something throughout different stages in life – work and personal. I chose this skill for this discussion because I believe that in order for the organization to drive innovation and overcome creativity barriers as well as the status quo, an organization/team must be able to explore the different ways for this to occur, that-s part of the experimenting. Giving employees a say for once in change and ideas and giving them a chance to show what difference can be made by their selected idea is part of experimenting and definitely part of the innovation process. As it states in the article, experimenting is a very important part of the innovation process and as been used by several CEOs and big companies such as with Jeff Bezos and Amazon and Steve Jobs and Apple (Dyer, et al.,2009, pgs 4&5). It raises self-esteem and growth in the individual and company.

APA References

Dyer, J. H., Gregersen, H. B., & Christensen, C. M. (2009). The innovator’s DNA. Harvard Business Review, 87(12), 60–67.

2nd Colleague to Respond to:

Ten Questions That Challenge the status Quo at Your Current Workplace

1. What if every employee understood how they got paid?

2. What if everyone in my department was more acceptance of change?

3. What if everyone in my department came up with creative solutions?

4. What if every procedure was systematic and manual processes where a thing of the past?

5. What if each employee worked at their highest performance level every day?

6. What if we truly rearranged the work environment to influence more creativity?

7. What if everyone respected the Payroll Department?

8. What if employees had more down time to allow for “idea time?”

9. What if everyone in my department could select their own individual work schedule?

10. What if there was a better way for employees to contact the Payroll Department (i.e., a ticket format)?

One Question for Further Analysis and Importance

If I had to select one question for further analysis that I thought was most important, it would be question number one. What if every employee understood how they got paid? This question is not only important because we want every employee to understand how their contract is paid, but solving this would also decrease the number of calls and e-mails we get on a daily basis. If people had more knowledge about how they got paid, they would in return trust us more and have confidence in our department. This is currently posing a barrier to innovation because we spend too much time explaining the same thing over and over again and we could be using this time for innovative ideas. This question challenges the status quo of the organization because there has always been an assumption that our employees struggle to understand how they are paid and the only answer given is to “call the Payroll Department” to find out. For the reasons stated above, this is why I believe question number one is an area that innovation might be needed and welcomed.

One discovery skill from Dyer, et al. (2009) to Overcome Creativity Barriers

Even though all five discovery skills are helpful, I was torn between two to overcome creativity barriers and the status quo that prompted my question number one to be selected for further analysis. The first one was the skill of questioning which challenge common wisdom and question the unquestionable (Dyer, Gregersen, & Christensen, 2009). The second one was the skill of networking which find and test ideas through a network of diverse individuals to give innovators a radically different perspective (Dyer et al., 2009). I found that the discovery skill number two, questioning, would suite me best for this exercise. Questioning enables me to ask things like: If we did this, what would happen? Why do we do this? Why should we stop doing this? And what if we did this? (Dyer et al., 2009). In addition, I truly believe most managers simply focus on how to make an existing process better, which is just putting a Band-Aid on an issue instead of actually taking a step back and challenging the assumptions (Dyer et al., 2009). The current assumption in my organization is that most people do not understand how they are paid and the standard protocol is to wait until you receive your pay check, to then call the Payroll Department and demand that they explain it to you. This is not only reactive, no one has ever taken a step back and questioned how to solve this barrier. Nothing good has come from this status quo and I am determined to innovate a much needed solution.

APA References

Dyer, J.H., Gregersen, H.B., & Christensen, C.M. (2009). The Innovator’s DNA. Harvard Business Review, 87(12), 60-67. Retrieved from https://services.hbsp.harvard.edu/lti/links/content-launch