We Thrive When Ideas Flow Up

Do we know how to make things better? We want ideas – and from our people!

Morale is not good. Many employees are overworked and a great many, the majority, feel undervalued. More and more people are working remotely, which only makes the importance of relationships all the more challenging. Even before the pandemic, most employees did not feel engaged at work. Additionally, studies show that satisfaction at work depends on the individual boss’s management style.

I wrote my new book, Make Things Better: The Path to Success in Business, as I see a need for the messages I regularly offer: leading with humility and empathy, leadership by questioning, active listening may be our most important skill, remembering names, being early, responding as soon as possible, leadership is how we help people feel about themselves, and many more.

I work with and or mentor a number of good people who I feel should be even more successful than they are and should advance to higher levels within their company/organization. They are intelligent, hard-working, reliable, great teammates, and they are not about themselves. They care about the success of their team.

A common denominator in these people is that they struggle with self-confidence. They are hesitant to speak up, to offer their ideas. They do their job very well, help their teammates do very good work, as well. We have to and can do, more than simply our job, and it need not take extra time.

The best ideas are bottom-up ideas and companies do better when ideas flow up, rather than simply having a culture of top-down directives.

Leaders make things better, and so can everyone else. Anyone, whether a CEO, another high-level or mid-level person, an executive assistant, a trainee, a receptionist, someone in the mailroom, can be alert to possible improvements, be it reducing costs, saving time, streamlining a procedure, a potential new service or product to offer clients, ideas for promotion of our company in our community, a new prospective client, and how to draw closer to our present clients.

If we are alert, see something or think of something that might make things better, then speak up, tell your manager or offer your idea in a meeting.

Concerned that your idea might not be a winner? That is okay, everyone has ideas, some great, some not great at all. It is said that failure is a door we go through on the way to success.

There are important messages in this book, and the main theme is that as leaders make things better.

Everyone’s job, no matter what our position, is to help our company/organization be successful.