IX Use Case: Increase Employee Motivation Through Virtual Idea Generation

I was listening to the IDEO Creative Confidence Podcast and a recent episode featured one of my favorites, Dan Ariely. He and Wardah Malik of BEWorks were on the show talking about experiments they’ve conducted in the workplace around employee motivation. Turns out the most potent motivation techniques do not involve money or bonuses or better coffee (extrinsic motivation), but involve getting validation, recognition, and praise (intrinsic motivation). It occurred to me that virtual idea generation, because you can invite employees to an idea project, has a tangential benefit of providing employees many, if not all, of these intrinsic motivations.

First, here’s the episode if you’d like to listen. It’s really good.

Validation by being chosen at all

You may not know this, but Ideasicle X allows users to invite not only our Ideasicle Experts, but their own employees to participate on the 4-person idea teams. It’s a great way for the user to bring different disciplines together to chomp on a problem together, each bringing his or her different perspective. But it’s also quite an honor for an employee to be chosen for the team.

Imagine the director of business development taps a junior writer, who is trying to write his way out of doing nothing but social media ads for the cash-cow bank account, for ideas in a big pitch in which the agency is participating. How cool would it be for this youngster to stretch himself creatively and show the higher ups what he can do? That’s validation. And as the IDEO podcast illustrates validation leads to motivation.

With Ideasicle X, up to four chosen employees can work as a team on each project.

recognition through participation

There are several dimensions to the recognition an employee can get by participating in his or her agency’s Ideasicle X job. One, with his teammates. He may never have worked with any of them before, so this idea project will be a meeting of the minds, literally. They will be introduced and will see how each other thinks. They will bond as a team. Further, the building and riffing between them will validate their ideas.

Two, recognition of the team by the users who organize/request the job, as that person is likely a senior person at the agency. A chance for employees to impress. Three, any Observers invited to the idea job (a user can invite up to 3 Observers to watch the ideas unfold) will also likely be pretty senior folks and if an Idea Director is invited (a user can invite 1 Idea Director to monitor the jobs and engage with the team) then there’s no doubt it’s a creative director or equivalent level that engages with the team.

That’s some serious senior recognition for all four team members. A wonderful (and motivating) opportunity.

Shared praise

I often say you could take any four people and put them on an Ideasicle X job, working virtually, and you’ll get a productive session. So when it’s not “just anybody” but are competent employees who know marketing and advertising put together in teams of four, the outcome will be exponential.

You can expect to get anywhere from 30-50 ideas over just a few days using our virtual model. And through the building and riffing between the team members, there are sure to be some amazing gems that emerge from the session.

If the agency uses a campaign idea from an IX session in a pitch, then the entire agency should know about it. It shows that upper management values ideas from across the company and, specifically, from THIS TEAM right now. Share the praise to boost the motivation of the team of four, but also to make working on an Ideasicle X team even more welcomed by everyone else in the future. Who wouldn’t want that kind of public praise?

It’s more than the ideas.

Obviously, the killer app of Ideasicle X is that it accelerates the generation of ideas. But the fringe benefits of motivating employees who participate are not small. One last thought. Ariely said they tracked stock prices of companies who do, and who do not, practice intrinsic motivations in the workplace regularly. And guess what?

Let’s just say, Ideasicle X, for all the reasons stated above, might also increase your stock price over time.