Not Invented Here

How many times has this happened to you? You're working on an absolute peach of an idea - something that will enrich the company, improve stockholder equity, solve all of those nagging problems that have beset your work group for years, and improve the quality of life enjoyed by all mankind. You don't expect a reward, let alone the promotion and raise you richly deserve, for making this happen; you're doing it because someone has to, because it's an idea worth having; because you take your fiduciary responsibility to the stockholders seriously, and because you take pride in your work. Even if your superiors steal all of the credit for your idea, it was still worth doing -- and of course, doing well.

Instead, your boss and his colleagues (or his boss and her colleagues) take one look at it and reject it without comment. Or, at least, without anything resembling INTELLIGENT comment. "That's not how we do things around here," they might say, if you've been with the company for a shorter time than they have. "It will take too long or cost too much," they could declare, if they don't feel like reading your proposal (after all, they control the money and the work schedules, so they get to decide) or thinking about it any longer. "This will never work," the might decree, if the idea has real merit and there's no easy way for them to steal the credit. "I don't like this," they might tell you, if you've demonstrated that your idea saves money, takes less time than existing methods, and works perfectly.

Chances are, you've just run into one of the worst things that can possibly befall an original idea: Not Invented Here Syndrome. Sometimes this means literally, in cases where the company has taken on a bunker mentality, and anything their own management team didn't dream up is seen as a threat to their way of life. Other times it indicates a manager who has come to view any subordinate with brain activity as a threat, who is maintaining control over the work group by attacking all ideas that he or she didn't personally invent and then blaming the employees for a lack of initiative and creativity. And sometimes it indicates that the person you are dealing with has fallen deeply, madly in love with their own idea or their own concept of how the business should be, and they can't bear to change or part with any of it.

I don't have any clever, magic-bullet ideas for how to beat this syndrome; it's one of the worst kinds of management failure, and may actually indicate that your manager is incompetent and/or in need of immediate replacement. You can prove the worth and value of an idea, and demonstrate that the concept will work, and still be met with comments like "You're right. I know you're right. But I'm not going to do it anyway." Trust me; I've seen it happen. If you have the power/influence with higher management, you may have to arrange an intervention by higher authority. If not, you might have to take whatever action you feel is appropriate to a supervisor who has gone mad and is going to destroy the company around you -- even if that means handing in your resignation and fleeing the scene.

To my fellow managers, I can only say that before you dismiss any idea, you should ask some logical questions. Will this idea work? If it does, will it make money or produce some other positive value for the company? What are its Net Present Value (NPV) and its Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and are they appropriate to the company, the current situation, and the characteristics of the idea? Can you personally gain by becoming the sponsor of this project and the mentor of the bright young person who came up with it? Is it, in fact, an artifact of how you nurture sharp young minds and the original ideas they produce? Or, at least, can you get YOUR boss to believe that it is? And, of course, if your subordinates fear bringing you new ideas to the point where they never do, how will you ever know when they ARE working on something that will enable them to take over your job?

It's worth thinking about...