The best source of ideas

Leaders have a tendency to look for new ideas outside of the organisation, ignoring their greatest source of highly relevant ideas—their own employees.

Employees that have daily contact with the customer are best positioned to come up with new ideas on how to create more value for the same customers. The problem is that they usually have no system nor support for doing so.

That is exactly what leaders can provide! Even simple things like clearly defining customer segments and jobs, as well as key support personnel, is enough to get the ball rolling. From then on, the best leader can do is get out of the way and intervene only when pulled.