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CHALLENGE One of the UK’s largest public agencies, with more than 100,000 employees servicing over 20 million customers, was focused on decentralizing innovation. The organization hoped to engage each and every employee in the innovation process.

RESULT Within the first year, the agency had realized more than £20,000,000 (GBP) in cost savings. This tremendous effort was the result of 4,500 users contributing 1,400 cost-saving ideas of which 63 were implemented.

SOLUTION Realizing the need for a centralized approach to idea management, the agency implemented Spigit and its community called “Idea Street.”

THE CHALLENGEThree years ago, one of the UK’s largest public agencies was focused on decentralizing innovation in order to engage each and every employee in the innovation process. With more than 100,000 employees servicing over 20 million customers, this was no easy task. The agency’s traditional suggestion box lacked the necessary infrastructure to effectively manage and develop ideas. Realizing the need for a centralized approach to idea management, the agency implemented Spigit and its community called “Idea Street.” Within the first year, the agency had realized more than £20,000,000 in cost savings. This tremendous effort was the result of 4,500 users contributing 1,400 cost-saving ideas of which 63 were implemented.

Historically, the agency consisted of a number of departments, all of which functioned largely independently. For example within one department alone, the agency had many hundreds of job centers that were building out local processes in the absence of standard operating models. One office could be accomplishing work more or less efficiently than another office just half a mile down the road.

Seeing the duplication and inefficiency inherent within these organizational silos, there was an agency-wide drive for continuous improvement to encourage learning. Towards this end, the Lean Development Center was established within the agency’s largest department. The Lean Development Center was charged with looking at different areas of continuous improvement, business processes that could be improved and standarized across the organization – for example, looking at the new claims process and how it could be improved.

Unfortunately, the agency’s Lean effort lacked transparency. According to the agency’s Innovation Manager, “There was no effective way of sharing what Lean efforts were going on across the organization. One Lean practitioner could be looking at a problem while another could be looking at the same issue in a different office.” Contributors in the Lean process typically would not see what happened to their idea, and if an idea did not go forward there was no easy way to share that feedback with the idea originator.

Britain’s Largest Public Agency Links Innovation Program to Save Millions

M I N D J E T C A S E S T U D Y | U K G O V E R M E N T A G E N C Y 2

Recognizing that a relationship between the agency’s Lean Development Center and the newly-formed Spigit Idea Street community could prove mutually beneficial, the two groups decided to team together. Idea Street’s innovation efforts, previously limited by the number of available hands in community to implement ideas, were helped considerably with the addition of everyone involved at the Lean Development Center.

While Idea Street could offer Lean enhanced collaboration, transparency, and organizational learning, Lean could offer Idea Street and the innovation community a ready-made system for idea implementation. This extension of Idea Street, a community called “Let Us Know,” included Lean Practitioners in the early stage of idea development so that idea submitters could be helped with root cause analysis (e.g. The 5 Whys, and various other Lean techniques) to try to get a better quality solution at the outset. Others could then see and comment so the agency could draw on the expertise within the organization to develop ideas and extend insight and learning in the process.

THE SOLUTION

Contributors in the Lean process typically would not see what happened to their idea, and if an idea did not go forward there was no easy way to share that feedback with the idea originator.

Recognizing that a relationship between the agency’s Lean Development Center and the newly-formed Spigit Idea Street community could prove mutually beneficial, the two groups decided to team together. Idea Street’s innovation efforts, previously limited by the number of available hands in community to implement ideas, were helped considerably with the addition of everyone involved at the Lean Development Center.

While Idea Street could offer Lean enhanced collaboration, transparency, and organizational learning, Lean could offer Idea Street and the innovation community a ready-made system for idea implementation. This extension of Idea Street, a community called “Let Us Know,” included Lean Practitioners in the early stage of idea development so that idea submitters could be helped with root cause analysis (e.g. The 5 Whys, and various other Lean techniques) to try to get a better quality solution at the outset. Others could then see and comment so the agency could draw on the expertise within the organization to develop ideas and extend insight and learning in the process.

THE RESULTThe success of this joint collaboration led the COO to personally promote a rollout of “Let Us Know” across the entire organization. Similarly, the agency’s new Permanent Secretary, the equivalent of a CEO in a non-public organization, who is dedicated to changing the way the agency works culturally, decided to promote the program as part of the effort to transform the agency into a listening organization. The momentum generated by partnering with Lean business processes has helped to break down organizational barriers, the typical innovation antibodies first encountered when trialing crowdsourcing.

In order to avoid confusion about the value of a dedicated innovation effort in an already lean-rich environment, the agency ultimately bifurcated idea routing between the newly formed Lean Continuous Improvement group dedicated to

improving processes and the Horizon Scanning and Idea group that sits within Business Strategy and is devoted to bigger picture ideas that range from developing products, services, or channels to new operational models.

One month after the launch of Idea Street’s “Let Us Know” community 30,000 users had participated. Three months later, well over 50,000 participants had joined the community contributing a total of 2,588 ideas. At the close of the first quarter ideas by stage included: 687 in the initial “Contribute” stage; 996 in “Working Collaboratively”; 43 “In Development”; 693 “Not Progressed”; 169 “Successful.” In the first three months of the “Let Us Know” community rollout the number of implemented ideas almost tripled the number observed in the first year of Idea Street before partnering with the Lean team.

In the spirit of Lean and continuous improvement being driven from the front line, the agency has extended training for more front-line workers to become Lean Practitioners in order to multiply the insights that can be fed to Lean Experts and ultimately Lean Development Centers. This speaks to the agency’s overarching theme of the advancement and development of people; efforts are made to keep idea generators involved as much as possible in the development of an idea. In fact, idea submitters can even be absconded from their job in order to help further develop their idea giving people more experience with the organization as a whole.

An example of a successful idea includes a proposal to simplify the Flexible Support Fund (FSF) process, the result of which led to a change to the guidance and forms employed by Advisers within the agency’s largest department. Previously, Advisers expressed to local Lean Practitioners their frustrations when completing the forms to process the FSF payments, as it was not easy to determine which form was needed.

The Lean practitioner carried out a practical problem solving exercise with staff to obtain a better understanding of the problem and Idea Street was then used

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We have a large geographically distributed organization. The value of enabling everyone to collaborate on a single concept is worth the investment alone not to mention the tens of millions in savings from implemented ideas.

Innovation Manager UK Government Agency

to suggest changes. A member of the Service Integration Team saw the idea and thought that it supported the findings from a “Voice of the Customer” survey for the Flexible Support Fund. The Service Integration Team contacted the idea owner to take the idea forward, and the owner was subsequently involved in workshops to develop the final solution. In the words of an idea owner who found Idea Street both simple and rewarding to use, “Ideas are taken seriously and I’m pleased that I’ve been able to influence the changes to the FSF forms.”

“We have a large geographically distributed organization,” said the Innovation Manager. “The value of enabling everyone to collaborate on a single concept is worth the investment alone not to mention the tens of millions in savings from implemented ideas”.

Innovation process design is a critical factor in demonstrating visible momentum and ensuring results. Echoing this best practice, the Innovation Manager advises outlining proper frameworks for helping idea generators get ideas implemented in advance of program rollout. Other key lessons the agency cited include the need to align participants with the strategic objectives of the community at the outset as well as the need to have a well-developed communications plan in place prior to launch, both of which are pillars in Spigit’s Launch Assist services for new communities. The agency next plans to expand into bigger picture, strategic challenges to bolster communications support and combine online challenges with offline events to further promote engagement.

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