Do these examples alone prove the Get Fired hypothesis—that process can change perceptions and you’ll have nothing to fear when promoting a far out idea? Two examples do not a statistically significant sample make—however, they do support the hypothesis.

Assembled in one methodology, these concepts can be applied to change risk-averse attitudes and get more new ideas to market. The following “Get Fired framework” is a plan of action based on what we’ve learned to help you succeed in building, vetting, and implementing your biggest, craziest ideas.

1. Gather your ideas

Few true innovations are “ah-ha!” moments. Most are rooted in a state of mind—one that mixes deep knowledge of subject and consistent use of imagination to consider a project in a new way. Ideas beget ideas, and to keep ideas flowing, fresh, and productive, you need to look for them everywhere. Always be collecting ideas—yours and those of others.

2. Choose the winner

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep,” writes Scott Adams in The Dilbert Principle. You’ve collected a lot of ideas, but you need to cull the list and determine which are viable. Apply your filters. Is your organization operationally capable of realizing this idea? Does the concept forward your long-term brand purpose and strategy? Is there a market trend this idea will serve that will help grow the company? These filters are a good start, but go further. Adapt them or create your own based on what you know about your organization.

3. Build your case

Once an idea looks viable, prototype it. Learning comes from doing, but you’ve got to be fast, resource-efficient, and cost-effective. Famed furniture designer Bruce Hannah says, “Mock it up before you fock it up.” We couldn’t agree more. Prototyping is the best way to find out what’s working and what’s not. Test it out. Do you see potential, but realize that your new product or service is not quite ready for prime time? Send it back for revisions and try again.

4. Socialize the idea

At some point in the process, you’ll probably need executive approval. You’ve identified friends throughout the previous steps: brainstormed with them, sought advice from them, asked for support from them. Now it’s time to identify the champions among them who will help sell the idea. With your prototype’s proof-of-concept in hand, you and your fellow believers will be ready to go after executive approval and funding.

5. Land the plane

Congratulations: You’ve got buy-in, approval, and probably even funding. Now you need to choose the right people to bring the idea to market. The makeup of the project team will play two key roles: (a) it will help signal to the organization the importance of the project; and (b) it will lessen or heighten the probability of the success of the idea itself—especially at its current fledgling stage. Fight to pick the team leader who will carry this flame forward. It could be you, a new hire or, perhaps, one of the champions consulted along the way.

Unproven ideas are inherently risky, and the potential fallout of failure can be career-damning. But as we’ve seen at Saffron and Steelcase, there are ways for you and your organization to realize dramatic innovation. By pairing unproven ideas with a well-considered methodology, you can mitigate risk and possibly even deploy those curb-jumping, paradigm-shifting, out-of-the-box innovations that you once thought too dangerous to be possible.

Now it’s your turn to Get Fired.

Co-Authored By John Root Stone and Josh Levine. Author Posting. © 2009 The Design Management Institute. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the Design Management Institute for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Design Management Review, 21:2, . http://dx.doi.org/.

Challenging times divide winners from losers. Winners survive because they never forget the important enduring truth: High quality products and services are created by engaged employees who know and care about customers.

Are you facing falling customer orders? Slower renewals? Cancellations? Requests for ever-deeper discounts?

Those are silly questions. Of course you are experiencing these recession symptoms. And you have probably cut budgets and jobs more than you like.

So now what? When you can’t (and shouldn’t) cut any further, you can leverage the creativity of the people on your team. This is truly the time when employees are your most important assets — for real, not just in slogans. In a recession, everyone should be in marketing. Motivated employees contribute to creative thinking that can help retain current customers and identify new ones.

Here are five suggestions:

1. Increase customer contact and communication. Financial turbulence sometimes leads managers to over-emphasize pleasing banks or investment analysts while appearing to take customers for granted. But as we all know, without customers, there is no business.

Senior executives, regardless of function, should become personal ambassadors to major customers, thanking them for their business and making it clear that they want to help them succeed. But don’t stop there. People throughout the ranks can reach out to customers – perhaps a personal note or a phone call to provide news or ask questions. Customers will know you care, you will be better informed, staff will feel more involved, and unexpected opportunities might arise.

2. Start looking for new markets now. Companies dependent on a few large customers are particularly vulnerable to changes in their customers’ fortunes, but all companies need the flexibility to move quickly into promising markets. In uncertain times, managers should increase efforts to identify additional uses for company products and additional sources of customers for the future.

Creative thinking can find opportunities to offset losses from current customers. Starting research now on less-familiar industries or parts of the world will help prepare managers to move quickly when conditions improve. This might involve sales calls, tests of a new channel, postings on Web sites targeting new areas or industry segments, sending more people to speak at industry conferences and cultivate relationships – good investments even if they seem like the first candidates for cutting. During slow times, employees who might otherwise be idle could be deployed to gather information by discussions with end users. If travel costs are too high, the telephone can be augmented by Internet research.

3. Invest in employee morale. When employees fear for their jobs, worries about family finances drain energy and increase the temptation to stay home on the slightest excuse. When morale is down, productivity and attention to customers suffer, right at the time that you most need zero defects, efficient teamwork, and cheerful voices handling customer questions. Too many companies treat employees as costs to be cut, when they really should show employees how important they are. Managers can greet employees personally and thank them for their contributions. Small tokens of appreciation and enjoyment, such as a weekend outing with families or a food festival with employee contributions as a break during working hours, go a long way to keep people motivated to perform well.

4. Emphasize and reward small wins. Innovation is an on-going task, but turbulent times increase the need to get everyone involved in undertaking small improvements that can be easily and quickly implemented – to find a cost-saving efficiency, improve the work environment, or convince customers to buy a little more.

People at lower levels and in unexpected places might see how to make a greater difference for the business, but no one has asked them, or they thought the ideas were too small to mention. A program that actively seeks these ideas and rewards them — publicity, appreciation, or even a small portion of the cost-saving or revenue gains — can strengthen the company immediately. Motivation increases, and customers see a company that is always ahead of the curve in terms of new thinking.

5. Stick with your values. There is always a temptation to cut corners when times are tough. Managers should avoid desperate moves that could damage them or the company later – no accounting tricks, no shoddy merchandise, and no compromises with ethics, such as “gifts” to a purchasing agent. Reminders about company values can reinforce solidarity and increase the confidence that customers have in the company.

Challenging times divide winners from losers. Winners survive because they never forget the important enduring truth: High quality products and services are created by engaged employees who know and care about customers.

4. Argue forcefully against your most dearly held hypotheses. Only then will you know if they stand up to scrutiny.
5. Make decisions, right or wrong. There’s nothing worse than waffling.
6. Take over the TV station. Airtime is everything. Reinforce your messages in everything that you do. Use every ad, press release, store, package, and event to tell your story.
7. Embrace thine enemy. Make a list of the people who could legitimately stop your big idea from taking root. Befriend them. Convince them. Make it their responsibility to improve on your vision.
8. Don’t hold meetings longer than two hours. (Otherwise they’re workshops, which require more planning.) And don’t walk out of a meeting without assigning a name to every item that needs follow-up.
9. Startle people. Break out of your comfort zone, and do something unexpected. Run an offbeat ad. Institute casual-dress Tuesdays.
10. Don’t throw anything out. Don’t kill ideas that won’t work right now. Someday soon, the world might be ready for them.