Many organizations expect innovation to start with CTOs, Directors, and Architects. However, often, one of the best sources of ideas is the “factory floor”. So the question is: How can we find the best ideas there?
As you can imagine, many programmers do not want to cause waves or were shut down too many times to care about sharing their ideas. Others are introverts by nature. Yet others, don’t even know that they have a precious gem in their hands and would miss it if someone doesn’t help them see it.
That is why I propose in my book that Front-end Architects should take up that responsibility for themselves. We should both promote that environment of innovation as well as capture innovative ideas that naturally emerge. We are specially situated to do so, because of our deep technical experience and our extended business visibility.
Nonetheless, the proposal I presented in the book was focused on being alert to this objective (set our minds to it) so that we can become catalysts of innovation during our regular meetings and even during corridor chats. But how surprised was I with this article (By Benjamin Bazso) which suggests that managers should simply sit and listen to their teammates!
Wow! That simple!
But when was the last time a manager did that with you?
And that’s my point. It is absurdly simple. Almost not worth mentioning it. And yet people rarely do it. How often is the “factory floor” completely ignored as the higher-ups come with their ingenious digital revolution?
The bridge I want us to make here, though, is to leverage that same concept and combine it with our architectural concerns, to further our understanding of unspoken challenges, find opportunities to improve the developers’ experience, increase employee engagement, and possibly capture ideas for innovation. Managers should still do that, for many reasons. But we, as Front-end Architects, could greatly increase the quality of our work with these quarterly meetings as well, by simply sitting and listening to the developers in an intentional and mindful way.