The innovation and creativity are the best weapons against the recession on the level of the individual organization. The organization fights with the slowdown in sales and the cash-flow can be strongly affected. The innovation can help to change the products and services to start a steady growth in sales volumes again. But the innovation depends on the honest communication in the organization.
As the management tries to hide the real status of the organization and the employees are worried to raise the questions, the organization can lose a lot of the creativity and the innovative effort of its own employees. The innovation has a big advantage, in a healthy organization it does not need an extra support from the management as the employees are innovative on their own. The organization does not have to invest any money and the employees do their own small improvements which can result in huge cost and time savings.
The management has to support the innovation in recession by the honest communication about the real situation in the organization. The management has to communicate main areas identified for the potential cost cuts and the employees can propose and implement many changes in a very limited period of time.
The honest communication can unblock the full potential of employees as they can see a clear goal of their innovation effort. They can help their own company to survive the recession and they can help the company to win the war with the competitors.
The organization with no communication about the recession has to invest a lot of money to support the employees to bring new ideas on the table. The employees can bring ideas, but they are not interested in their implementation as they do not understand the reasons to implement them and the management can be lost in many ideas proposed just for the cash.
The innovation cannot be driven by the compensation scheme, the innovation has to be driven by the attention of the management and the managerial support to employees to innovate their job every day.
