The Frappuccino is one of Starbucks’ most popular and profitable drinks. But it wasn’t created by management.

Baristas noticed that people were asking for a cold blended coffee drink that wasn’t on the menu, so they started experimenting. It became a huge success, and management noticed. Today, it’s a billion dollar product.

This story illustrates a crucial point: your team often has access to insights that management doesn’t.

This is great in theory, but in practice it can be hard to extract insights from your team. So here are some tools and tips to help.

Create a Culture of Innovation

It’s important to make your team feel empowered to speak up and suggest new ideas. This means asking for their input often and trying out their ideas to see what works. I once had a team member suggest we use Gather to communicate remotely online. I thought it was super gimmicky and a bit of a time waster, but I let her trial it anyway because she believed in it. It turned out that the team loved it and we still use it to work together daily almost 3 years later.

It’s also important to celebrate your team when one of their ideas pays off. Public kudos and employee innovation awards go a long way.

Spend Time on The Frontline

As your company grows, you get further away from the day to day action. It’s essential to periodically spend time on the frontline to see first hand what’s working and what’s not. Take time to just watch your team work, and then roll up your sleeves and do it yourself. Listen carefully to the parts of the process that your team complains about, as they’ll often know the problems, even if they don’t yet have solutions.

Survey Your Team

An ultra simple technique is to regularly survey your team for insights. We check in with our team quarterly and ask them what they feel is working and what isn’t. We combine this with our employee satisfaction survey and management reviews so they aren’t overwhelmed by too many surveys.

We use Survey Monkey so we can get anonymous feedback, but it can be as simple as a Google Form that you send out regularly.

This combination of a supportive culture, hands-on involvement, and structured feedback has helped us improve significantly over the years. While management insights are valuable, don’t underestimate the potential innovations hiding within your frontline staff.

Who knows? Your team’s next suggestion might just be your company’s Frappuccino.

Until next time,