Research published in the Harvard Business ReviewOpens a new window recently broke down the ways in which crowdsourcing can be manipulated to get the best results.
The researcher led with a classic example: when BP asked the public for suggestions on how to deal with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill — and drew 123,000 recommendations, none of them very helpful. It’s a classic crowdsourcing problem, the glut of well-intentioned but useless suggestions.
So does it ever make sense to turn a problem over the public? Not, for example, crowdsourced laborOpens a new window , but crowdsourced problem-solving? In this case, I’m thinking of the public more in terms of the company. Does it make sense, then, to take a problem that a team has been struggling with and turn it over to open discussion within the company?
The researcher, Oguz Acar, found that the quality of suggestions depend on a few aspects that can be channeled by managers in order to get better results. People are generally motivated by a few reasons, including a natural affinity for problem-solving, a desire to belong to a social group, a desire to be a do-gooder and a tangible reward.
Acar found that people motivated by the first and last reasons, problem-solvers and reward-seekers, came up with the highest-quality suggestions. He also made some recommendations for incentivizing those kinds of people, including highlighting the rewards of problem-solving and offering prizes.
I have a few additions to his suggestions for keeping open discussion positive and, most importantly, constructive.
Define the problem in specifics
I’m sure there must be an old aphorism about this but any answer you get is only as good as the question you ask. How should we deal with this problem? That, for example, is not a good question. It’s far too vague and invites the inevitable analysis of the roots of the problem. Analyzing the roots of a problem is often a good idea but not necessarily helpful for resolving specific challenges. If you’re having trouble narrowing the questions, try to define the elements of the challenge that need resolution and ask to resolve those tensions specifically.
Show how problem-solving aligns with company culture
It’s one thing to sing the praises of problem-solving in order to motivate people who are excited by an interesting puzzle. It’s another thing entirely to recast problem-solving as intrinsic to the nature of the companyOpens a new window . Identify how the foundation of the company was built in part by confronting and overcoming challenges and tell that story. Sometimes there’s a tendency to have a flawless origin story. But identifying how challenges were overcome in the past can be a great motivator for overcoming them in the present.
Address failure
When someone knows the consequences for failure, it can become easier to imagine a path to participation. In crowdsourcing, this is generally much easier because the bar is low. In that sense, defining failure can create two outcomes: Impart information about what you’re not looking for and help people imagine investing in the process. Just make sure not to go too heavy here, because the whole idea of crowdsourcing is to get a crowd. So don’t scare them off.