Every now and again, we like to use simple everyday situations to illustrate how easy Innovation and Idea Management can be.

In the latest installation of this theme, I will share a simple example of collaboration and its ripple effects across a seemingly complex, diverse and siloed environment.

Last Friday evening I was returning home from work by car. The highway was jammed so I decided to take the longer, more pastoral and usually less congested road that runs along Montreal’s lakeshore (Montreal for those who don’t know is an island-city). When the cross-street that I was on hit Lakeshore Road, traffic was bumper-to-bumper; as a result of the single-lane only configuration, this had all the potential of being a worse case scenario than the multi-lane freeway. But a remarkable thing happened on our way to gridlock: the person in front of me who was waiting to merge was let in  by a driver already on Lakeshore Road. That helped our situation and we got moving. A little ways down, another car was waiting to merge onto Lakeshore Road and the car in front of me (the lady who had been let in) now let that person in; and the driver waived “thank you” in appreciation. Everyone in sight followed the example and cars started merging like the teeth meshing on a zipper. However, a couple of Stop signs later, the original car that had let the lady in front of me in had to turn onto another congested road. This time, no one let her in and everyone around us stopped moving again.

So when you look at your organization to see where your process is at a roadblock, find the laggards who don’t play as a team and either honk at them or pull them out of the flow. It only takes one road-hog to slow everyone else down.