Medieval Corparations

I work in a big company…Very large company...A HUGE company. I've sat here many times, after walking past the walled offices, past the big cubes, to my hovel of a cube, and thought "this place is just a smaller version of a medieval kingdom." The company president is king, the VPs are princes, directors are Nobels, on down to us "surfs" . The king (president) doesn't see us except on the rare occasions he ventures out of his palace area. The Medieval kingdom paradigm aspect is pervasive in this environment (Big companies). You walk from "Employee parking" past upper management "Reserved Parking" to the building. The closer to the building the higher ranking the person in the parking spot.

Enough rambling, I was thinking about our Medieval company environment and how it affects innovation. There are a lot of people here with good ideas but a lot of them, I believe, are not voiced because of the hierarchy. This was reinforced in a meeting a couple of months ago when I just happen to be in a meeting with a director and several of his guys just below him in rank. I had an idea, and I voiced it, as I tend to do. I was ignored. I voiced it again and was told to be quite and that the they would figure out the answer and would tell me what it is. I've learned from many experiences that if I am simply brushed off in two tries, I will not be heard. Approximately 3 minutes later, one of the upper level guys repeated what I said, very close to word for word, and it was a great ides! All the big-wigs loved it.

How does this affect the common people with being innovative? What kind of culture does this set up so people can be innovative? Basically, it's anti-innovation, innovation and idea crushing, and is simply wrong. Innovation needs to be ingrained in the culture, ideas should be allowed to be openly expressed and listened, too. It's not only for the upper labor grades. If you want good ideas, listen to the people who's spirit haven't been crushed yet by this type of environment. Pull the thinking of the higher ups out of the 70's and at least into the 90's.

A lot of companies are better than this (I.e. Google and NI) but a lot of companies are not.

One Note: I will say that the director was out of the room and his minions were the ones not listening, but I was a couple of labor grades below the next lowest person in the room. The director does listen