Build a Better Workplace

By Tom Terez

At this very moment in workplaces everywhere, people are coming up with millions of good ideas for improving how they go about their work.

That’s great news because innovation is desperately needed. But there’s bad news too: Most of these ideas will go nowhere.

And it gets worse: In most cases, the people who come up with these ideas will be the same people who keep the ideas from gaining any traction.

It sounds implausible. Why would you keep your own ideas from becoming reality? Let me answer by way of a confession.

A TRUE IMPROVEMENT: Many years ago, I was a newbie newsreader for a campus radio station. I’d read 10 minutes of breaking news four times a day three days a week.

The job was pretty straightforward, and there was a well-established way of doing it. This included the requirement that we type our news stories IN ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS ALL THE TIME. We’d read the news during live broadcasts using our freshly typed sheets of paper.

When it came time for my first news broadcast, I felt fairly calm — yet I stumbled on my words several times. The same thing happened during the second and third broadcasts. Even after four or five broadcasts and lots of practice, I kept getting tongue-tied.

Speaking more slowly didn’t work. Nor did more time spent reading the text out loud before going on air. Nor did shorter sentences.

Then it struck me: Ditch the ALL-UPPERCASE. Use upper and lowercase letters, just like our brain is used to seeing them.

I tried it with my next broadcast. Sure enough, I read 10 minutes of news with no stumbles. It was the same on my second and third tries.

THE SMACKDOWN: Then the student news editor happened to see my typed-up script. “You’re supposed to type in all capital letters,” he said.

When I asked why, he froze for a few seconds. “Well, that’s just how it’s done,” he said.

I explained how a mere release of the shift key on the keyboard had improved my performance in a significant way. He didn’t care. The news had to be typed in all caps — end of story.

THE PROOF: As the years passed, this little experience faded from my memory. But it all came back to me a month ago, when I read about some recent study that looked into — surprise! — the relative ease of reading words that are all uppercase vs. uppercase and lowercase. The researchers found that upper and lower, as you’re seeing it here, is easier to process. When people have to deal with all capital letters, their speed goes down and their stumbles go up.

When I saw that, part of me wanted to track down my long-ago news editor and send him the findings. Look at this, I was right! But most of me was miffed at…me.

LESSONS LEARNED LATE: When the news chief gave me the emptiest of reasons to explain the standard way of doing things — “that’s just how it’s done” — I should have pressed further. Are you sure? Says who? How do you know?

If I had dug deeper, I would have discovered that this “standard” was due to our station’s teletype machine. This was in the early 1980s, and we had an Associated Press teletype machine that cranked out the news in an endless roll of paper. We’d tear off stories and work from those. Their text was all uppercase — and that’s probably why we typed in all caps. Someone bent on consistency must have done it that way early on. The practice grew into a tradition, the tradition became a standard, and the standard became a rule.

There’s one other reason I’m miffed at myself — and why I might be miffed at you.

I should have stuck with my new and improved way of doing things. The news editor didn’t come around all that much, and even when he did, I could have kept my ready-to-read sheets to myself. Instead, I followed the rule and dutifully went back to all uppercase letters — verbally tripping along the way and ultimately classifying myself as the lousiest newsreader on campus.

ABOUT YOU: But why might I be annoyed with you?

Well, if you have your own improvement idea — something small yet practical, like my example above — I sure hope you’re not sitting on it. Put it to work already so it can generate some benefit. If you’re not sure whether you need to ask for permission, don’t. Just do it.

And if you tried an improvement that produced results but was yanked by someone who told you to stick with the usual way of doing things, make a renewed push. See if there’s a credible reason for this approach. If you have to, ask questions to get people wondering. And if you can do so without putting your job in jeopardy, dust off your improvement and put it back to work.

Whatever you do, don’t wait 30 years to see some research paper that validates your initial idea. The time for innovation is now, and the person to do it is you.

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