Are you a victim of the idea bandit?

By Jason Foster - jfoster@heraldonline.com

Tell me if this sounds familiar:

You come up with a great idea that will help your company save money. You do some research and legwork. Yep, this is a golden idea. You mention it to coworker Bob.

Bob casually mentions the idea to the boss. The boss loves it. Success! This will certainly be good for your career. This winning idea will be associated with your name for years to come. Life is good.

You can't wait to read the office memo that's sure to come, the one singing your praises.

“Thanks to the hard work and innovation of Bob, we're going to save millions,” the boss' memo reads. “Great idea, Bob. We're lucky to have you.”

Huh? Bob's idea? There must be some mistake. Surely Bob will make things right.

Not a chance.

It's a classic case of workplace idea theft.

And it's something that's happened to roughly a third of U.S. office workers, according to a recent survey by the staffing firm OfficeTeam. The firm surveyed nearly 450 workers and found that 29 percent reported having a coworker take credit for an idea.

But here's a more telling statistic: Of those who said they'd had an idea stolen, more than half (51 percent) said they did nothing in response. Just 26 percent said they spoke up to let coworkers know, and just 13 percent said they confronted the idea thief.

So how do you prevent this? I asked Lee Richardson, a certified business coach in Fort Mill, for some advice. What it comes down to, he said, is documentation.

“When you have a great idea, the first thing you should do is get it written down and dated. That way, you established some type of claim that you had a good idea,” said Richardson, owner of Focal Point Business Coaching.

That's how astronomers lay claim to newly discovered stars, and the practice certainly has applications in the business world, Richardson said.

Lots of people come up with good ideas at the office, but most never do anything about them, he said. But that inaction risks someone else getting the same idea — and taking credit. Apart from putting your idea in writing as a first step, Richardson also recommends establishing a plan for how you would put the idea into practice.

“If you have not done anything about it, I don't think there's any legitimate reason you can go back and claim anything on it,” Richardson said. “The written word carries so much more weight than a verbal, ‘I remember when.'”

But it's important to pick your battles when it comes to idea theft. Taking action to make sure you get proper credit might not always be worth the hassle, Richardson said. So where do you draw the line? What's worth fighting for? Well, Richardson said, that's a tough call. He recommends workers try to develop relationships with mentors within the company who have more seniority or experience and might have a better idea of what needs to happen.

“That's a great place to use your mentoring network, to go completely off the record and say, ‘Gee, this is what I perceived happened. How do you think I should approach it?' Take their advice,” he said.

Other suggestions for avoiding the idea bandit:

Report up: Frequently remind your manager of your ideas and the progress being made to put them into place, OfficeTeam suggests.

Look for patterns: If something small you've done gets overlooked, it's OK to let it go. But if other people routinely get credit for your ideas, you probably need to be more assertive.

Don't act in haste: If someone else gets credit for your idea, OfficeTeam recommends, try to find out how it happened. A simple misunderstanding might be to blame. Let the other person give their side of the story. To that, Richardson adds: “Frequently when the emotions are high, you can cut your nose off to spite your face.”

Give credit where it's due: If the roles are revered and you get credit for a coworker's idea, quickly set the record straight. If working in a team setting, it's easy for the leader to receive credit. But it's good for morale to emphasize a team victory. “You'll find that it is repaid many times over in their response and their productivity for you,” Richardson said.

With job security still at demoralizing lows in many companies, it might create an opportunity for some workers to take credit that doesn't belong to them in hopes of falling into favor with management. But Richardson believes those people are by far the exception.

“I tend to think that most people have a fairly high level of integrity,” he said.