It is true that people, wherever they work, will have ideas for improving what they do. But while they might have ideas and they might be all too aware of the problems they experience, are the ideas sound methods for dealing with them?
It will depend on the extent to which people (including managers) have understood the problems. In understanding the problems, people often need to take a perspective they don’t currently have. Sometimes people will think they have the right perspective when they don’t.
For example it is not uncommon for people to have no idea of the concept of failure demand; but it is easy to grasp once you have had it pointed out. Taking this new perspective, front-line people may still think that if they have solved a customer’s problem, then it must have been a ‘value demand’. Similarly managers often think you should attribute failure demands to departments that caused them (who is to blame?).
People need perspective to study and understand problems. People need methods for designing out causes. Where the Vanguard Method is applied by people who do the work, the improvement of work design, measures, roles, and structure occurs where the work is done; ‘design’ is ‘in process’ to put it another way.
This means faster and better solutions, and no longer is ‘improvement’ foisted on people by those above, who often have no real idea at all.
When design is in process and people have methods for studying and designing, it generates lots of ideas, naturally.