There's not a lot of good news coming from the business side of newspapers these days, and nowhere is the situation more grim than at the Tribune Company, which just sold the beloved Chicago Cubs, still owns the struggling Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, and has been operating under bankruptcy protection since December 2008, with little hope of emerging any time soon. But as Plato, that noted corporate strategist, famously said, necessity is the mother of invention — and the troubles at the Tribune Company have inspired at least one intriguing approach to unleashing some inventive ideas for the future.

The organization's top brass has turned to front-line employees to devise new ways to generate revenue, to conduct their own forms of R&D. At the Tribune, though, R&D doesn't stand for research and development. It stands for "rip off and duplicate."

The theory? So many journalists and business-side employees are in touch with so many creative initiatives in other fields, why not look for revenue-generating ideas that are working elsewhere and figure out how to apply them inside the mainstream media? In companies hungry for innovation, sometimes the best source of new ideas is proven ideas from other places.

I like the idea, and it's been a powerful (if unappreciated) approach to innovation for a long time. In their definitive guide to organizational learning, Benchmarking for Best Practices, Christopher E. Bogan and Michael J. English tell a story that illustrates the long history of moving ideas between unrelated fields. "In 1912, a curious Henry Ford watched men cut meat during a tour of a Chicago slaughterhouse," Bogan and English write. "The carcasses were hanging on hooks mounted on a monorail. After each man performed his job, he would push the carcass to the next station. When the tour was over, the guide said, 'Well, sir, what do you think?' Mr. Ford turned to the man and said, 'Thanks, son, I think you may have given me a real good idea.' Less than six months later, the world's first assembly line started producing magnetos in the Ford Highland Park Plant."

Or consider a more contemporary example — an illustrious British hospital that borrowed techniques from automobile racing to redesign how it transferred patients from one step of a complex medical procedure to the next. Fascinating articles in the Daily Telegraph and the Wall Street Journal described how London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, renowned for its cardiac care, struggled with poorly designed "handoffs" that resulted in errors, complications, even deaths. So Dr. Martin Elliot, head of cardiac surgery, and Dr. Allan Goldman, head of pediatric intensive care, studied high-powered professionals who were better than anyone at organizing handoffs — the pit crew of Ferrari's Formula One racing team.

The doctors and the pit crew, the Telegraph reported, "worked together at [the team's] home base in Modena, Italy, in the pits of the British Grand Prix, and in the Great Ormond Street [operating room] and intensive-care ward." Members of the pit crew were struck by how clumsy the hospital's handoff process was — not to mention the fact that it often lacked a clear leader. (In Formula One races, a so-called "lollipop man" wields an easy-to-see paddle and calls the shots.) Moreover, they noted how noisy the process was. Ferrari pit crews operate largely in silence, despite (or because of) the roar of engines around them. As a result of "one of the more unlikely collaborations in modern medicine," the Journal reported, the hospital redesigned its handoff procedures and sharply reduced medical errors.

The message is as simple as it is powerful: Ideas that are routine in one industry can be downright revolutionary when they migrate to another industry, especially when those ideas challenge the prevailing assumptions and conventional wisdom that have come to define so many industries. Here's hoping the Tribune Company can apply this strategy to great effect in its troubled industry. And what about your industry: Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas?

I was reminded last week of a simple but important truth: if you want to manage people effectively, ask them what they need from you in order to succeed.

The realisation came as I was coaching a executive who had been finding it very difficult to manage the disparate people in her team. Some were old hands, experienced but cynical; others were new recruits, enthusiastic but very junior. She had tried to sit down and work out all their different needs, but was finding it perplexing. Some wanted to be left alone, others craved attention; some needed structure, others a free rein. After repeatedly getting it wrong, she decided the best thing to do was to go back to her preferred directive style: "At least we will all be clear about what to do — and I can get on with my work," she said.

But she knew well that a one-size-fits-all approach rarely works when managing individuals and teams, regardless of how diverse they are. Much depends on the situation as well as the individual — there's little point in trying to control a specialist, such as a lawyer, for example, as they probably won't listen, and very junior staff need structures and directions until they find their feet. It's important that all managers recognise and become aware of their default style in order to move away from it: we all need to widen our range, moving across the spectrum from controlling to laissez-faire as the person and situation demands.

So here's a simpler approach, based on a short conversation between you and your team members. It can also work with your boss, although really he or she ought to be initiating this conversation themselves! Ideally, you should have this conversation when you start a new role, but it's useful at any stage of the working relationship.

Meet each member of your team separately for half an hour and follow these steps:

1. Tell them your job is to help them succeed. You will support them, but they must tell you what kind of support they need in order to succeed. If they have trouble formulating a response, ask them, for example, whether they prefer close supervision or to be left alone, whether they prefer formal or informal catch-ups, or how much detail they need from you.

2. Be careful to make a clear distinction between the words "need" and "want." Needs are what they can reasonably demand to do their job well; wants are a wish list to make their life as easy as possible. (However, it might be worth striking a deal on this if you have some specific wants of your own.)

3. Explain that their job is to help you succeed in yours. Now it is your turn to state clearly what you need from them.

4. Document the contract and refer to it when appropriate, perhaps when performance dips, deadlines are missed, or there is conflict in the team.

The client I mentioned at the beginning of this piece used this approach to good effect. She acknowledged that her controlling management style wasn't working: it had left her team disempowered and her overloaded with work, stressed, and unbalanced. Instead of trying to pretend she was perfect and omniscient, she made a pledge to her team members and asked for their pledge in return. This is now documented for all members of her team.

Manager's Pledge:
To trust, support, defend, and develop individuals and to communicate as clearly and as much as she is able.

Team Members' Pledge:
To trust her, work hard, do their best, be team players and take responsibility for their work and actions.

It's a simple but remarkably powerful statement of how they want to work together. What's more, they can always go back to their pledges as an explicit contract of trust, rather than rely on assumptions. I am confident it will work for her in the future.

What are your thoughts? Do you think it's important for managers to have this kind of frank exchange with team members or do you think it's a naïve approach that could easily backfire? Have you ever made a similar pledge to your staff or requested one in return? What happened?

I will go back to my client in six months and ask her for her experiences, but in the meantime, I'd love to hear your views and thoughts.