Complacency Is A Silent Killer

complacency is a silent killer of businessComplacency kills…big time!

Two weeks ago I was invited to talk to a group of marketing and MBA students at INIDE University about what it takes to make innovation happen inside established organizations.

As I mentioned in a previous post, nothing prepares you for reinvention. There is no class, course, workshop that teaches one how to “unlearn” old habits and skills which only use is to maintain the status quo.

Your comfort zone is your death zone

In the video below (in spanish), I talked about how one needs to take time to consider new approaches to business as usual. A woman told me that she does different things all the time in her job. To which I responded with a question: when was the last time you did something outside your comfort zone?

I remember the face she made. And not surprising, she responded that it’s very hard to do things outside ones comfort zone. This is the reasons why most people, and organizations, can’t reinvent themselves.

You can’t tell people they’re complacent, they don’t respond to it well because everyone believes that doing their job is “enough”. But “enough”, although it works, is a state of complacency; which leads to disruption.

Clayton Christensen has a great quote on this principle:

It’s not incompetence, but competence, that causes companies to be disrupted. That applies to big companies and small, as well as people too.

Here’s the audio:

As I stated on a previous post: innovators don’t wait until it’s too late to change, they change before they have to; without asking for permission. They make change happen by actively exploring, experimenting, outside their comfort zone.

Bottom line: Nothing new, surprising and bold happens in your comfort zone. Complacency will catch up with you every time if you allow it to. Stay hungry!