I’ve talked at length about how companies aiming to attract innovators to their organization shoot themselves in the foot, because the culture they have doesn’t embrace innovation. Still, let’s ask: How do you hire innovators?
To help answer that question from the perspective of an innovator, the University of Texas conducted a study last year and they asked me to take part. They’ve yet to share the results with me, but I’m jumping the gun and sharing my thoughts with you.
This blog is all about being a game-changer, a difference maker. In this path skills matter, but attitude is even more important. Skills are hard to acquire and develop, it takes time to master something; but you don’t have to work for attitude.
When I was 3 – 4 years old my love for Disney started. I had seen the movies but everything changed the moment I set foot in Disneyland. I still get excited even though I’ve been to Disneyland a bunch of times. That excitement made me very curious about how they execute at such a huge scale.
Many leaders rely too heavily on past achievements, practices, and ways of thinking to drive positive results today, but they often need to unlearn those behaviors before they can take a step forward; this is the essence of innovation.
You can tell whether a business has innovation potential by the way it leads and its priorities; both are critical measures of innovation. The first one, leadership, I’ll focus on here.
Why do established businesses fail? Because they miss the future. And what contributes to them missing the future? Many things, among them is a focus on maintaining the status-quo while avoiding uncertainty.
Here’s a short story of how innovation dies inside established organizations that have a short-term results focus…
