A friend called me a few days ago to tell me she had finally quit her job. She’d been miserable for years. She couldn’t stand her boss. She couldn’t stand the environment.
The reason was simple: She felt powerless.
She worked at a food manufacturing company and consistently did the work of three people, far beyond what she was paid for. Her boss took credit for her results and never acknowledged her contributions.
Worse, she had solid ideas for doing more with less. When she took the initiative to implement them, she was blocked.
“That’s not your job.”
She stayed for over six years. She watched the company grow. But she didn’t grow with it.
When she finally left, she took something with her: a detailed understanding of every process bottleneck, every supply chain vulnerability, every workaround the team had developed. She took it straight to a competitor.
Her story isn’t unique.
Some people respond to environments like this by keeping their heads down. They stop offering ideas. They do exactly what they’re told, nothing more, nothing less. They show up to survive, not to build.
Is that a problem?
Yes.
Because you don’t get innovation from people who feel powerless.
The Real Cost of Powerlessness
What my friend experienced, and what millions experience, is considered “normal.”
And that’s the problem.
Her team shipped the same core product for 4 years straight, while competitors released three major iterations. Ideas that could have saved the company hundreds of thousands sat unexpressed in people’s heads. When budget cuts came, leadership had no idea which processes were actually critical because the people who knew had stopped speaking up years ago.
This isn’t about one bad manager. It’s about the habits, systems, and leadership behaviors that kill innovation before it starts.
The Habits That Kill Innovation
Most organizations don’t lack smart people or good ideas. They lack the conditions that allow innovation to survive. Instead, they reinforce the behaviors that destroy it:
Credit theft becomes standard practice. Ideas flow up, recognition doesn’t flow down. People learn quickly: your contribution will be claimed by someone else.
“Stay in your lane” territorialism. Innovation requires crossing boundaries. But organizations build walls between departments, functions, and levels. The initiative gets labeled as overstepping.
Death by process. A line worker spots a $5,000 efficiency gain but needs five signatures to spend $200 testing it. By month three, they’ve stopped looking for improvements.
Pilot program theater. Companies launch innovation initiatives with no authority, no budget, and no air cover. When nothing changes, they blame “resistance to change” rather than examining whether people actually had the power to change anything.
Compare this to a manufacturing director I worked with who gave line workers budget authority up to $5,000 for process improvements. First month: $12,000 in waste reduction ideas implemented. People who’d been “just following orders” for years suddenly acted like owners.
The difference wasn’t the people. It was the power.
You Can’t Mandate Innovation. You Can Only Unleash It.
Almost every business leader says they want innovation.
But wanting isn’t enough.
That means building a company that:
- Attracts great talent and keeps them engaged
- Earns genuine loyalty, not just tenure
- Delivers exceptional customer experiences
- Improves year after year
You can’t get there by demanding innovation. You can only create the conditions where it emerges naturally.
For Leaders: A Gut Check
If you want innovation, ask yourself honestly:
- When was the last time someone at a level below director killed a project or redirected resources without first asking for permission?
- Can your best people name three ideas they’ve stopped pitching because “it won’t go anywhere”?
- Do people volunteer for new initiatives, or do you have to assign them?
- Does credit flow down, or does it all accumulate at the top?
- Is initiative rewarded or quietly punished with extra scrutiny?
- Do your best people feel ownership or exhaustion?
If people feel powerless, they will not innovate.
They will disengage. Or eventually, they will leave.
And when they do, they’ll take everything they learned and everything they could have built with them.
Bottom line: Innovation isn’t a culture deck or a suggestion box. It’s what happens when people believe their actions matter. Everything else is theater.
So ask yourself: If your best people left tomorrow, would they say they felt empowered, or that they finally escaped?
The answer to that question tells you everything you need to know about your capacity for innovation.
