Why do established companies fail? Because they fail to create the future. Two ways for a company to fail: One way is it sets ambitious plans and doesn’t meet them. But the second way is it sets plans that aren’t ambitious and needs them.
And, there are many reasons why they fail to do so, but there is one word under which you can put all those reasons under: inertia.
In established organizations, what can leaders do to drive innovation? How can leaders support innovation at work? What’s one tactic that will unleash it? Let me tell you…
I was sitting in a Starbucks recently minding my own business and overheard a conversation between two people. It seemed to me that one of them was coaching the other person on some leadership challenges, and my ears perked up when I heard the “coach” say: you have to create a clone of yourself.
In the world of innovation, diversity of thought is necessary. Really, every business needs diversity of thought regardless of what business they’re in. Diversity of thought comes from diversity of experiences from people from all walks of life. Diversity of thought gives a team perspective, multiples ones, not just one. Naturally, this will create conflict. Not everyone will get along, and that’s just the way it goes most of the time.
Last week I wrote a post about what you should do to add value and increase your standing in the workplace. Now, let’s look at the opposite: If you could deliberately kill your credibility with your boss, what would you do?
The organizations that no longer exist are the ones that failed because they missed the future. Why did they miss the future? Because they were late to the party or got disrupted by an upstart. They never led, thus got disrupted. Ironically , organizations that fail operate with a fear of failure. Internally, it’s this mindset that kills any chance at disrupting themselves!
In the world of product design, your goal as the designer is to make the product easy to understand and use. People will get frustrated, anxious, angry and just leave it if it’s not easy to use. Similarly, organizations have to be designed to be to be easy to work with for employees, customers, partners and providers. Of course, most aren’t.
