Moving beyond the meltdown – linking opportunity to innovation

Here’s a brief clip from a recent event in New York City; I focused on the need to have a forward-oriented strategy given the recent economic events.

Frame of mind — and the tone set by senior management — is a critical factor right now. I wrote about this in Ready, Set, Done, in a chapter titled “Key success factors for innovative organizations.”

The first point I made is that innovative organizations have a growth orientation.
Quoting from the book:

Growth orientation. They’ve managed to instill a culture that has everyone thinking about what can be done – they are forward oriented. It’s a culture in which people are thinking less about the problems that have occurred, and more about the cool strategies that could be pursued. They don’t run ‘change-management workshops’: they have strategic sessions on ‘growing the business.’ It’s not an easy task, but innovative organizations have managed to get their people away from ‘right now’ to ‘our next step’.

They are focused on the opportunities of the future, not the challenges of the past. They are ready to pursue transformative change, built on top of a share vision. They are not busy examining what went wrong and why it happened — they’ve already moved on to the next step.

They’ve moved beyond the “anger and denial” stage of economic grief, and are already busy, focused on innovation and the next steps!

• Grab a copy of Ready, Set Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast
• Where are you on the “Seven Stages of Economic Grief?”