Why You Need to Get Out of Your Innovation & Creativity Rut – NOW!

I spend a LOT of time doing talks at corporate meetings; often, a CEO or CxO leadership event for a Fortune 1000 company. There’s usually some big issue on the table – a disruptive trend, massive industry change, or a new competitor that is setting the pace. My job is, in opening these critical offsite meetings, opening up the mind

I’m also there to shake them out of their complacency. Often a senior executive will confide in me that the organizations are stuck, spinning its wheels, unsure of where to start. I’m advised that my job on stage is to give them a mindset to move – and so I do this.

Through 20 years of doing this, I’ve come to learn what it is that kills innovation in many an organization.

Here’s a post of 10 things that happen all too often:

• everybody knows something needs to be done
• there are an awful lot of ideas as to what to do
• no one knows where to start
• no one has the courage to take the first step
• and in fact, no one has been charged with the responsibility to take over and manage that first step
• there is a rampant fear that if we don’t do it, it just won’t end up well
• so a committee is established to figure out what the first step should be
• in frustration, a pioneer sets out to do something while the committee debates
• for many reasons, the efforts of the pioneer don’t go too well
• rather than learning from that experience, blame is assigned
• the result is that likely some other company – most likely a competitor — ends up doing exactly what should have been done in the first place!

World-class innovators don’t fall into this trap.

They just do what needs to be done!