Daily Inspiration: “Institutional Incompetence: When everyone knows something needs to be done, but no one knows where to start!”

“Institutional Incompetence: When everyone knows something needs to be done, but no one knows where to start!” – Futurist Jim Carroll

Everybody knows why organizations fail at innovation – we’ve seen them repeat the process far too many times!

Through 28 years of advising organizations about creativity and innovation, 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, including a lack of support
• 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!