When you have some sun on your back after a long period of those winter months, you just always begin to feel life is so much better going forward.
Life seems to reawaken within. I often wish we could capture the ‘sense’ of spring and what it promises to bring from this change of season. Those of us who witness the change of seasons are so lucky.
I’ve also been reminded recently about the phrase offered by a number of leaders to explain a positive encouraging shift after a tough time, it goes like this: “we do see some green shoots that are offering some early signs of growth and recovery.”
Spring captures that growth moment. It is often talking to us of renewal. Innovation needs that capturing opportunity as well.
Looking across a sea of faces you feel that certain resigned feeling, that lack of empowerment, you press on, encouraged by the movement, not within the eyes but the clock. Is that the only thing ticking? You shudder.
How many times have you felt that ‘wave’ of oppression when one colleague looks nervously at his boss just sitting across from him in the same workshop or conference, hoping to gain some new, fresh glimmer of hope?
None comes, just a stony, empty blank face staring straight back.
It is really sad but with all that is written about innovation, discussed, offered as leading, best or emergent practice, the majority still simply don’t get it and if they do, they often are forced to keep quiet about it. It can be depressing to witness.
Often you get that feeling the different (and latest) innovation message simply rolls over, a little like the mist rolling in off the sea on a foggy wet day, slowly clawing itself up over a wet rock to suddenly stop and hang there, waiting for something to change.
Will getting it changed for the many or does this resigned feeling wait upon the boss suddenly waking up and getting innovation, so it all suddenly changes and the innovative sunshine comes out. Empowerment needs enactment
How often have we left it too late, we are suddenly under pressure. We need to get to that critical meeting and we take risks, or we simply just left it too late, so we ‘run the red light’.
If we get to this point we are not just the ones in danger but we more than often involve others in this stupidity, with potentially serious consequences for all involved.
Care on intersections
Organizations so often leave their own futures to the last minute by failing to recognize or acknowledge they are running out of time, the situation they have been so use too for such a long time has suddenly changed.
Well, for the vast majority, there was nothing “sudden” about it, they simply left it too late, ignoring all the warning signs and they decided to cross that “red light” as a last-minute panic to catch up and be back in charge of their innovation destiny.
Often all organizations want to do is get back in control, revert to being comfortable, managing “as usual” but in the process have missed so much innovation opportunity in these panic moments because they did not plan for it. T
hey just had a simple failure in not anticipating and thinking ahead, they “ran the amber”, not being alert to their surroundings and wanting to learn so as to adapt to changing conditions.
Not being open and receptive to reacting and exploring, in different more flexible ways, they simply have no time to manage changing events, they are suddenly out of their comfort zone.
I’ve been reading a fair amount recently about the “lack” of innovation leadership within organizations. Where there is smoke there has to be fire I suspect, but does it need to be so?
Internal leadership of innovation suffers from exactly the same critical problem that the people working on innovation suffer from, of a lack of timeand opportunity to study alternatives, as all are caught up in ‘driving’ their innovation through their internal system.
This “alternative voice” is often missing and this can so easily come through external advocacy. This is unlikely to come from the innovation consultant brought in to undertake ongoing work as that is very different, this is more critical, more specialized, even strategical supporting role, involving peer-to-peer engagement.
This peer-to-peer helps explore those critical issues relevant to you and where your organization is. Its aim is to offer a different perspective, so as to alter opinions or build new insights, that often cannot be evaluated without considerable deflection from the daily managing innovation that is taking place in often complex and challenging situations.
I have recently been in some different discussions about the merits and balances required for the separation to manage incremental and radical innovation. Partly this is in preparation for a workshop later this month but partly from a conversation, I am having with a sizable, well-respected organization, with its head office based here in Europe.
In the conversation within the organization, we were discussing the breakdown in their treatment of incremental and radical and they suggested this was being managed within an “ambidextrous structure” yet I was not convinced. I have to point out this was only a part of a broader story on the difficulties of managing conflicting innovation demands that they were having.
We have been entering some perilous times recently and I can’t imagine when Joseph Schumpeter outlined his groundbreaking efforts for explaining “creative destruction” he or anyone else, could imagine this being flipped around to what we are facing more today, in a more innovative era, that of “destructive creation”.
Schumpeter saw “creative destruction” as the renewing, through new innovation, society’s dynamics that would lead to higher levels of economic development and welfare.
At the same time recognizing that this destroyed a few of the incumbents to the benefit of many more newcomers and increasing value creation for broader society.
Today it seems we are caught in the reverse of this- the process of “destructive creation”- where it benefits a few rather than the many. This sets out often to destroy or greatly diminish the usage value of existing products and services before it is optimal to actually do so, and in the process incurring often significant costs not taken into account at the time.
“Slow constrains quick, slow controls quick” There is so much built in tension, bias, barriers, mindsets, mental model conflicts, and all types of friction seemingly going on around us, you must sometimes think all our organizations can only be totally dysfunctional.
The Scream by Edvard Munch for Dysfunctional Organizations
Has anyone not come across some or all of these?
Dysfunctional leadership symptoms and those typical warning signs of dictatorial leadership, no feedback on performance, personal agendas, more ‘political’ compensation than ‘performance related ones, inefficient use of resources, empire-building practices, unequal workload distribution, too much management, fragmented organization efforts.
There is simply just too much talk, ineffective and incessant meetings, a lack of collaboration across departments, ‘selective’ low productivity when you are working way beyond the normal, feeling in a constant crisis mode, watching a morale deterioration take place before your eyes, the backstabbing, starving projects of essential resources and finally, working in highly stressful workplaces.
Making innovation a constant daily task for everyone in finding time and space to become involved in, is certainly a real problem for many organizations.
Innovation does not sit comfortably alongside efficiency or effectiveness as it requires a much looser structure. It constantly ‘flies’ in direct conflict too much for many within organizations to create resistance and adoption.
Innovation is looking to increase variability, nearly everything else in the organization is the exact opposite. How do we address this resistance and make innovation part of the daily working routines?
Where can we start? We have to open up our thinking to a number of “possible paths” to allow it to flow. I believe innovation should not be highly structured; it should be more loosely structured to allow the possibility.
For a start individuals and organizations needs to explore multiple ways to learn and find the right pathway for innovative learning as they progress.
This needs a more ‘dynamic social fabric’ to allow it to flow, it needs organizational encouragement. It needs mutual adaption and mutual adjustment. The understanding of the absorptive capacity framework I’ve outlined before helps structure this.
Firstly stop and survey our world from a new advantage point
Can you imagine standing on top of a mountain, looking out across a vast expanse of nothing but mountains and valleys stretching out before you? If you squint hard enough you can just make out that somewhere in the hazy distance, the endpoint of your travels.
The distance you have to travel towards that much-needed innovation understanding, that is made up of so many different dynamics that make you and your organization that much fitter to compete in today’s challenging world seems really far off, or actually is it?
Exhilaration can quickly turn to reality.
Clearly, while you are on top of this mountain you feel exhilarated to have even got up to this point. To even get there you have already made a decision that you and your organization need to become more innovative.
One that needs to look beyond what you have, to what is possible, you are curious to explore this further, you have to, innovation is a strategic imperative for, adding value, growth and improved wealth creation.
Maybe I’m taking on more than I can chew here but I’m going to attempt to explain why innovation can be so complex and requires an adaptive system.
I apologise if it does not work for you, or you simply just give up on this but I am going to try to explain innovation as a complex adaptive system.
Why- I like the pain involved! I’m certainly not in any shape or form an expert or even that much of a student of complex systems, and what it fully consists of, but I do need to explore this more, and a little shared pain helps in this as I go.
This issue is one that I consistently come across many references to innovation being a complex system. The trouble is I’ve never been fully clear on what determines the make up a complex system for innovation. I’m not sure anyone does for complex systems either!
