What is cramming in Innovation? Suez Crammed Canal Effect: Cramming Old Tools into a New World
Are we on a bus to Abilene? Is it ok for people to speak up when they think something is not right? Are they gainsayers or Naysayers?
My point in sharing this is to inform you of the “fractal no” or the “long no” so that you recognize when you are stuck in a fractal no loop. You can waste a lot of personal energy in such a loop.
In Innovation work, it is no different.
We must have extensive knowledge of our industry, of adjacent arenas. We must read widely and eclectically. We must dream big and experiment small.
A huge mistake in innovation work is to hire someone in an innovation role who is all chaos and no order. If you do have an innovator who lacks discipline, then it is important to support them with a do-er. While vision without action is a daydream, action without vision is a nightmare.
Talent without discipline is not enough.
Wonder without rigour remains wonder.
Chaos with order remains chaotic.
One final thing in Innovation is that Innovators need leadership air cover in order to succeed. When you are improvising you are going to make mistakes. It is only through embracing the mistakes that breakthroughs emerge.
While it is natural for organizational neurotypicals to misunderstand changemakers, it is very hard to stomach the incongruity, the mismatch between the espoused values of the organization those values in practice. Innovation and change need friends in high places, without the air cover of leadership in organizations those people who can unlock future growth in organizations will leave to find authenticity and fulfillment somewhere else.
There is a need for chaos and order. Too much order and you fossilise. Too much chaos and you fall apart. These things are always in fruitful harmony.
it is vital for organizations and individuals to reinvent in permanence, to constantly build capabilities before we need them. When we do need new capabilities, it is often too late.
The map is not the territory means that the description of something is not the reality of that something. The model is not reality, or in the context of this Thursday Thought, when a group of consultants who know very little about your organization design a strategy, it does not mean that strategy will succeed. In fact, because they do not know the inner workings of not only your industry, or the realities of the territory of your organization, coupled with the reality that they often do not include key people in designing the map, many consultants design bum maps. Is it any wonder that 75% of transformational efforts fail? (I always believe it is more because some organizations will not admit such failure)
Every act of Creation is first an act of Destruction: Catabolic and Anabolic
Hyperbolic Discounting Eisenhower Matrix and. Innovation and Life Decisions