A panel of experts on NPR just warned us again that US organizations free fall daily, while developing countries advance emerging takeovers. All through squashing or boosting innovation and discovery. Have you seen it happen?
Invention will reignite broken bureaucracies, only if novelty parachutes back into profitable interventions. Only if your organization reverses tumbling markets from further free falls, before it’s too late.
Invention and workplace nosedives rarely occupy common skies.
It’s also true that workers’ innovative capability holds more than enough talent and raw ingenuity to return a zest for ongoing improvements – in spite of occasional plummets. Reinvest in an innovative process, for example, and you can stop rapidly eroding ground through vigorous and healthy new enterprises that shape an entrepreneurial era.
So how to lead change in the face of organizational freefalls:
1. Facilitate roundtables rather than dictate orders and you’ll reverse faceless commands that drive an estimated 30% of corporate workers to care less about their jobs. The clear message that top down meetings send is that one person carries the vision and new input is unnecessary to organizational growth.
2. Reward ethical leadership practices and you’ll likely discontinue downward directions from at least a few egos that currently serve self. Impede dishonest practices and watch the advancement of innovative approaches pop up with far wider workplace benefits.
3. Exchange multi-tasking for focused brainpower and one new invention. A central bottleneck exists in the brain, and this prevents people from doing two things well at once. Yet, while inability to process two tasks at the same time, exists in the frontal cortex, demands for multi-tasking comes with many jobs.
4. Negotiate and display short term alongside long term goals. Watch the synergy of the groups’ brainpower narrow gaps between pressured positions where workers stand unaware of organizational vision, toward calmer places where workers gladly achieve targets they helped to create.
5. Connect past cynicism of workplace naysayers. Halt disdain for innovative ideas, that pops up when cynics rail against others’ efforts, and distrust motives of workers who differ. If you find yourself over on the darker side of life, free-falling with cynics where you work, consider ways to turn off that molecular switch in favor of healthier habits that more creative peers practice.
So how do you halt freefalls that tossed Rome and your organization into brainless routines and a diminished stature? What tactics would you add here to boost innovation and lead a culture of discovery where you work?
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Ellen, typically the cynic jumps in early to show why first suggestion won’t work well. I was just involved in an exchange for folks to suggest a name for a new community center. After the first person shared idea with the group, two jumped in almost immediately to show why it wouldn’t work well.After that many folks are fearful that their ideas aren’t good enough. It’s exactly why cynics can take away from creative ideas.It’s hard to create, but ever so easy to knock down.Cynics need to put their minds to bringing in their suggestions. It would be so much more productive.
Geoff, you make a great case for organizations that cut back, pare down and refuse to look forward in recession times. The successful groups, though, are making those long term goals that have them out at the cutting edges ahead of the pack.
Thanks for your inspiration to hold onto long term vision, as we’ll need the best firms there for post-recession growth!
#4 is right on, I feel like a lot of companies forget about the long term, or are willing to abandon it to accomplish something sooner.