Recently I saw an article on why innovation isn't working as a solution for the troubles most companies find themselves in these days and there was something about it that struck a chord with me.
I teach about a wide variety of subjects in the business domain, and one of them is about innovation. The first clue I have that innovation isn't an option for a lot of companies is that most companies don't invest in real innovation in the first place, or this would likely be my most popular course by sales. As it is I get rave reviews from the few companies that request it each year, but the phone isn't ringing off the hook from other businesses for that course the way it is for my Advanced Project Management Expert courses or my courses on Marketing Automation, for example. And there's a good reason for that.
Business managers are 'chicken.'
It's ok, and it's entirely understandable. Business managers are usually adults, and like most adults it has been established through repeated studies, they have a greater tendency to fear change. Change often costs people their jobs, change usually involves extra work, breaking routines, changes in your work environment and how you go about your day. Let's face it- change scares the crap out of most people. And the word 'innovate' is just a fancy way of saying that things need to change, right?
So why would any manager willingly thrust training, processes, and changes onto themselves and their staff without any guarantee that the results of the innovation will be a smash hit?
It's a fair question. And here's the honest answer: survival. Without innovation the business will begin to deteriorate naturally as it gets outmaneuvered and outperformed by other businesses that are innovating, or by a marketplace of consumers that move on to something new that obviates the need for that product or service in the first place. In other words, sooner or later the business that stops innovating dies.
That really makes it a clear analogy then- innovation is a fundamental organ of business, one that most businesses abuse badly, mistreat and malnourish, and then have the audacity to wonder why the business is failing.
The clearest symptom to tell you if your business has started its death rattle is to ask yourself these questions:
- Has my organization gotten so involved in petty inner politics and empire building that there are any good ideas that are going to waste because they can't get a fair hearing by people who could act on them?
- Have the ideas we HAVE been implementing gone through the process and come out the other side properly ready to hit the ground running, or have we hit major snags because we were unprepared for something?
- When was the last time we came up with something WE honestly thought was cool or exciting?
If any of those questions give you a feeling that there is too much inertia to put a good idea forward in your company, then you know your company is doomed and it's just a matter of 'when'.
Just like the human body, your entire organization needs basic resources and fuel to survive. For us it's air and nutrition; for businesses it's raw materials and human effort. In both cases those resources need to be circulated to every major organ for the organism to live and flourish. Any organ that doesn't get what it needs becomes ill and deteriorates until it fails, causing death.
We all know a poor diet, no exercise, and high stress will lead to an early grave for humans. Suffocating management, no applied resources, and high stress will kill a business in exactly the same way.
Want to know why your business can't innovate, then?
It's the same reason people fail at maintaining their health- a combination of apathy and fear. With more than 60% of Americans registering as having an unhealthy weight, is there much need to study why more than 86.4% of Americans are dissatisfied with their current jobs before we come to the conclusion that people are every bit as scared and disinterested in pushing the envelope of change? Apathy and fear will be found at the root of that study, and I can tell you that without needing to get a government research grant and spending two years in focus group testing to get there.
So if the symptoms are the same, the consequences are the same, and the solutions are very similar too, it may not be algebraic proof, but there is a least strong corollary evidence to show that apathy and fear are getting in the way of getting good ideas to improve businesses across America.
Will your business 'get healthy' through increased innovation or will it wait for the inevitable cardiac arrest some random day in the not so distant future?
