“How can an organization encourage innovative ideas and allow them to move through the system? The answer is that you need to create little pockets of chaos within the larger organization.” -Ori Brafman via The Chaos Imperative
Rigid, regimented routines and strict, controlled structures still epitomize the majority of our modern organizations. Our time is proficiently planned, programmed and agenda-ized for the greatest efficiency. Even if there were a little left over, it sure wouldn’t be wasted on fanciful ideas of imagination, curiosity and creativity. Those ideals live in the land of the dreamers, not the doers. Remember, if you can’t weigh, measure, or account for it, well, you know the story.
Unfortunately, our organizational talk seldom seems to match our organizational walk.
Let’s be honest, in most instances the mantra “think different” sounds great, until someone does. We love the concept of creative, innovative thinkers, until we come face to face with their ideas. Especially when they push up against the power and pull of the organizational status quo. That’s when it gets real. That’s when it no longer seems easy or sounds as good.
If we believe that we are going to create more creative and innovative organizations by being more open to a few out of the box ideas that get bantered around in a meeting, then we will find ourselves deeply deceived. We will find ourselves all aboard a slow train to insignificance quicker than we ever imagined.
If not already…
Building more creative and innovative organizations will require some very intentional shifts. We are going to have to infuse some pockets of creative destruction and disruption. And that won’t be at all comfortable, but very necessary in a world that is finding ways to take what is new today and make it irrelevant by tomorrow.
The problem is that we never think it is going to be us until the rug gets pulled out from under us. Until it is too late…
In a world that is looking to upend the latest and greatest, you have to be willing to constantly disrupt your best ideas, and your best work. Welcome to the exponential economy. It’s a new world and it’s shifting, daily.
Without some deep dive changes and intentional shifts, our organizations will ultimately become the graveyards where good ideas go to die.
DCulberhouse 