Innovation happens !
When the culture in an organization, to a reasonable extent, is tolerant of failures and enable its members to learn out of the failures, willingness to experiment, try-out new ways, take risks...etc will flourish probably resulting in worthwhile innovation.
All efforts/experiments need not result in worthwhile innovation. But some amount of new ideas/thinking will emerge out of it. Sharing and documenting them will help to start at a different level.
All the more, at the individual level, creative ideas flourishes in the thought processes of an individual who is either "Lazy" or capable of "Lying" (think of the time when you have asked someone why a particular task assigned to him/her is not yet finished) or who "Love" someone or something (including work or the organization). These three "L"s spark lot of creativity and some may lead to innovation.
Tru DO KHAC • asked...
Senthil,
Would such a writing (...of a mission statement) include "the employee is fully entitled to Lie, be Lazy and Love (whom or what ?), the means justifying the end ?
Senthil Responds:
I add my best wishes to all of you for a year of meaningful interaction, collaboration and learning.
It is a psychological fact that people who are conformists find it difficult to think differently as they tend to follow established pattern. It is the non-conformists who come out with new way of thinking - some of which may immediately or at a latter stage, turn out to be worthwhile idea and when pursued become a successful innovation. In that context, non-conformists like people who lie, lazy and are in love are capable of generating ideas - to give excuses (like putting blame on someone/something), to make life easier, or to exaggerate simple things into something great. However carefully recruited organizations do have such type of people. I may not put it in a mission statement as '"the employee is fully entitled to Lie, be Lazy and Love .....).
But your comment has given me an idea. Perhaps, I can put it as (if I MUST put it in a mission statement),
"we acknowledge the creative potential of some of our employees who may be Lying, Lazy and in Love, and use their potential for generating new ideas for innovation" !!
Would like to add few of the presentation points of Tom Peters (available in his website)-
"Our business needs a massive transfusion of talent, and talent,I believe, is most likely to be found among non-conformists, dissenters and rebels.” (David Ogilvy)
"We cannot get a technologically innovative place unless it’s open to weirdness, eccentricity and difference.”... and
" Somewhere in your organization, groups of people are already doing things differently and better. To create lasting change, find these areas of positive deviance and fan the flames.(Richard Tanner Pascale & Jerry Sternin, “Your Company’s Secret Change Agents,” HBR).
Thanks for the clarification sought which I had almost missed which provided me to think little more into what I have written.
Let me go back to the starting line in my posting....
"INNOVATION HAPPENS" !!
I believe in it. The culture in an organization should be able to recognize it, encourage it, use it for either 'incremental' or 'breakthrough' innovation - and should NOT kill it.
Instead of trying to find a structured way to build that culture, let each of us innovate methods to allow it to emerge. ..And what works in one culture may not work in another culture.
My Additions on January 4, 2011:
Response to Karthikeyan Arumugathandavan
I enjoyed going thru the list. A list of practical "Need-to-do"s for promoting a culture of innovation in organizations be it a technical production oriented or a marketing or an IT/ITES or a service organization. The last point needs more attention - many time organizations suffer due to "false consensus" during the discussions where people agree immediately to some ideas without thinking it through and later when it becomes a failure on implementation blame the idea and the idea-giver. They forget that they have agreed to it earlier. (For more details pl refer : “The Abilene Paradox” by Jerry B. Harvey).
Add on to @Kirk Rheinlander
Good point, well said. This 'shooting down of ideas' is yet another strong barrier for developing a culture of innovation in organizations. I call it as "IDEACIDE" - killing ideas when they are born.
Let the idea be born, process it from various angles and decide its potentials before discarding it. In fact, I would suggest, no idea should be discarded permanently.. it needs to be captured along with the discussion points and the reasons for not using it currently and documented. Perhaps at some point of time in the future when the environment has changed 'that' idea might become a valid and valuable one. And it can be taken up for application with appropriate modifications to the changed situations. Mohanakrishnan's points 20 (Capture knowledge within the organization) & 21 (Create space and time for new opportunities >and ideas< to incubate) probably speak about these aspects.
"Knowledge may be limited but Imagination is not".
Keep imagining !!
