- Whether to mention a pregnancy in a job interview
- A possible meeting protocol
- What are an end-user's responsibilities?
- Another take on opening PCs, or not
- Getting some process going
- Selling a more open environment to management
- Running an effective meeting
- Licensing rules for virtual machines
- The ROI of metrics
- Legal challenges to virtual machines
December 08, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Learning from success without stifling innovation
Dear Bob ...
Nice column! ("Creating a learning organization," Keep the Joint Running, 11/26/2007). I hope you follow this up with some thoughts on how you can reward learning from success without stifling innovation. Somehow I think you will do that; otherwise, why the teaser at the end?
I'm actually less worried about stifling innovation than I am with people not learning from success. Most of the technical people I've worked with like to create "new" things.
- Teasered
Dear Teasered ...
The short answer is "balance," and balance isn't something that comes easily out of formal methodologies or techniques.
I think the core of the solution starts with the understanding that innovation isn't complete when a new idea is proven to work. It's complete when a new idea has been adopted and made part of the enterprise, whether it's a new product successfully brought to market, new software successfully implemented in the business, or a new business practice that spreads from the division that first thought of it to the entire business.
It's also my opinion … and I have nothing to back this up with other than my sense of how people work … that innovation isn't possible unless everyone thinks of themselves as being on the same side. It's a whole lot more palatable for the Illinois branch office to adopt something developed by the North Carolina branch office when they both figure it's their company against its competitors than when they each figure Illinois is competing with North Carolina.
One other thought on the subject: Innovation is easiest when everyone in the company loves new ideas. You need a culture in which employees are constantly encouraged to find better ways to do things - not because what they're doing now is bad but because the company leadership is confident there's always an even better way. You need one in which employees are more likely to be excited about possibilities than about finding flaws.
Achieving that sort of culture is extraordinarily difficult. And once you achieve it, you've immediately created a new problem: Employees who are more excited about possibilities than about finding flaws are more likely to adopt and promote seriously flawed ideas.
Which brings us back to the need for balance.
- Bob
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Posted by Bob Lewis on December 8, 2007 10:09 AM
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