Kill Your Company for Innovation
Every business leader agrees that creativity and innovation is important. Telling your employees that you want to hear their ideas, but not telling them you will consider any of them keeps your company’s status quo just where it is. Companies know they have to be creative and innovative in order to encourage their teams to embrace change.
There are many pieces to the innovation puzzle and they will come together differently for each organization. “Risk-taking is central to innovation”, says futurist and change expert Lisa Bodell. Powerful techniques can help you Kill Your Business and then reinvent it for greater innovation.
Don’t Let Corporate Antibodies Kill Your Best Ideas
The corporate antibodies of your company don’t want things to change as they police, prevent and protect the company from moving forward. They like to stay complacent and believe “Everything is fine”. They are secure in their job and don’t want that to change.
Too many organizations are “stuck in the land of status quo”. The very structures you put in place to help your organization grow are what now hold you back. This is the time when you need a new approach to think and change your organization. If not, you may find your competition take over what’s left of what you built.
If employee ideas fail to be accepted, this is one place you need to look at carefully for why your company is not moving forward.
As leader of your company you don’t want to see your clients and customers leave yet this is what is happening. Your competitors win while you lose. Something has to give.
Kill Dumb Rules
Everyone has the power to innovate. Everyone needs to realize they are creative also.
Any rules that stop or slow innovation needs to either be killed or changed. Encourage employees to regularly seek these rules out. Identify one rule you want to kill and why.
Start Asking Thought-Provoking Questions
Start re-thinking, question and take some risks to get you in the right direction.
Asking the same types of questions and generating the same ideas over and over again. You need to reverse the way you think. By asking questions you shake people up to start thinking. This in-turn has people to generate ideas that are not the ordinary routine kinds of things. Otherwise, people will continue to go about their ordinary day and not work so much.
Challenge Assumptions and Beliefs
Brilliant ideas employees generate could set your company on the road to thriving beyond your expectation.
The problem with assumptions and beliefs is that they typically go unchallenged. You need to get out of your way by challenging them. This is what stops you from moving forward. Don’t dismiss the notion that innovation will have no impact on your company. You have the best resource assets right in front of you- Your Employees. Take advantage of them.
Start changing your assumptions and beliefs about your company. Shift the mindset of your employees for greater creative thinking. Question your company and how you conduct business. Ask yourself, what inhibits innovation in your company?
Collaboration is the Catalyst for Innovation
To get an innovative idea off the ground, organizations must establish create an environment where employees and customers can develop fresh ideas, encounter new ways of thinking, and share feedback. Since most change start from the middle, your teams need to cooperate well enough to work on what change they see that needs to be improved.
Start removing unnecessary red tape and begin rethinking your company. Now is the time to address your strengths, weaknesses what’s working and what’s not, and anything that gets in your way from generating ideas for creative and innovative changes. Look to Kill Your Company in order to reinvent your company to thrive beyond survival mode.
Take it to the next level and start an innovative revolution