One way to deal with a common innovation strategy barrier - fear of change and new ideas – is to disguise new ideas as your team develops and implements them.
Yes, you got that right.
If your organization or other important audiences that will feel the impact of your new ideas truly fear change, it may be best to make your ideas appear less new, less frightening, and less like change than they might normally seem.
Innovation Strategy in Disguise
For a quick innovation strategy inspiration along these lines, this video is an example of doing something that doesn't fit, but making it seems as if it does.
An Innovator’s Prayer for Humility
As an innovation leader, pursuing an innovation strategy in disguise requires a different perspective. Thinking further about the leadership qualities it takes to successfully engage an innovation strategy in disguise reminded me of a litany of humility I read frequently. It seeks help relinquishing our desires for the things most of us want.
Using the litany of humility as an inspiration, here is an Innovator’s Prayer for Humility to gain the perspectives to make successful change happen without seeking the notoriety and credit for it.
- Give us the purity of motive that the new ideas and innovations we want to pursue are truly for the benefit of customers and the organization.
- Give us the ability to identify the people and resources we will need to create change.
- Reduce our need for credit for generating new ideas and moving them forward.
- Reduce our need for overt direction so we can imagine and improvise the needed changes without asking for permission or guidance.
- Give us the energy to work early and late hours when fewer people are liable to pay attention to our efforts.
- Reduce our organizational visibility to allow us to make progress without calling unnecessary attention to our work.
- Give us the foresight to move forward with needed changes that take a long time to implement because we are innovating unconventionally.
- Increase our skills in innovating through trial and error, real-time learning, and integrating our tough lessons into future success.
- Increase the opportunity for others to see the innovation as their own in order to take credit for and support its success.
- Give us patience to wait without comment if people never notice new ideas as their own.
- Reduce our need to call attention to and seek credit for the innovation our team accomplished.
- Give us a sense of personal consolation if people never notice that new ideas have changed things.
You may think this innovation strategy is nuts. Trust me though: it can work.
Sometimes the only way to make positive change happen is to make it happen WITHOUT calling attention to what you are doing. While we have done this successfully as an innovation strategy, it takes a different mindset to do it with honest motives and a willingness to abandon your need for others celebrating you for innovating once it is successful.
Call this a prayer or call it a checklist for an innovation strategy in disguise. Either way, if you are trying to hide innovation to be able to innovate, these are twelve things to pave the way for it happening!
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The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations innovate successfully by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Contact us at info@brainzooming.com or call us at 816-509-5320 to learn how we can help you enhance your brand’s innovation strategy and implementation success.
