I met Adrian Martinez at an internal management meeting for our client, LeSaint Logistics. Adrian has incredible creative thinking skills.
How was I so sure about his creative thinking skills?
Well, get a load of this example!
He is a manager with LeSaint, and he faced a challenge. His team needed to move a racking system from one part of the warehouse to another. A wall separates the two areas. The racking system is 23 feet tall. The door between the two sections is 8 feet tall.
You can see the problem.
The natural solution would be to disassemble the racking system into its component parts and move those through the door. That is a good solution if it were not for a second challenge.
The second challenge is that it takes 2 hours to disassemble and 2 hours to reassemble each section of the racking system. Altogether, it would take 3 weeks of labor to move the racking system using that strategy.
What would you do?
Adrian looked at the racking system and the wall. He applied his creative thinking skills and came up with a solution that was pure extreme creativity.
After exactly measuring the racking systems, he cut a hole in the wall to allow the racking systems to roll right through what was previously a barrier!
He didn't do that without a challenge. People told him repeatedly he was crazy and would get in trouble.
He did it anyway.
Based on the number of positive shout outs management and co-workers gave him during the company’s management meeting, it was clearly a solid decision! They are celebrating Adrian as a rock star for this move, his creative problem solving, and his dedication to building a legitimate sense of family among his team.
A half-hearted leader would never get to this decision even though it fully exploits the first core value at LeSaint: creativity. A leader unable to look beyond what others would typically see as a boundary and roadblock would never reach this decision.
Cutting a hole in the wall is a move rooted in extreme creativity.
Congratulations, Adrian, for making a bold creative move and getting everything patched up already! – Mike Brown
Facing Innovation Barriers? We Can Help!
Are you facing organizational innovation barriers related to:
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The fear of change?
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Scarce resources?
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Limited innovation perspectives?
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An overly-internal focus?
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Multiple innovation challenges?
