I read this blog post by Mike Shipulski which resonated really well with me. His post is as below:
You cant innovate when,
Your company believes everything should always go as planned.
– Mike Shipulski on his blog
You still have to do your regular job.
The project’s completion date is disrespectful of the work content.
Your company doesn’t recognise the difference between complex and complicated.
The team is not given the tools, training, time and a teacher.
You’re asked to generate 500 ideas but you’re afraid no one will do anything with them.
You’re afraid to make a mistake.
You’re afraid you’ll be judged negatively.
You’re afraid to share unpleasant facts.
You’re afraid the status quo will be allowed to squash the new ideas, again.
You’re afraid the company’s proven recipe for success will stifle new thinking.
You’re afraid the project team will be staffed with a patchwork of part time resources.
You’re afraid you’ll have to compete for funding against the existing business units.
You’re afraid to build a functional prototype because the value proposition is poorly defined.
Project decisions are consensus-based.
Your company has been super profitable for a long time.
The project team does not believe in the project.
Here are some more reasons I think you cant innovate when:
- Your organisation is only interested in ideas which have the potential to bring in big bucks (read at least half a billion dollars).
- Your culture names and shames the teams that attempt to try something new.
- Line managers are not innovation champions.
- The management team shoots the messenger delivering bad news.
- A new project can never be started without approvals from at least 3 different people.
- The culture of the organisation is all about governance.
- No one codifies the learnings from the different projects, successful or otherwise.
- If the management team doesn’t realise the difference between being lucky and being right.
- If the management only talks about all the great stuff that is happening all around us and avoid talking about failures and the difficult conversations.
Can you think of more reasons why a company cant innovate?
