People often wonder; ‘What drives innovation? What drives this spirit?’ The problem is that those who’re always asking these questions are so committed to the past. They hold onto all these things pulled from the past. They love the world to continue working the way it used to work. You, we always say, Innovation, the innovative culture starts with losing attachment to the past.
Those who invent the future forget the past. Almost everything you thought was true, imagine all of it is wrong. Imagine that how you thought the market worked is wrong. Imagine that the things you thought drove customers are wrong. Imagine that your current market segmentations are wrong. Start from that platform, that basis then dare to invent the future.
Yet, those in the C-Suite keep missing this. You find CEOs so attached to how things worked in the market 20 years ago when they were in the field sales team. As a leader, you must be comfortable that going forward you’re not the source of wisdom, or insight, you are simply there to clear obstacles for your teams, to refine their thoughts and give them velocity and direction. Gone are the days of the god-head leader. Those days are long past. You don’t create innovative companies in this style, instead, you take them into holes too deep and too wide to dig themselves out.
What worked yesterday won’t work today. Hold that thought to heart and you will have an innovative spirit.
Photo by Alan Bowman on Unsplash