No Straight Path to Innovation
I was out for a walk this weekend and spent time thinking about a client who is trying to innovate their way out of a decades-old problem. They are growing impatient because they can’t yet see the end point — the solution. This project is taking some unexpected twits and turns that are slowing them down. They have figured out what isn’t working, but have yet to see a clear path to a solution.
This week, they were ready to give up.
It reminds me of the Thomas Edison quote:
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
On this walk, I saw some large shrubs that struck me as what the experience of innovating has been like for them.
They have an idea of something that could be — or could be better. It starts as a seed of an idea, sprouting out of the ground. Sometimes that seed is joined by other seeds — all climbing in the same direction and sharing space.
This front part of innovation growth is messy and unpredictable. They are moving in all directions trying to figure out the best path. But they are tangled up right now. Some ideas need pruning away to make room for stronger ideas. The right path forward is unclear.
In this knotted up, messy space is where many people give up. But this is where the base is formed, and where your idea gets it strength. Where your thinking is changed. Where you see something you haven’t previously considered.
Paul Pyrz, the President of LeaderShape, is always inviting us to “stay in the mess” and not run from it or try to smooth it over. The mess is where the REAL work gets done and true change happens.
But organizations often never even enter the mess, let alone stay in it once they get there. Like my client, they are on auto-pilot and keep doing the same things over and over, until one day they wake up and find a competitor innovated them into irrelevance.
If you can keep your team focused on the benefits of the desired outcome, and reinforce patience to work through all the various phases of innovation, you can come out of the mess with a clear path supported by a strong foundation of having done the hard work to get you there.
The shrubs I saw on my walk were over 9 feet tall. While tangled up at the base, they had grown up toward the sun, straight and tall, providing the privacy that the owner envisioned when they were planted. The owner didn’t look at the knotted-up mess at the bottom a couple of years into their growth and chop them down because they weren’t perfect. He had patience and waited to see what they would become. And in the end, they became what they were meant to be.
I reminded my client that if the challenge you are working on is messy, you have to stay in that space. It means you are doing work that matters and creating change with long-term benefits. Don’t give up.
So if you are in the mess and struggling, know that the innovation you are working on is close at hand…just keep walking and follow the path.
