Resistance Is Futile
If you're new around these parts, I just want to say how much I appreciate your dropping by! Oh, and you may want to subscribe to my feed. Thanks, and a tip o' the hat to ya!
.edsel failure.
Originally uploaded by tEdGuY49.
From today’s Business Week Online is a story that resonates with a previous entry concerning the deliberate making of mistakes.
“How Failure Breeds Success” talks about how true innovation is dependent upon those willing to take big risks – and make big mistakes. The story and accompanying slide show identify a veritable Who’s Who of very public “Uh-Oh’s” that will likely bring a rueful smile and a sad shake of the head. Everyone makes mistakes; even those big, smart corporations who should have known better. It’s just that some mistakes are rather more public than others (can you say, “New Coke?”).
One company, Gore-Tex, identifies a formula that most of us, including yours truly, will have trouble shifting toward – yet shift we must. When it comes to taking risks, most people set out to prove their expectations are correct. But what’s needed is to try to prove themselves wrong. Why? Because an early focus on flaws leads to lessons learned early, an eventual key to success.
But the point is that true innovation requires us to be willing to make mistakes, and that’s something business is going to have to really come to grips with. So I wonder: after spending so much time with efforts to “get it right”, have we become afraid to stick our necks out?
I predict: resistance.
Granted, that’s something of a no-brainer. After all, since when have most people truly embraced change? The normal state of affairs is that people hate change!
No matter the merit, getting most companies to actually innovate can be quite a challenge. Sure, most of them talk a good game, but meanwhile, down in the trenches, workers tremble at the thought of suggesting a new idea that doesn’t work out. Thus innovation becomes stifled at the grass roots level.
But luckily, resistance to change is, well, futile. Changing markets, changing demographics, changing political landscapes – these and many other factors all contribute to the need for more rapid innovation. To survive, businesses must come to grips with the reality of taking risks and making mistakes. It’s do or die time, folks!
I also predict: you WILL be assimilated.
You know, it would just be absolutely finer than a frogs hair if you would subscribe to my RSS feed!
2 responses so far
Middle Zone Musings is a comfortable place to stop, have a cup of coffee, swap a few stories and share practical ideas for the real world. I don't ask for much, just a bit of your brain every now and then. Have a seat, take a load off, and relax...
Thanks, climberreader, I believe for most organizations, at least initially, the financial cost is the main hurdle. However, the “deliberate mistakes” concept is a valid way to help overcome the financial cost, because it can provide a way to learn sooner, and thus more cheaply than ever before.
Social networking CAN help. In fact, it’s almost scary to think of the many ways it can introduce positive change. (I worry about the toolbox simile though - “If all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail…”)
It is certainly one way of speeding up the knowledge transfer process within the corporation.
Interesting. But “change” is really the normal state. This is not a new concept. I think it was Aristotle’s concept that we are always in a state of becomming. We define ourselves by the passage of time, etc. The trick, I think, is the perceptible velocity of the change. In fact, when things appear too stagnant, nobody is happy either. Of course, the real sticking point, as you suggest, is the cost of innovation, both financial and psycological. What’s the trick to making change cost-effective? Perhaps it’s the use of social networking.
Anyway…good and interesting read.