The Top 10 Reasons Why Your CEO Sabotages Innovation
There's a huge gap between CEOs saying they want their companies to innovate and actually acting in a way consistent with what they say.
This lack of congruence drives internal change agents crazy, catatonic, or out the door.
At the very least, it makes them cranky and unwilling to "go the extra yard" required to turn their inspired ideas into reality.
And so, as a public service to all of you out there whose CEOs are not walking the talk, here's our TOP TEN reasons why not.
After nodding your head and chuckling to yourself, choose one or two, align with some fellow change agents, and kick start the process of doing something about it.
"If not you, who? If not now, when?"
10. Innovation sparks dissonance and discomfort.
9. Innovation increases the amount of seeming failures.
8. Results only show up long-term.
7. More meetings.
6. CEOs conserve resources. Innovation requires more resources.
5. Innovation flies in the face of analysis.
6. CEOs assume the Board will not be impressed.
5. Imbalance of right-brain and left-brain thinking.
4. The perceived absence of time.
3. Over-reliance on cost-cutting and incremental improvement.
2. Inability to enroll a committed team of champions.
1. Insufficient conviction that innovation will make a difference.
PS: This list is only a conversation starter, folks. Speak up! Pitch in! Tell me your top ten reasons and I will publish version 2.0 next month.
Posted by Mitch Ditkoff at June 5, 2009 11:47 PM
Comments
Yes! Excellent post.
I would also add that really fostering and driving innovation requires leaders to do a lot more of the "soft skill" stuff than they are comfortable doing. Innovation means listening. Innovation means ambiguity at times. Innovation means asking big open-ended questions. Innovation means relaxing our reliance onj hierarchy and authority. Innovation means that it is not all about me (the CEO).
Thanks!
-joe
Posted by: joe gerstandt ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 10, 2009 04:34 PM
Hey Mitch,
Well articulated! I must confess though that I don't agree to point 6. To me innovation isn't about more resources. It's about resourcefulness. And the simple solution to this tricky challenge very often is to kick start an intervention starting from the top and cascading it across levels.
Makes sense? Cheers - Sujit
Posted by: sujitsumitran at June 11, 2009 05:48 AM
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