Today most executives seem to be time-starved. They are constantly reacting to daily events, for fix focusing and fixing short-term performance. This applies to the top executive down to the most junior.
It just seems to me they simply don’t have this luxury to think.
Technology is rapidly taking over this thinking role. We are being deluged by social media that constantly become smarter on your clicks to give you the information to help you in your daily lives.
Yet it is not helping us to really think, we often are simply not connecting the dots, we are chasing the moving dots.
We should think more about the gaps, the issues, and most importantly for us, the implication. The more we react and don’t think things through and apply them to our situation, our context, our situation the more we are more than likely going to foul up somewhere along the way.
This time-starved environment has real implications for innovation
If we don’t sit down and think through issues and implications of our present performance around innovation, how can we close the gaps and improve it? We just simply don’t seem to have a more systematic, connected roadmap within our thinking that points the way to the improving longer-term as we keep doing this ‘reacting’ only.
We have such a limited amount of time to pause, evaluate, or redesign. We equally don’t feel capable to simply assign this over, even to outsiders to help. We are far too challenged and driven, often far to inbreed into thinking “our solutions can only be the only solutions to our problems”.
Often I am caught in finding better solutions to this trap. As an external consultant or advisor, I see a mistake, upon mistake happening. It is not from a lack of trying or a lack of working within the abilities or situation, it is often that lack of alternatives that might be considered. We simply press on regardless.
All in the valley of Death, Rode the six hundred:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns’ he said:
Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
For today’s “valley of innovation death,” we could rewrite this The Charge Of The Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
“Into the valley of innovation death, I pushed six hundred ideas, Forward the innovator!
We need more Innovation, Charge with all your energy and might the CEO said.
……Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, and theirs but to do & die, Into the valley of Innovation Death”
Tell me, does it really need to be like this?
Often there is no time for a thoughtful analysis, a depth of thinking, a platform of knowledge and connectors to bounce this off. Yet there is a growing need to discuss this, the risk of wrongly innovating, of dealing with increased failures all seems to call for solutions to help but where? Where do I quickly go to gain some innovation knowledge or insight, as I simply have no time to sift through it all.
We are often faced with the death of a thousand cuts.
Often that precious lack of dedicated time to investigate, to question, to deepen understanding, simply to relate too and interpret innovation is a key missing ingredient. This is a where the external perspective can fill critical gaps; it can become the extra resource, that runs in parallel.
I believe it is the time where the value of external, dedicated innovation thinking has a place within the time-starved innovators thinking, it might help provide a more comprehensive delivery of innovation understanding and plugging individual gaps by delivering thinking that bridges many of those current gaps I seem to find.
Is there space for an “innovation thinking guru?” I believe so, do you? If so……..hello?
