The 7 Laws of Sustainable Innovation: Law 6
By Bruce Wade
Law 6 – Become agile in your approach to risk and opportunities and act with innovational intent
The larger and heavier the ship, the longer it takes to stop or change direction. The same can be said for large corporations, government agencies and autocratic hierarchal organisations. All these create a slow response to risks or opportunities, and as they say, only the early bird gets the worm. Second place is just that: second and not first – no worm.
Creating an environment within your organisation that facilitates agile processes that model rapid response to issues without derailing the current status quo is something that not many large organisations are able to do. The layers of hierarchy and bureaucratic red tape leaves them lagging and wanting in the agile department.
Law 6 encourages not only an agile response but also innovational intent. Your response should be designed to not only fight the fire but design a process to make it better once the fire is out that both prevents and improves. Too many organisations seem adamant about creating witch hunts, disciplinary hearings to justify their response and never getting to fix the actual problem that created the issue in the first place.
Similarly, opportunities come and go long before large organisations can even identify, let alone react to them because of their multi-layered management style and reporting.
It is best to manage an organisation with as flat and empowered structure as is possible. Allow everyone in the team to identify and speak up and give credit where it is due. Protect whistle-blowers and reward opportunity seekers.
Adapt and respond to risk with innovations intent is just that. It is a team sport that creates a better environment, a better organisation and more sustainability.
