I’m busy these days writing a manual for my new company, Kiln. Writing a technical document is a mixed blessing. It feels like you’re doing something that will provide value, that feels good, and — it’s often slow going. The manual is for a new innovation process which we’re calling FuseTrail. More about that in future posts, but as part of that effort I had some fresh thoughts about factors that impact innovation. I had all the usual suspects down, things like, respect for ideas, supportive culture, persistence, and talented people. I paused while writing and thought about what was stopping some of the organizations I’ve worked with — and it came to me — the obvious, Courage.
This will be a short post, but to elaborate a bit on what I mean by courage, I’ve listed these 11 kinds of courage an organization needs to creatively innovate:
- Courage to continue to work when results are a long distance away.
- Courage to deal with conflict on innovation teams.
- Courage to confront cynicism, satire, and cutting humour.
- Courage to make changes of all kinds.
- Courage to present bold new ideas.
- Courage to move into new areas for your business.
- Courage to try new methods to get you to better results.
- Courage to express ideas that aren’t politically correct.
- Courage to present to management ideas with far reaching consequences and risk.
- Courage to face the daunting task of developing a new technology, product, service, that’s outside your expertise, or comfort zone.
- Courage to confront the seemingly impossible.
Can you add to my list? I’m all ears. I’ll leave you with these two quotes:
“Creativity Takes Courage” — Henri Matisse.
“Integrity and Courage are part of creative effectiveness” Gregg Fraley in Jack’s Notebook
9 responses to “Creativity Takes Courage”
The courage to admit that its okay to want more….
Gregg
One of the first books I read about creativity was in the middle 70s:
COURAGE TO CREATE by Rollo May
I will find it, pull it off the shelf (wherever it is), knock the dust off and scan through my multi-colored highlighted overlinings and margin notes and see if I can find more forms of COURAGE for you.
BTW which blogger system do you use to create your blog?
Greg – organizations and their leaders must have the courage to confront prevailing orthodoxies and turn them on their head. This notion is confounding to most enterprises. The way things are made, shipped, sold, priced, consumed, stored, compared, etc. The way we decide, debate, resolve conflicts, chose and prioritize, etc. These become rigid and “impossible” to change. This drives for more of the same and elevates the “risk” of doing something differently. This also enables new, nimble and small competitors to fight asymmetrically and reframe the proposition. Glad to discuss – all my best – ags
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If I only had da noive!
Okay, this time for real…
Maybe this is included in your list… but there is a fear or inability to confront how it really is. It isn’t an elephant in the room, either… It isn’t as if “everyone in the company knows this” but are avoiding it.
It is more about completely ignoring a short-coming. Denial. Wishful thinking. Sugar coating. Almost like the joke of the way families deal with problems by sweeping them under the rug or just not talking about them…
Companies do this.
They don’t admit they fear risk, yet put risky things in their plans. Then they don’t do them.
They don’t admit their systems won’t handle the new process/idea. But they launch anyway and don’t understand why they didn’t make numbers.
They don’t address that their product isn’t remarkable, but act like it is and wonder why the sales team can’t meet goals.
Some companies don’t use the word “problem” to describe their problems. They call ’em opportunities… challenges… But by never admitting they have a problem, they never address the problem, and the problem lingers.
Courage to address problems?
Courage to look deep?
Courage to cut the bull, and address the hard questions?
Not sure what to call it.
Great observation Paul. Forgive the cliche, but Denial ain’t just a river in Jordan. This lack of courage to deal with reality is huge. As a former salesman I saw this in the ability to inflate one positive call into a “sure thing”. Euphoria gets in the way of effectiveness. The lack-of-remarkability is also something I’ve seen over and over. In the software industry there was a phrase I heard all the time to justify an average product “every product has warts.” Once this was said, nobody moved forward with ideas to make the product better. Thanks for your great comments.
And noive is key isn’t it? (Said in my best Curley of the Three Stooges voice…)
[…] courage. Creativity takes courage. Whereas creative decisions require courage, making fear based decisions that always lead to […]
The courage to face facts if your first idea isn’t working as you thought it would, and then to do whatever it takes to change tack and develop a better solution, midstream if necessary. This is Eric Maisel’s idea of fierce provisional commitment to your creative work..fierce because you must champion your ideas, and provisional because you need the courage to change them if you realise they need to take another form.