In my 2013 marathon training, I remember the specific turning point where I began to hit my stride, and when my runs seemed to flow. What had seemed so difficult became natural and I began to get creative with the routes I took and the distances I ran.
Innovation is seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. ~ Dr. Albert Szent-Györgyi
I varied the terrain, the inclines and the declines, and explored what I didn’t know, I didn’t know, about my physical capabilities. I pushed through whatever I needed to push through, and was surprised each time as my body responded positively.
I’m seeing the same traits in the business owners I’ve been working with. They are getting creative, resourceful , and innovative, resulting in them also hitting their stride. For some, they have birthed ideas out of crisis and conflict, where in ordinary times, such changes would have occurred as too difficult.
Shifting from we can’t to we will and determined to defy the odds, they are reinventing themselves and their leadership.
In the process of shifting from we cant to we will, and when business owners are determined to defy the odds, they reinvent themselves and their leadership.
It’s remarkable to behold, and at times surreal, as I listen to their stories of teams pulling together, setting their differences aside, having difficult conversations and sharing their triumphs and tears. Boardrooms have gotten noisy with the voices of creative people, who ordinarily might have remained silent.
Leaders are mostly listening. Insecurity is now a luxurious time-waster, and the difference between boom or bust. Tapped out of their own ideas, leaders find themselves in uncomfortable, transformative tension, listening to the voices and perspectives of people they wouldn’t ordinarily include in problems such as these.
Collaboration is the new old buzzword. The opportunity to reinvent and redesign how you interact is always available. Perhaps it’s a human state to think we can’t before we are thrust into situations where we have to, and find ourselves doing the impossible of leaning into possibility beyond our wildest imagination.
Crisis and conflict causes transformation, stimulates innovation, and provides access to what we don’t know, we don’t know.
What do you think would be possible for your company, if you knew how to harness the energy in conflict to stimulate innovation?
“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.” Margaret Heffernan
If your company is stuck or plateaued, consider how your meetings go. How do your leaders interact? Are they stuck in habitual patterns of interaction and thinking that keeps them on the surface of their interactions? Or are they able to quickly discern the invisible dialogue, the bottom half of the infinite depths where innovation and creativity exist?
Unveil the invisible dialogue of your company culture, join the Bomb Proof Executive Program today.
It’s time.
