Musings at Altitude

I’ve spoken to several innovators over the last couple of weeks (aren’t we all in some ways, innovators?), and each has talked about the things they have had to overcome because of bureaucracy to get their innovative ideas and concepts out in the open and legitimately assessed and implemented by those who could gain most from the innovations!  As they talked, I kept thinking back to that amusement park game, Whack the Groundhog!  The bureaucracy is the beast with the mallet, and the young innovators are those groundhogs popping up out of holes with great ideas and great smiles, sometimes not knowing what’s fixin’ to hit them and other times hoping desperately to pop up and launch their idea and then drop back in their holes before the attack comes!

For innovators, every day is some form of groundhog day, and unfortunately for innovators in big time bureaucracies, they pop up with smiles and then crash back into their holes under the whack of the bureaucratic mallet!

We need to love the innovators.  We need to shield them from bureaucratic attacks and allow those contagious smiles and great new ideas to burst forth.

That’s how we accelerate growth.  That’s how we identify efficiencies in business operations.  That’s how we constantly change for the better and make every single person in the organization a participant in the quest for organizational perfection.

PS.  I found the picture on a web site promoting Groundhog Day.  Those are some amusing and obsessed people!