Stun-gunning Your Organisation into Inventiveness

Critical Factor of Innovative Organisations No. 8

History has revealed many stories about organisations moving into long periods of stagnation and inertia after enjoying years of growth and prosperity. Many organisational scientists have attributed this condition to the organisations’ failure to innovate, adapt and transform to match the evolutionary and disruptive changes in the environment, markets and stakeholders’ expectations.

Organisations which have found a way to keeping their workforce stun-gunned against complacency are able to insure themselves against this malaise.

Humans always want to avoid conditions of atrophy by staying within or reaching for homeostasis environments. In a world full of uncertainties, the unknowns bring about great discomforts. These cause the person to tense up, which is negative and exhausting. He wants to reduce or remove this tension because he recognises that an environment in homeostasis brings about satisfaction and happiness. This motivates him to recognise that new solutions have to be found, and the old ways, which no longer work, have to be replaced.

However, not all stun-guns produce the intended effects. Some are not blunt enough to push the organisation out of its fixed ways. Others are too blunt that the over-stunned organisation implodes onto itself. Innovative organisations differentiate
themselves from the ordinary ones by being able to find the right mix of stun-guns that help grow the organisation continuously.

Innovative organisations fully understand this human phenomenon and use a number of unique stun-guns - policies, methods, processes, and systems, to keep their workforce in a challenging but supportive atrophied state so that these generate the needed forces and energies to keep their organisations innovative, adaptable and renewing.

Here are the links for the other critical factors of innovative organisations:

• No 1. Purpose Driven Organisation

• No 2. Understanding the Demonic Nature of Vision

• No 3. Risks of Playing No Games & Being Off the Board

• No 4. Fearless Organisation Environment

• No 5. Openness is in the Eradication of Fantasies

• No 6. System of Authentic Sharing

• No 7. Human Resource Investment Is Not About Spending But Creating Opportunities for Learning

• No 9. Focus on the True Purpose of Celebrating Success and Contribution

• No 10. Fully Appreciating the True Meaning of an Innovative Team

This article was 1st written on 7 July 2010.
Copyright 2010. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.