Squirrel! And yet another shiny, blinky opportunity has hijacked you team. All prior initiatives’ luster has been lost, as well as the experience of ownership by the team members who initiated them.
Building a culture of innovation sounds brilliant, exciting and cutting-edge. Yet innovative, new, cool initiatives will kill your culture if they keep your team from completing on current commitments. Those new initiatives become current commitments – meaning nothing ever gets accomplished, completed, DONE. No finish lines are crossed. No celebration is had. Just a bunch of dehydrated bodies lying on the road at mile 23 – their water reallocated to the sparkly fresh runner at the starting line.
Burnout is prevalent when innovation overrides follow-through.
If you’re like me where you love being creative, innovative and seizing new opportunities with all sorts of incredible possibilities – hit the pause button. Just for a moment. And ask: Where do we need to be disciplined to follow-through on and sustain what we’ve already started – and WHY did we start it in the first place?
Getting you and your team present to the “why” will not only reground you in your commitment, it will revive the inspiration and motivation that existed when you started.
Building a culture of innovation is useless without a culture of completion.
Instead of simply lighting matches, build a bonfire to dance around with your team!
PS: Also ask, what projects do we need to let go that no longer serve our organization? This is also a form of completion. Instead of leaving undone work hanging over you, powerfully choose to leave it incomplete.
Team Building/Culture Building Activity:
Within this same vein, we’ve built for you a simple yet powerful, one-page Interdependency Awareness Filter for Big Initiatives. Why? Because as an innovator, you have to be thoughtful about the state of current commitments and resources BEFORE taking on a new opportunity (not once you’re already wondering why there’s push-back and delays in the implementation stage.)
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