"People who urge you to be realistic generally want you to accept their definition of reality" - Unknown

There has been a lot of chatter recently on the more popular innovation-related websites and blogs about the "proper" definition of innovation.  This is all rather amusing actually because in my book, there is no singular definition of innovation.  In fact, there can be literally thousands and thousands of legitimate definitions of innovation.  I had an interesting experience with a client a few years ago that will help explain what I mean...

I had been retained by a client a number of years ago who told me over the phone, "I need my leadership team to understand innovation and then be able to drive that down throughout my organization."  Okay...no problem.  I sent along some pre-work, an innovation culture assessment, and prepared for my site visit at the client to begin conducting interviews and workshops.  One of the things that struck me immediately were the interesting results of the survey.  Based on the results, this leadership team already understood innovation.  In fact, they not only understood it, but were demonstrating many key tenets of innovation and idea management.  Obviously, I was a bit confused about my role as I arrived for my on-site interview sessions.

When I arrived, I immediately shared the assessment results with the company president and he said, "Just what I thought, they aren't on the same page with me.  What can you do about it?"  Okay, so now I was completely confused.  As I explained the detailed results, I kept trying to make the point that the leadership was, in fact, already aware and supportive of innovation.  But the client kept insisting the opposite.  Frustrated, I tried to explain, very gently, why I felt the client was wrong.  That first day of the engagement didn't go as well as I had hoped.

As I was sitting in my hotel room that evening, going over the notes of the meetings and looking again at the assessment results, I realized that not only had I missed something, but I also committed some of the most egregious facilitation and consulting sins possible.  First, I failed to listen, and I mean really, really listen to my client.  Second, he was trying to tell me something, but I couldn't get over my own assumptions of what I thought "innovation" should mean to understand.  Third, because I failed to listen and understand, I made the most critical mistake, and that is trying to force my client to accept my version of what innovation meant.

Luckily, I had an extremely patient and understanding client.  That next day, we started over, and most importantly, I listened, understood, and no longer needed to convince anyone of anything.  What I discovered, was that this client already had a solid understand of core innovation fundamentals.  They also were able to successfully drive those core concepts throughout the entire organization.  What the president of the company wanted to do was advance his organization's core innovation and develop an innovative program to drastically change and improve his customer service experience.  Once I truly listened and understood that he didn't need my help with the foundational steps, but instead needed help making his vision of exceptional and innovative customer service a reality, we worked together to develop a road map to achieve his vision.

The moral of the story...Listen, then understand, then be flexible enough to accept anyone's definition of innovation, even if it doesn't always match with yours or the dictionary.

Have a GREAT week!!!