There is a sickness ravaging corporate America today...a sickness that may or may not be curable.  It is a sickness that is easily preventable, but rarely ever treated once the infection sets in.  A sickness called Words vs. Action Mismatch Syndrome.

Let's take a look at symptoms, shall we?

Symptom 1:  You just started a new position with the organization and you are told that the company treats its employees like family and that like any family, trust is important.  Then you are asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, non-compete agreement, records confidentiality agreement and code of conduct agreement.

Symptom 2:  You are told that the organization values the ideas of every single employee and fully expects your involvement in identifying problems and championing solutions.  To accomplish this, you are given access to the Process Asset Library where you will find the templates you must use to validate that you are following the organizational processes and will be assigned a Process Owner who will guide you through the other governance oversight structures.

Symptom 3:  You are encouraged to "think outside the box" and use company time to troubleshoot issues, find root causes to problems, incubate ideas and develop solution prototypes.  You are then asked to sign an IT Security Policy that restricts your access to any documentation not essential to your existing role.  You also note that nearly every website that may provide you with lessons learned, best practices studies, white papers or other valuable research is summarily blocked via web filter and you can expect, due to the number of attempts to access these sites, a call from your boss or someone in Human Resources.

Symptom 4:  You are told that a special budget exists to fund research and the development of ideas/prototypes.  When you request funding from this special budget for your great idea, you are asked to provide a business case, cost-benefit analysis, market research and a positive IRR validated by the Finance Department.

Symptom 5:  You somehow get the funding you need to build a prototype and next go about identifying the people you need to help get your idea off of the ground.  You find that the people you need are ready, willing and able to help.  After repeated "resource allocation requests" to their functional managers, however, you realize that each and every person within the organization is over-committed.  Actually, "over-committed" doesn't accurately describe the situation.  If someone was able to take the time to calculate human resource demand and allocation, each person would discover that they would need to work for 143 straight days, without sleep or a break, to deliver all of the tasks currently assigned to them that are either due today or are already past due.

There are hundreds and hundreds of other actual examples where organizational "words" fail to match organizational "action" or behavior.  Creativity and innovation are culture-driven disciplines.  Like any other discipline, and like any other culture, they require that the words and the action match in order to be effective.  Those who are most likely in a position to ensure this behavior are senior leadership.  If they aren't "walking the talk" how can you expect anyone else in the organization to do it?  Have courage.  Be brave.  Make decisions.