"Stay committed to your decisions, but be flexible in your approach" - Tom Robbins

A year or so ago, I had a client come up to me after our problem-finding workshop had ended and say, "I am so sorry that we didn't find any problems to fix right now...We feel just awful!" 

Can you imagine that?  First of all, they weren't my problems, I was just the facilitator of the session, and quite frankly, they were "problems' that could wait for a solution.  But the part that was most distressing was that she didn't consider the weeks of work that went into scouring the organization for problems to solve, for ideas on product improvement, or for ways to better engage customers as a successful outcome to the engagement. 

Sometimes, like our in our current economic climate, it just doesn't make good financial sense to take action on problems or ideas.  Or in other words, sometimes you really can't afford to "innovate."  But that certainly doesn't mean that you should completely ignore your search for problems to solve, shut down idea campaigns, pull the plug on low-cost prototypes or cease to engage in other organizational creativity activities.  Sometimes making the decision to do nothing is the best decision to make.  And yes...that IS okay!

The main point is, even if you aren't currently in a position to execute on ideas, that doesn't mean you have to stop challenging your employees to look for pain-points to solve, to think of ideas that might steal a few customers from your biggest competitor or to simply look inside your organization and make certain the current strategic direction is still headed on the right bearing.  Use these challenging times, or any ebb in the cyclical nature of business, to fill up the idea funnel or pipeline.  It costs very little to put people in a room for the day to think about the problems your organization faces.  Then, when the time is right, you'll have actionable ideas that have been fully explored and considered for immediate execution.  In fact, while your competitor is busy restarting his innovation machine and going on a search for new ideas to bring to market, you'll already be putting prototypes in front of customers, including some of his!

So let me close by telling you what I told that client last year who felt just awful about deciding not to solve any of the problems they discovered, "The simple act of looking for problems to solve, solves a problem.  Think of the things you now know that you didn't know before.  Believe it or not, that is an incredible competitive advantage."

Hopefully you see it the same way!