30 Tips for Today’s Financial Advisor: Tip 12
Vulnerability can feel uncomfortable, risky, and scary. But if you want to innovate, you need to be vulnerable, according to researcher Brené Brown.
This fear of vulnerability can show up in many ways in your organization — it could be the underfunding of new ideas in the name of sustaining current efforts. Or senior leadership not owning up to their mistakes. Or companies focusing on the successes of the past rather than the challenges of the future.
On his blog, senior executive Torben Rick lists several hidden obstacles that could be preventing your company from innovating. These include:
- Lack of a shared vision, purpose and/or strategy
- Short-term thinking/focus
- Lack of time, resources, or staff
- Lack of “spec time” to develop new ideas and opportunities
- Innovation not articulated as a company-wide commitment
- Lack of ownership by senior leaders
- Leadership expects payoff sooner than is realistic
- Lack of a systematic innovation process
- Management incentives are not structured to reward innovation
- No reward and recognition programs
- Constantly shifting priorities
- Belief that innovation is inherently risky
- Internal process focus rather than external client focus
- Inadequate understanding of clients
- Focus on successes of the past rather than the challenges of the future
- Unwillingness to change in the absence of a burning platform
- Unwillingness to acknowledge and learn from past “failures”
- Politics — efforts to sustain the status quo to support entrenched interests
- Rewarding crisis management rather than crisis prevention
- Hierarchy — overmanagement and review of new ideas
- Micromanagement
- Underfunding of new ideas in the name of sustaining current efforts
- Fear that criticizing current practices and commitments is a high-risk activity
- Risk aversion
- Addiction to left-brained, analytical thinking
- Absence of user-friendly idea management processes
- Innovation not part of the performance review process
- Lack of skillful brainstorm facilitation
- No creative thinking training
If you want new results, you need to be vulnerable. You need to get rid of these hidden barriers to innovation. And you need to try something different.
Today’s Tip: Try A Different Approach
Tip #12: It can be challenging to change the way we tackle our daily problems. But if you want different results, you have to try different approaches. A bold, new idea today could lead to tomorrow’s success.
Want to innovate and achieve more in 2020? Reach out to our team today.