No innovation in your company? Burnout? Do people resign from work and you keep wondering why?
Burnout by definition is a paralysed state in which nothing more can be positively changed.
What does this have to do with innovation? A lot, because a burnout prevents innovation, and innovation should prevent a burnout.
Your employees can suffer from burnout. They started to work with you with these great possibilities in mind. They thought you want to hear their ideas, opinions. They were sure you will have time for them. They wanted to be leaders, turn their ambitions into solutions that work for your organisation.
Oh, hold on. It’s an ideal employee for me – you may say.
Everyone works to the limit. The schedules are tight. Expectations raise. Meetings, calls, fire fighting, emails… Meetings, calls, fire fighting, emails… not much time left to do anything else. Every day, all day – the same shit.
And… the constant change of strategy and the associated instabilities and ambiguities, increasing complexity and problems in dealing with it, competence deficits, the increasing scarcity of resources and increasing demands and workload, unrealistic performance targets, negative management culture, blind arrogance of success – this not help… not at all.
Innovation is the lifeblood of every organization. The goal of every organization is a long lifespan and this with success, either combined with high returns or growth.
I’m sure you can feel the increasing demand for innovation. And you wait for fresh ideas to come. You want your team to get involved. And you observe that they are doing what everyone else is doing. There’s nothing new, creative, disruptive. You ask them, you beg them and still no innovation. Is creativity completely gone? No, it’s not – 100%.
You want innovation and people want an interesting job – sounds like a perfect match but is far away from the reality.
What I observe among my Clients is that employees are so busy fighting the fires that they simply can not think. They do what they must to do, they care less about how they doing it. The most important thing for them is to meet the deadline… You asked to do something so they doing it – blindly. Often you pass your ideas on them so how can they show their expertise? How they can inspire themselves? How you can expect ideas from them?
No one wants to work in such a workplace. Where the task list raises and all the opportunities of personal-development are gone. The boss is saying that he’s always open for ideas but giving permission to execute only his own.
You may say that this is not true. You giving your team the possibility to personal-development. Courses, workshops, books, events… whatever they need is available. And you saying you always open for their ideas and (swear to God) you don’t pass your aspiration on them… But is it really the truth?
Success is decided in the company. Nowadays, innovation is a part of every job description. But CEOs don’t do much to actually spark disruptive thinking. Everyone wants to innovation happen but they do nothing to develop creativity on their team and counteract the traps.
51% of employees don’t have enough time to work on ideas…
Innovation must not only be the task of an innovation manager or the R&D department but must be part of every employee agenda.
The expansion comes from thinking. Standstill is death. Strategy and culture are the most important levers to avoid burnout. If you expect innovation – give your people a space for that, develop creativity on your team and inspire them. People need your attention, they want to be fulfilled in their jobs. Period.
Would you like to discuss the ways how your business can move forward? Leave an email address below. We will reach out to you to schedule a private call.
See you in the next post,
Patrycja Franczak
