Leading Past the “No Mentality” that Derails Business Innovation

    

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All organizations and leaders intuitively understand that coming up with that next breakthrough light-bulb-red-back.pngbusiness innovation is always going to be a challenge technically and financially.  However, most business leaders may be faced with a quiet unseen blocker to business innovation that is harder to recognize and can derail the building of a culture of innovation… the “No Mentality.”

The “No Mentality” is defined as a culture where employees seem to always say “no” to new ideas and changes for a number of reasons, sometimes valid and sometimes because they are resistant to doing something different. Or because they are not engaged and simply don’t care to make any extra effort.  Some may say this is a natural form of resistance to change, but based on my experiences working with leaders and teams I believe that the blanket acknowledgement that this is what “change management” is all about isn’t helpful to the everyday leader trying to execute a strategy.

Below is an example from a recent conversation that I had with a client.  The client is a manufacturer of customized industrial parts and advanced materials.  Their business strategy is Product Leadership and Innovative Differentiation, but all of their products are highly customized and require a deep knowledge of both the customer’s business and the customer’s technology in order to design the best solution.  The traditional process of engagement with their customer is a rigid project management process that starts with a joint customer kick-off meeting that includes roles and responsibilities during the project.  A typical team has about 20 people on it and the coordination of the logistics - document management, travel, meetings, inclusion of third party vendors, scheduling, developing prototypes, etc. is very complex cumbersome.  Everyone on the team is fully trained and given the responsibility for open communication and managing their own portion of the logistics management.

One of the newer engineers on my client’s team approached his boss, the VP of R&D, with an idea to streamline the entire logistical and administrative process by taking the logistics responsibility away from all 20 people (including the customer) on the team and centralizing it with one fulltime person in the role of a “Project Logistics Manager.” “This way the engineers can focus on developing a great solution for the customer and not worry about all of the administrative stuff.”

The VP of R&D thought this was a great idea that everyone would like and was surprised by the team’s reaction. Everyone on the team said “no.”

  • “This is the way we have always done it.”
  • “I don’t want someone else managing my document flow. What if they accidently delete it?”
  • “No way. It won’t work. I want to control my work and my resources.”
  • “By the time I tell someone what to do, I can just do it myself.”

The team leader approximated that by centralizing the logistical tasks not directly related to the innovation development of the project, each person on the team would have at least 10-15% more time to focus on the solution and perhaps use that time to come up with something breakthrough and disruptive for the customer.

Obviously in this situation and most like it, the leader couldn’t just demand the team to follow a new process without their acceptance and buy in. That approach could work in the short-term but it will fail in the long-run.

Based on our research and experiences, there are three simple business leadership tools to use to lead past the “no mentality.”

Diagnose and diffuse the reasons why the “No”

There are many reasons that drive the “no mentality” so the first task is to understand what is driving it in the specific instance.  Typically the “no mentality” is associated with the protection of either resources or identity, and in many instances both.  In most organizations, resources become a currency.  Making a change implies that you are taking away something from them (their currency and control) and that drives the negative reaction.

Solution: Present the idea in a way that illustrates to your team that they are not losing resources or power, but rather gaining more time and efficiency that will lead to the ultimate goal.

Link the New Method to the Strategy

In this example, the strategy is Product Leadership.  By streamlining the operational elements and providing more time to be innovative, this new solution is helping and supporting the drive toward the successful execution of the strategy.  Way too often leaders forget that leadership is equal to the execution of the strategy and don’t frame change in terms of achieving the ultimate goal.

Solution: Present the new ideas in the context of how doing something different is going to help achieve the strategy and goals quicker and with a greater chance for success.

Communicate the Message to their Expectations

People on your team see things in a certain way and that mental model is a function of your culture and leadership style.  A sudden change to a team that isn’t used to sudden change isn’t going to end up with a good result.  A sudden change to people that are used to sudden changes may be met with resistance because they are tired of all of the sudden changes.

Solution: Present the message in a way that is aligned to the way the team expects information and new ideas to be presented.  In this example, some of the resistance was because a new engineer came up with the idea and it disturbed the more experiences engineers.  If they are used to you as the leader sharing information, then perhaps you need to calibrate the way you deliver the message including identifying who came up with the new idea.

Why Business Acumen Matters

Robert Brodo

About The Author

Robert Brodo is co-founder of Advantexe. He has more than 20 years of training and business simulation experience.