In the contemporary world, innovation has turned out to be one of the most important strategies that leaders are required to rely on for the growth of their businesses. It is necessary for innovative leaders to think differently to come up with creative ideas. They are expected to employ a process that is not organized to develop, explore and experiment with new ideas. However, it is not easy for leaders to be innovative as various factors hinder them from successfully applying the innovation process (Hess par. 2). This essay discusses factors that make it hard for leaders to be innovative that include fear, their organizational environments and failure to understand some crucial aspects of the innovation process.
As human beings, leaders are likely to have fear, an emotion that makes it hard for people to think differently and develop novel ideas. Hess (par. 4) claims that the fear of failure, losing one’s job after making mistakes and, looking bad makes individuals reason defensively. This is because people are inclined to defend what they believe in making it difficult for them to think beyond what they already know. Therefore, leaders have a fear of providing the wrong direction or failing in their leadership roles since it can result in the loss of their jobs or lack of confidence. This makes it hard for leaders to be innovative.
Organizational environments make it hard for leaders to be innovative since they do not help them in overcoming their fear of failure and making mistakes. Hess (par. 7) explains that organizations focus on producing results that can be forecasted, standardized and reliable. For this reason, it is wrong for an organization to have failure or mistakes. Nonetheless, innovation requires an environment that tolerates mistakes and promotes efficient operations. Various companies that are considered innovative such as W.L. Gore & Associates and Intuit use their mistakes and failures as learning opportunities. For instance, Intuit Company took eight years to build a culture that encourages innovation that is driven by experimentation (Hess par. 8). Therefore, lack of a supportive organizational environment makes it hard for leaders to be creative.
Leaders also find it hard to be inventive due to their failure to understand certain aspects that are necessary for novelty. Firstly, leaders fail to understand that collection of massive volumes of data does not necessarily help in the innovation process. Such data may not assist in getting correct predictions during innovation. Secondly, they do not understand that failure is inseparable from creativity. Thus, they are not ready to fail to succeed in developing novel solutions. Third, they are not aware that, innovation needs to deviate from the regular things and focus on unique issues. Fourth, they do not engage constructive conflict in the innovation process, meaning that they do not seek for different opinions that can be useful in coming up with the best ideas. Additionally, leaders do not understand that innovation is a cyclical process that requires constant evaluations and improvement of new ideas and solutions that are being developed (Degraff par. 3 -16).
Leaders encounter various factors that make innovation so hard. Fear or making mistakes and failing contributes to making innovation hard since they are afraid to lose their jobs and destroy their reputation. Organizational cultures also put so much pressure on leaders as they give them no chance of making mistakes or failing. Leaders also fail to evaluate and understand significant aspects that ensure innovation is possible.
Works Cited
Degraff, Jeff. “Why innovation is so hard.” Fortune. Web.
Hess, Edward, D. “Why is Innovation so Hard?” Forbes. Web.