Stop waiting for a “big bang” innovation to transform your working life. It’s either not coming, or if it does it won’t live up to your inflated expectations. We’ve all been through that so-called “improvement” cycle before…
Here’s a truth that most busy professionals get wrong: They treat innovation as a project. A structured, off-site, whiteboard-filling, Post-It note fiesta that’s outside of their “real job.” They arrive hoping for lightning strikes of genius and leave with only a belly full of biscuits.
This is a recipe for falling behind, on a slow, buttock-chafing slide towards obsolescence.
Sustainable success doesn’t emerge from grand gestures and off-sites. It comes from making change a daily habit, from fostering a culture where continuous improvement is on everyone’s daily task list.
I saw this firsthand leading marketing teams at both Kimberly-Clark and Microsoft. Our most impactful breakthroughs were rarely the giant, top-down product launches. They were the sum of countless small, smart changes driven by the team on the ground. Lots of little things that collectively created a shed-load of change.
At Microsoft, we moved away from betting everything on one “perfect” campaign (heck, we were never very good at that!). Instead, we empowered the teams to run dozens of small, rapid experiments in our digital channels. We tested messaging, visuals, and audiences, learning and iterating in real-time. This culture of “always be testing” consistently delivered better results.
This is the essence of the Future-Ready Mindset. It’s not about having an Innovation Department where the ideas can live; it’s about empowering every single person to have the curiosity and courage to ask, “How can I make [x] better today?”
Stop waiting for permission, a miracle, or a major change project. What’s one small thing *you* can improve right now?