Pearson Innovation.

Volunteer Trap The topic of innovation can perminate an organization with excitment. This is a tremendious asset for creating momentinium. The excitment generated by the innovation process attacts a lot of interest. Some of this interest is expressed as by additional employee availibilty. Telented and motivated employees may express interest in participating in the new intitive. Employees looking for their next promotion may also apply. Retaing motivated employees is a good practice.

Me Too Shuffle

In many organizations the "in" group forms around those in management and leadership positions. This is a normal occurance in most social structures. Bosses use this dynamic to emphize their proiorities, employees are rewarded with increased oppertunies for projects and promotions. In a healthly environment membership of the in group is based on merits and results. Competent employees are kept in the loop to ensure that they can respond quickly to requests from leadership.

However, in a toxic environment membership to the in group is based on enforcing the status quo of the existing power structure. Most organizations likely exprience a reality inbetween these two dynamics. Although the effectiveness of the in group deminishes when its members must navigate between maintaining existing powerstructures and responding to new threats and oppertunities. An in group maintaining the current heirarcy may appear homogenious in at least one regard that supports the status quo (Simular backgrounds, education, temperment, etc.). Collectively, these traits may not be suffiencent to respond to the requirements of the innovation process. If true, then the in group will extend the innovation process to include others better suited to innovate, while rotating members of the in group as the process begins to produce results. Conversely members of the in group may rotate out productive members of the innovation initiative to diffuse any claims to credit that doesn't support the existing heiracry. Unfortunately this poor behavoir can't be entirely eliminated, but it can be managed.

The use of Project charters helps to document who was selected for each role and why. The charters also serves as a log to document what desions where made and which actions where asigned to whom. Some innovations projects fail because the wrong people were selected for the project, if the idea is sound then it is possible that another manager or leader will try the initiaive again with a group better able to achieve the desired results.

Dunning-Krugger Effect

This particular insight describes a phenominon that many in the workforce have exiperenced at least once. Some may see this phenominon displayed on a daily basis. Simply put the Dunning- Krugger effect is a form of cognitive baisis that leads to someone over estimating their own abilities. This condiction is limited by a person's self-awareness of their own understanding of their abilities, which leads to an overestimation of their abilties and a underestimation of the difficultly or complexity of a particular problem or situtation.

This type of personal blind-spot can negitively affect an innovation initiative if the certain leaders judge the effectiveness of an on-going project not by its progress, but by meaningless key proformance indicators.

Impostor Syndrome

This is the opposite of the Dunning-Krugger Effect. An individual has enough knowledge and expeiricence to appricate how complex the world really is. To speak as an expert on a given subject seems very unappealing becuase they don't feel qualified. The simple truth is that mastery of a subject never really ends. Recruiting qualified perfessionals for a job in innovation that they don't feel that they are comfortable doing requires some psychology. One approach is to engage their intellectual curiosity. Another is to consript them with a soft out, "Help us get this thing going, while we look for a real expert to take over."

Outscorcing

Selecting people from outside the organization can be a get way to obtain additional expertise and thought leadership diversity. However this choice should be considered carefully. Many organizations have used consultants to either point the organisation in the right direction or provide and implament a custom solution. This creates a reliance on consultants, and communicates to the rest of the organization that innovation is a job for the "Big Boys". When it comes to innovation consultants should be teachers and partners. It is ok to need help getting started, but ultimemately an organization should seek to build its own capacity for sustained innovation. Consultants, like Pearson Innovation, must provide value to their customers that has both short and long term benefits.