The silent killer of innovation
Throughout my career, I’ve observed that great ideas often die in the minds of the people who conceived them. I’ve watched talented professionals dismiss their insights before giving them a chance to be evaluated on their merits. Think about the last time you had what you considered a “crazy” idea. Maybe it was a process improvement that could save your team hours each week, a technology solution that could enhance customer experience or a strategic initiative that could open new markets.
If you’re like most people I work with, you probably ran it through an internal filter first, a mental calculation of feasibility, resources and likelihood of approval. More often than not, that filter convinced you to keep the idea to yourself. I’ve done this myself early in my career, and I’ve seen it happen countless times with my teams.
This self-imposed gatekeeping creates a tragic irony: the very ideas that could transform our organizations never make it past the person who conceived them. We’ve become our own worst enemies when it comes to innovation, creating invisible barriers that are often higher and more impenetrable than any real constraints we might face.
