Examine Resistance

If you want to avoid resistance, don’t suggest doing anything new. Almost every attempt to introduce innovation is met with resistance. I’m not referring to the market, or the competition, but rather, to the organization trying to innovate! For years, we have taught students in our d.leadership course at Stanford to “empathize with resistance,” which is to say, “seek to understand the people who are resisting new ideas, ostensibly holding back the organization, in order to design a way to proceed.”

That’s all well and good, and I believe in that approach. In my own practice, though, I’ve noticed a much more insidious source of resistance: myself.

To give a simple example, this past weekend, I was packing for a family hike, hustling to get everyone out the door to make the most of the day. Make hay while the sun shines. My wife, supporting my scramble, suggested a better bag to pack the lunches in. Mind you, the suggestion was better in every way: backpack, instead of a tote, so I would be hands-free; cooler, instead of canvas, so it would keep the lunch items cold; etc, etc.

You already know where this is going: I rejected the idea out of hand. No time to change bags, yada yada.

This is the most absurd version of “not invented here” imaginable. Ordinarily, when we think of the rejection that accompanies innovation, it’s because the idea comes from outside, or from another team, etc etc. As a senior product leader at multiple big-name athletic and apparel companies told me recently,

“Both (companies) thought that by building a separate innovation center, and staffing it up with specialists, this separate center would generate bigger / more significant product innovations for the mainline businesses to capitalize on. But the biggest problem those innovation centers faced was the moment when they were ready to ‘hand over’ a technology to the mainline business to commercialize it; the mainline team often rejected it.”

But I’ve found that the most instructive learning opportunities come when I examine my own resistance. Why reject my wife’s bag recommendation? It is better. Such personal examinations have taught me how “not invented here” doesn’t just refer to a team, or an organization; it refers to a mind. And every mind is susceptible to the tendency.

Without a healthy acknowledgment of this bias, no amount of organizational exhortations to “innovate” will succeed. Reform starts in changing the way individuals react to things that originate outside their own heads.

Related: Listen to Understand

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