“Victory awaits him who has everything in order—luck people call it. Defeat is certain for him who has neglected to take the necessary precautions in time; this is called bad luck.”
Roald Amundsen -The first person to lead an expedition to reach the South Pole
We live in a VUCA – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous- world. Innovation, in part, creates this dynamic. However, creating an environment where innovation can be cultivated and thrive relies on people and businesses having the opposite of this- a house in order.
As Jim Collins stated in Great By Choice, leaders who have navigated this world successfully “prepare with intensity, all of the time, so that when conditions turn against you, you can draw from a reservoir of strength. And equally, you can prepare so that when conditions turn in your favor, you can strike hard.”
In other words, it’s hard to innovate if you don’t have endurance of mind and endurance of resources. Innovation requires the bandwidth to be able to test and fail and this requires resources. As stated in the Innovator’s Dilemma:
“The dominant difference between successful ventures and failed ones, generally, is not the astuteness of their original strategy. Guessing the right strategy at the outset isn’t nearly as important to success as conserving enough resources (or having the relationship with trusting bankers or investors) so that new business initiatives get a second or third stab at getting it right. Those that run out of resources or credibility before they can iterate toward a viable strategy are the ones that fail.”
Bottom-line, you better have cash in the bank if you want to innovate. If, as an organization or as an individual, you’re worried about the next check bouncing you aren’t going to get very far. This is why many organizations now offer personal financial training to employees and rightly so. If your people are worried about their personal cash flow, how productive and creative can they be for you?
If you don’t have your resources in order, start saving now. You’ll get beat if you don’t, regardless of whether or not you have the best people or the best strategy.
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