Why Tinkering Around is the Key to Success

Here is a quick way to judge whether your company will continue to be successful: can you tell your CEO that you spent the morning tinkering around with an idea? If the answer is yes, you are in good shape. If no, start looking for another job.

Successful companies know that the path to innovation isn't a straight line. Profitable growth is a messy, roller-coaster process that involves almost as many setbacks as victories. If you succeed in everything you do, you aren't aiming nearly high enough.

I get frustrated when companies talk and talk and talk about innovation, while simultaneously making it nearly impossible for their employees to tinker around. Tinkering is what drives innovation, not talking.

Tinkering lets you try different combinations, to stumble upon outcomes you never expected, and to experiment until you figure out how to get predictable results.

Last month, I tried to write a convincing article about the business value of tinkering around, and failed miserably. Not many people read my story, and the few who did missed my point. (This was my fault, not theirs.)

This was all a bit ironic, because my point was that most innovation is the result of persistent tinkering. So I tinkered with my approach, and today I am trying again.

Big companies hate tinkering, and many small ones do, too

When companies get too big and too bureaucratic, they abhor the idea of tinkering around with a product, service or process. To them, it sounds amateurish. You can almost hear these lumbering giants saying: we are too professional to get on the floor like kids and keep taking stuff apart and putting it back together in a slightly different combination.

The same can be true for small, slowly growing businesses. You know the ones I mean, those that had 12 employees in 2003, and still have 12 employees. They do things the same way year after year, and almost never tinker around with the way their business operates.

I've resisted the impulse to talk about famous innovators in this piece, because that would imply that tinkering around is only for inventors seeking to get rich. To the contrary, tinkering around is for everyone. It's a way to improve your resume, refine a cover letter, learn a new language, and take five strokes off your golf game.

I hope this makes good sense to you, because I'm not going to stop tinkering around with this article until it helps a large number of people enjoy greater success. And, yes, I tinkered around with this Slideshare, too...

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Photo by Gayle Laird, the_exploratorium/Flickr.