How to make a lizard garden grow

Celebrating innovation at work and home and inside yourself.

Innovation is a core value for many businesses but truly living that value is a challenge.  Corporations like patterns. Businesses like structure and there would be chaos without them. While many corporations say they are committed to innovation, translating that into the everyday isn’t easy which is why I try to grow a lizard garden every day.  Say what? Let me explain. 

I’ve been curating an art collection for ten years. My suppliers? My brood of three. In recent years, the volume of art created got to the point that I had to “give away” much of it.  By “give away”, I mean throw it in the trash or recycling bin.  How many turkey handprints does a mother need?

I finally initiated a rule. I wouldn’t keep a piece unless it met one of two criteria: 1) it was humorous or interesting or; 2) it showcased something unique about their personality or interests. For example, I have kept the illustration with the words ‘Every night dad helps me do meth’ (aka math) which thankfully is not the case as well as the Mother’s Day drawing featuring the statement ‘My mother’s favorite sport is naps.’ 

Artwork that really captured their personality and interest was a definite keepsake which is how the lizard plant drawing found its way to a frame on my desk. When my then 7-year old son brought home a fill in the blank worksheet, that read “If I had a garden, I would grow a (blank).” His fill in the blank answer was “lizard plant” complete with an illustration showing lizards sprouting from two orange cacti-looking plants. 

I thought it was spectacular. I delighted in his dedication to the subject and admired his unencumbered thought process. I took pleasure in his free-thinking. He was coloring outside the mental lines and creating his own reality. How wonderful, I thought.    I did not say to him, “You know, there is no such thing as a lizard plant.”   Rather, I rejoiced in his imagination, his creativity, his innovative mind. 

But do you allow for this freedom of expression at work?  Are you creating a culture that encourages boundary-less thinking?   The Lizard Plant sits on my desk as a personal keepsake but also a professional reminder to do just that, to translate that into the everyday, to allow for freedom and diversity of thought, to encourage wonder and rejoice when staff show it.

There is the adage, “A year older, a year wiser.”  Wisdom comes from experience and of course, children have a limited amount or none at all which is why their ability to imagine things like Lizard Plants comes so easily.  Unfortunately, something happens to us as adults. Wisdom takes over and our ability to be free of mental frames and context is compromised. Wisdom is the muscle-bound big brother who dominates. Innovation is the little sister who knows she can hit him where it counts if she just gets the chance but will she?    How often have you heard a leader say, “That will never work” or “This is the way it’s done and has always been done.” It’s the big brother’s equivalent to ‘Get Out of my Room.’ 

Processes, standards, systems are like house rules in organizations. This can get in the way of innovative thinking which is why organizations need to be deliberate about creating a culture that supports it. Organizations must commit to programs that help build a spirit of innovation, giving people permission to flex their imagination muscles. When wisdom and innovation mix, when they play together, good stuff happens.  I realize deliberate innovation is an oxymoron. It’s like directing my 13 year old son to play with his 8 year old sister. However, from that mandated and contradictory union, I have witnessed the creation of games, plays, and lego structures that were simply amazing.

Businesses depend on such innovation, on the ability to creatively adapt. So how do you create a culture that allows for it? Three things:

Create platforms to encourage it.   Whether it be a case competition, an internal shark tank or through directed creativity exercises, you need to plan for innovation.  Create a culture where being idea bounty hunting is a part of your organizational DNA.

Acknowledge and rejoice in your free thinkers.  Seek out those who devise new patterns. Afford them with patience and time to explore. Recognize their successes and allow for failures.  You will have some mad scientists and experiments will go wrong but idea generation requires generation.  Accept that iteration is a part of the process.

Be brave child.   Tap into the little girl or boy inside you.  She/he is there--the one who use to draw rainbow colored trees. And are trees green? In the Fall, the leaves in Virginia are yellow, orange, red and purple. As daylight falls, some even turn a hazy shade of blue.  Creating is fun. Have some. Don’t let experience prevent you from coloring outside the lines.  

Is there risk in doing this? Perhaps. There may be time wasted. Will you sometimes end up with the corporate equivalent of a box full of turkey handprints?  Maybe so.  But there is more risk in not doing it. Unless you hand out the crayons, you will never ever see a lizard garden grow.  If I had a garden, I would grow a shoe plant…after my nap, of course.   What about you?