Leaping Beyond Success

Visualize yourself in this article’s photo: leaping over a gap between two piles of precariously balanced rocks. “Major” innovation begins with a leap of faith, mustering courage to leap beyond success and take bigger risks despite potential failure.

Complacency or contentment with current success is a risk for Corporations. (Explore what happened to 50 Corporations, at the end of this article.) Success or an innovative position among peers is never guaranteed long-term. Corporations must align for predictable change and be agile to respond quickly to unanticipated changes that are often beyond their control.

To maintain success into the future, requires strategic preparation today. This entails building multiple facets of a healthy corporate culture for “major” innovation that engages individuals, teams and leaders within the context of their work environment. Cinder to Flame focuses on multiple facets, one of which is health and well-being to energize people while simultaneously building skills for inventive thinking and performance. This novel program strategy bridges the gap to your Corporation’s next successful innovation venture.

Leaping beyond success requires a resilient corporate and collective mindset for risk taking and failure. Imagine if everyone in your Corporation had the mindset of Michael Jordan? His famous quote portrays failure as an endurance exercise that flexes the mindset muscle for success:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Key indicators of corporate resilience are the willingness to invite disruption and the ability to thrive through transformational change. When success is alive and well, it’s a formidable task to convince people in a Corporation to invite disruption and transformational change. Human change tolerance tends to be low, with a preference to keep the needle comfortably set at maintaining the status quo.

On the topic of change, I’ll share my discovery during a walk along the Blaak in Rotterdam. In pouring rain, I stopped to contemplate the meaning of this inscription, above the door of the Willem de Kooning Academy:

“I have to change to stay the same.”

Very intrigued by the meaning of Willem’s quote, I searched online. One interpretation is that “time and change are exactly the same thing”. And, while there are people who enjoy disrupting the status quo and innovating; others are trying with all their might to keep-things-exactly-the-same.

When I connect the meaning of Willem’s quote with my personal life experience, this is my interpretation:

Change happens, whether you are onboard with it or not. Life is complex, full of moving parts, many of which are beyond control. Never settle for being a casualty of change. Pick up the pieces and get ready to create something new. Expand your network and strive to be on a team that leads positive change, for a better world.

Design thinking is a human-centred activity, it involves people with conscious (and unconscious) motivations. When people focus on their own professional aspirations, job protection and compensation, this blocks change and prevents “major” innovation. Introspection can help individuals examine their motives (explore feelings and thoughts) and intervene when necessary, to shift the focus back to serving clients and their communities.

Cinder to Flame helps Corporations maximize cost containment and quality in service delivery through a strategic program that builds a healthy corporate culture to ignite “major” innovation.

Is your Corporation ready to leap beyond success, build upon your corporate culture and ignite “major” innovation? Welcome to Cinder to Flame: https://www.cindertoflame.ca/

Here’s a link to 50 Corporations who at some point in time delayed leaping beyond success, for some it led to detrimental consequences, and for others, it resulted in their demise: https://www.valuer.ai/blog/50-examples-of-corporations-that-failed-to-innovate-and-missed-their-chance

? Deborah (Ellen) Wildish, Cinder to Flame 2022-Present. All Rights Reserved.

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