FROM HERE TO BETTER

Call it whatever you want: innovation, transformation, revolution, progress, advancement, continuous change. To some degree what you really mean is your organization is trying to find a way to be better. That's good. I'm all for better. 

But let's be honest, putting a name on it doesn't make it so. Creating a program around it doesn't make it so. Putting "innovation" in somebody's department name or job title doesn't make it so (this from someone who used to have it in his job title). Even putting a ton of money into it doesn't make it so. Writing a manifesto about it doesn't make it so. Slap as many sigmas as you want on it, but that alone won't make it better. None of these things necessarily hurt and some will help. But if you lack the courage to do one thing, you'll never really get to better. Because to be better you have to be willing to do something much harder first: be different.

You need to be different than what you are right now. And you need to commit to not just toying with different or testing different or talking about different or piloting different or dipping a toe in different to see how it feels. You need to be all in, accepting that it may hurt, it may cost you, some may be left behind, and it may take a while - but also believing and helping others believe that it will be worth it.

Different isn't the same as better. You can certainly be different and worse. But you can't get to better without it, and there is no real map because nobody has gone from precisely where you are now. There are many paths forward and they don't all lead to better. But the ones that do will inevitably lead through the vast uncharted territory of different. So plan, do your research, find out who will come with you, provision yourselves as best you can, and then go.