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The 5 Elements Of The Changemaker Mindset
Chances are, you work in a square-peg business, because that’s the best way to make money. You work diligently to improve the pegs and to get them to where they need to go better, faster and cheaper. It is through quality and consistency that you can best serve your customers, beat your competition and win in the marketplace.
The problem comes when your square-peg business meets a round-hole world. When that happens, following traditional best practices will only result in getting better and better at doing things people care about less and less. Round holes don’t concern themselves how good your square pegs are or how efficiently you can produce them.
Make no mistake. Eventually, every business eventually finds itself in a round-hole world. That’s why good companies fail. Not because they become stupid and lazy, but because the world changes and they lose relevance. Clearly, in the midst of disruption the only viable strategy is to adapt and shift from a traditional manager mindset to a changemaker mindset.
1. Don’t Look For A Great Idea, Identify A Good Problem
“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door,” Ralph Waldo Emerson is said to have written and since that time thousands of mousetraps have been patented. Still, despite all that creative energy and all those ideas, the original “snap trap,” invented by William Hooker in 1894, remains the most popular.
We’ve come to glorify ideas, thinking that more of them will lead to better results. This cult of ideas has led to a cottage industry of consultants that offer workshops to exercise our creative capabilities. They walk us through exercises like Brainstorming and SWOT analysis. We are, to a large extent, still chasing better mousetraps with predictably poor results.
The truth is that every great change leader starts out with a problem they just couldn’t look away from. Change doesn’t begin with an idea. It starts with identifying a meaningful problem. That’s why it’s so important that before you start an initiative you ask questions like, “What problem are we trying to solve? Is there a general consensus that it’s a problem we need to solve? How would solving it impact our business?
