"False Flat" Syndrome

False flat is a term used in cycling and it refers to a situation that occurs when one is pedaling in what one believes to be a flat road.
The mind is a funny organ an tricks us all the time. Faced with a perceived flat portion of a road, ideally in a sunny day in a California road with low humidity and no cars, the mind relaxes and perceives the challenge of pedaling the next few miles to be easy and consistent. We are basically seduced by our visual perception of the terrain. Said perception starts to change as the pedaling becomes arduous for no apparent reason and we start to feel differently. All the while the brain is still persisting in that this should be easy; it is a flat road after all.
Is is amazing how a 1% to 3% incline, not readily evident to our visual sense, can affect physical effort and of course results over a long period. The longer the miles pedaled in such a section, the longer the struggle and the longer the dissonance.
In my experience a very similar thing happens in organizations that are trying to be more innovative. It happens when the resident culture tries to delay and block business models and innovation that threaten the status quo.
How?
By engaging with the new change-driven culture (one of the side benefits of an innovation practice) via a collaborative approach that with time proves to be a form or quiet resistance, the resident culture basically aims to kill and/or delay new ideas. This  syndrome is exacerbated by organizations that repeatedly engage in restructurings that induce "wait and see" behaviors. There are many versions of these behaviors that I will not detail here but suffice it to say they are there and obvious for the analytical eye.
These behaviors are the corporate equivalents of the false flat syndrome and if not recognized and addressed, it will kill innovations and new ideas. Gauranteed.

The Burden of Maturity

Recently my wife and I had occasion to reflect on the different levels of maturity that our children have to deal with as they go about their growing up. The discussion evolved, unexpectedly, to organizational maturity. Don't ask me how the leap happened, but it did.

What makes the human drama so perplexing and interesting is that we are all very different. We learn differently, our brains are wired differently, we are different. Why should maturity be an exception with our institutions? At the end of the day our institutions (and dare we say "governments") are managed by us.

In my eternal quest to try to understand how best to manage companies via an innovation imperative, I find that this maturity coefficient must be relevant and it will influence an organization's innovation DNA. A lack of maturity severely retards development and the generation of new ideas. Enhanced maturity allows for more openness, exploration and the generation of ideas (quantity and quality).

Focusing back on the individual; one of the burdens of professional maturity and the ability to understand the need for change before others, is that one stands alone - in many instances - and this is not a good place to be in organizations that do not assign value to maturity and fore-vision. We must develop support structures for people in these circumstances.

Recently I heard from an Innovation consultant that described a sudden insight from one of his clients when discussing his company's ability to generate ideas. His insight was that it is about quantity and from there the ability to manage the funnel to identify the jewels. Couldn't agree more.

The thing is,  I instinctively know that there must be a strong correlation between an organization's ability to generate ideas and its level of maturity. Now we have to prove it.