Habit 9: Agents of Change

If The Joker be an agent of chaos, the innovative people are Agents of Change. They don’t fear change. They bring change. They adapt and evolve with change.

Why is it so important to change? No, I don’t say that you would perish if you do not adapt. Otherwise old wouldn’t be gold. I have different thoughts about it. I feel it is important to change if you want to innovate. Let me explain it further. We are used to working in a routine fashion. With time, we slowly become expert in that routine. So far things remains in that well accustomed domain, we are good. We grow so used-to of the situations that we stop thinking about improvements and improvisations. And slowly mediocrity starts sinking into us. We start getting habitual of sub-standard stuff. Now you are intelligent enough to know its ramifications.

My focus today is not why you should learn to change. It is up-to you, you want to or not. But if you want to be a successful innovator, you will have learn to create change and to adapt with change. That is the point am trying to highlight.

Innovation demands change. The demand itself is the problem. And that problem, if solved, will lead to a better solution. An innovative solution. So you should not wait for circumstances to change. And then follow the wind and adapt with change. This is what you do to survive. not to innovate.

Innovators do it other way. They innovate and thus, cause change.

 

Habit 8: Passion to succeed

Nothing tastes sweeter than success. And once you taste it, you want to taste it more. Till you get addicted to it. Let’s not focus on the vices. But lets talk about the passion behind it. That positive energy which you can derive from it to achieve. Goals. Success. Happiness. The passion to succeed leads you to achievements.

Initially it looks difficult. And we easily tend to get complacent. But the innovative people drive themselves from the desire to succeed. And this desire slowly turns into passion which makes winning a habit.

How you develop this passion? You have to first free your mind. And think. What is that you REALLY want to achieve. Don’t be vague like “I want to successful.” Be precise. “I want to be successful in my job by achieving so-and-so position in this much time”. Be realistic with your goals. You need to be really really sure about it. No Ifs or Buts. No compromises. We all want to be rich. But that’s not a goal. Define how rich in how much time.

Most importantly you should be clear why you want to achieve that goal. When you have cleared your doubts. And you have clear vision of your goal. Then only can you focus on it. And then only the desire to achieve that goal starts driving you. What will happen next? You will succeed. You succeed and you like it. You savor the feeling. Then you set a new goal. And achieve it. Then next. And next. You won’t even notice when the desire to achieve goals turns into passion to succeed.

And when this happens, you will see how WILL MAKES ITS WAY.

 

Habit 7: Self Belief

Kung Fu Panda. Wasn’t the Master Shifu innovative. The way he trained Po to be Dragon warrior was pure innovation. But he couldn’t give him the self belief. Po needed a dragon scroll for that.  The secret ingredient. But that was movie. How you would find THAT scroll – that will make you believe in yourself.

How to have faith in yourself?

The key to self belief is honesty. It you make honest efforts, you will get the faith that you did your best. Make this a habit and it will instill your faith in yourself. Then even if you fail, it won’t hurt. And as side-effect you loose regrets.

Self belief guides you too. The habits of innovative people are isolated traits. They come from each other. One habit imbibes the other. Self Belief helps you gauge you abilities and you become a calculated risk taker. Persevering with honest efforts leads to self belief. So we can find a cause and effect between their habits.

This also makes imbibing these habits difficult. You can’t just try to develop few of them. They are inter-related. You need to take-all to accomplish them. The more you will give it a serious thought, easier will become the need and tougher it will get to develop them ( as you realize its not going to be easy). But its not the easy road you are choosing. Are you?

 

Habit 6: Perseverance

Tortoise won. Where rabbit would have reached had it been persevering. This is what you need to be – A Rabbit and Persevering.

If you wish to travel the road of innovation, failures are bound to come. And then unless you are persevering, you won’t succeed. But then how to be persevering? Well, vaguely speaking, you need to be self motivating, need to know how to handle failure and be sure of yourself to ward off self-doubts.

Innovative people are prepared for failures even before they come their way. No. They are not pessimists. Just that, they are ready for eventualities. So if one thing doesn’t work out, they get ready for next and next and next.

 

Habit 5: Mentoring

Mentoring is an often neglected. A good mentor is priceless. And innovative people knows this very well. It is a very efficient way of knowledge building. And knowledge replicating.

We might be fast learners. We can also upgrade skills quickly. But there is no substitute for experience. And there is no way you can quickly get that. So the best way is to become mentee and let your mentor enlighten you with his/her experience.

How to choose a Mentor?

First analyze what is that you wish to gain from a mentor. Are you looking for technical directions? Career development? People management skills? etc. Once you know that, then start looking for the best person to approach. If you don’t know such a person personally; use your friend circle to find a suitable mentor. These are the times when you realize the importance of networking.

Once a mentor has acepted you as mentee, decide on how frequency of meetings, goals and progress evaluation process, etc. It is not formal process but its important to keep track. You are not reaching out to some guru for fundas of life.

 

Habit 4: Calculated Risk Takers

You need to take risk. No . Not asking you to gamble. But unless you take risk, how would you know an innovative idea would work or not? Jobs took risk. So did Gates. In a way its always a risk. If you are not taking any risk, you are taking a huge risk – of getting out-dated. That’s why innovative people take calculated risk. Gets your facts right. Verify them. Think over them. And then take calculated risk. Then make a well-thought decision.

What are the stakes when you take risk? It can be

• Money
• Time
• Energy, Health
• Reputation
• Friends and Family
• Career
• Growth – Personal, Career
• Motivation

So check what are your stakes. And how much you can risk it? Now don’t get discouraged by this. Because some of them are replenishing like Money and Motivation. Stakes replenish to various degree. So you need to be sure of you priorities.

It will be a good idea to turn your mentor and seek help before making any decision. Wise people learn from other person’s mistakes.

Important word of wisdom in the end. Never regret what risk you take. Because under the same circumstances and given the same knowlege and exprience, you made the best decision. Later if you think, you could have done better, you are not doing justice to yourself.

 

Habit 3: Taking Ownership

Innovative people believe in taking ownership – of the work they do and of the result they get. Its very important to feel responsible for the work you do. The way you do it. And then be ready to accept the result you get from it. When you take up a certain job, a task or a challenge – whichever way you perceive it; you need to feel responsible towards it. You can not succeed with an indifferent attitude. You may be able to complete the task but then it will be just that. But when you do it like you own it, then you try to accomplish it the best possible way.

The feeling of ownership drives you towards self motivation. It reflects in the approach you take to achieve your target. Having said all this, it is equally important to feel responsible towards the results. Because it is that what governs the risk you would be willing to take. The desire to succeed is a very positive feeling. You can drive a lot of motivation and energy from it to keep yourself going even when the circumstances get difficult.

I thing you should be very clear off. Taking ownership doesn’t mean you should get possessive about it. There is no room for ego. This may sound confusing but try to understand. What am asking you to own is the act of accomplishing the task. That is what is meant by owning the task. It does not mean because its assigned to you, you will be doing it your way or whatever you wish to do with it. Ownership comes with responsibility. And accountability.

And when you win your challenges, success will taste only sweeter.

 

Habit 2: Collaborative

Innovative people believe in collaboration. They look for you help to be successful and they help you to be successful too. They understand they can’t learn everything and each person has his own set of expertise. They collaborate with people having different expertise. With ever evolving world this is the best way to progress.

Geeks may not agree with me. Some of the greatest inventions may have come from a lone experimenter. But I would point them to the list of Noble Laureates. More often than not we see that the awards are conferred jointly. There is a reason behind all this. In this every evolving world, the problems are getting more complex day by day. The progress made by scientific community has been so tremendous that it has become almost impossible for any body to continue research work alone. You need to collaborate not only because you don’t know it all but also due to the fact that lot of time and resources are required nowadays.

Collaborating also helps you to multitask. You can now pursue many ideas. You donate some ideas. You borrow ideas. That is how it works.

It’s easier to solve a problem with more than one mind is working on it. I beg to differ. That is why I don’t consider this as need for collaboration. I will explain it later.

 

Habit 1: Everything is an opportunity

Everything is an opportunity. Whatever work innovative people do, they keep looking for improvements. Its good work, bad work, ugly dirty work. Whatever they might be doing. They don’t just crib about it. They make an effort to improvise and innovate.Don’t confuse them with opportunists.

How they do it? Basically it comes from an innate attitude of not tolerating mediocrity. But such attitude can be developed too. If you keep challenging yourself, you can get into the habit of seeing an opportunity to improvise everywhere. This won’t be a good place to define what an innovation is, but soon we will talk about that too.

Innovative people are self-motivated and this what keeps them looking for opportunities.

 

Habits of Innovative People

Let’s see what Innovative people are made of. What makes them kick. I am purposefully not counting just seven habits. Partly because I don’t want to get “inspired” but also because I don’t want to restrict to seven. Though a book “Seven Habits of Innovative People” may sell good.

Anyway, the purpose here is to identify what Innovative people do differently. How. and when. We will probably make an effort to understand why they act so.