I wonder how many good ideas never make it into the room.
Not because they weren’t good enough.
But because somebody decided not to say them.
We tend to notice innovation once it becomes visible.
The new product.
The improved process.
The breakthrough idea.
The successful change.
What we rarely see are all the ideas that disappeared before anyone had the opportunity to consider them.
The employee who thought:
“They won’t listen.”
The manager who decided:
“It’s not worth the argument.”
The younger member of the team who concluded:
“Everyone here knows more than I do.”
Or the experienced colleague who has learned:
“We’ve tried suggesting things before.”
Nothing dramatic happens.
No innovation programme fails.
No alarm sounds.
The meeting simply continues.
And the idea disappears.
That is why I increasingly believe that one of the greatest barriers to innovation isn’t a shortage of ideas.
It is the environment in which those ideas have to survive.
Ideas are fragile when they first appear.
They are usually incomplete.
They need questioning, conversation and sometimes disagreement before they become useful.
That requires people to exercise Human Agency.
To speak.
To listen.
To challenge.
To reconsider.
To risk being wrong.
And to allow somebody else to be right.
In a high-agency environment, an idea can be examined without the person offering it feeling that they are being examined.
Challenge becomes curiosity rather than threat.
Being wrong becomes part of learning rather than something to avoid.
Responsibility becomes something people take rather than something managers have to allocate.
But in a low-agency environment, people quickly learn the boundaries.
And eventually nobody needs to tell them not to cross those boundaries.
They regulate themselves.
Perhaps that is the most dangerous moment of all.
Because from the outside, the organisation may look perfectly healthy.
Meetings happen.
Decisions are made.
Strategies are written.
People appear busy.
But underneath all that activity, something valuable may quietly have disappeared.
The willingness to contribute what you really think.
So perhaps before asking people for more ideas, leaders should ask a different question:
Have we created an environment in which people believe their ideas are worth offering?
Because innovation may begin with an idea.
But whether that idea ever sees daylight is a question of Human Agency.
If you’d like to explore these ideas further, I’ve written a paper called Human Agency that examines the subject in greater depth. It’s available as a free download from my website.
Related Articles:
Why Human Agency Helps Some Teams Consistently Outperform Others
Human Agency and Innovation: Why the Best Ideas Are Sometimes Never Spoken