Newminimalists are ever learning, changing, and adapting.
Consistency kills innovation is a mantra that has become sacred for me. This mantra is most likely the key reason I adopted the idea of Newminimalism as a way of life for me in 2015.
The power of consistency can not be overstated [see photo]. Around the globe there exists a range of industries that exist to serve the cause of consistency. Why? Most people crave consistency in performance, process, and outcomes because this makes their world much more predictable to them. This means that our 2020 world is the direct result of consistent processes which deliver predictable outcomes at a fast food provider, a social media service, a government run program, and a patterned [or linear] series of legal outcomes.
Given that most people crave consistency it is no surprise that few people are employed to be innovative. And those workers with a bent towards innovation will soon be fired from any job which demands consistency. What can be confusing for some workers is that consistency moves from process to process along the value adding production line: and, thus, workers are fed the illusion of progress. Perhaps the greatest illusion of innovation is the existence of Silicon Valley. When you visit that place all you see is consistency. There is consistency at Stanford University in Palo Alto, or Facebook in Menlo Park, or Apple in Cupertino, or Google in Mountain View. Consistency runs through them all.
Let me broaden this example by referring looking at CHAZ or CHOP as a movement that can deliver progress in terms of social change. If this is to be the real outcome of this beta-test of social innovation then we must see an absence of consistency in the processes of governance. Indeed what most of us see as chaotic or anarchic processes within CHOP is purely and simply the absence of consistency.
What I find most pleasing, and disturbing, about what is happening inside CHOP is that the Mayor of Seattle is applying the tag of consistency to a process that is clearly innovative. The Seattle Mayor, Jenny Durkan, is saying that CHOP is a "block party" or a "peaceful protest directed against police brutality" or a "legal expression [by a random group of citizens] of anti-authoritarian behaviours in an attempt to enact innovative change", and so on and so on. She is setting herself, and her administration, up for an intervention that will close down CHOP based on principles of consistency not on the protestors' tolerance for innovation.
The protectors of consistency in your workplace are often the same people who are paid to push for, and ultimately to introduce, innovative change. But. The ironic implications of this common pattern of change is that we laude CEOs who champion innovation as an idea while, at the same time, feeding their obsession with a type of consistency that kills it.
Richard
Please let me know what you think about this argument. You can contact me via direct messaging or email at minimal-you.com
A key reason that change management programs have such a poor record when bedding down innovation is their obsession with consistency is counterproductive. Also they are found to be risk averse at times when risk taking is essential fir success. They create a multitude of unnecessary crises because they go looking for consistency when they should be exploring opportunities.
In the main the people recruited to change management programs come with a training, HR, organisational development background and none of those fields provide fertile grounds for innovation, imagination, and flair. Much of the time of the pure innovator is spent finding ways to go around these people who form roadblocks to anything out-of-the-box.
Another reason that change management programs fail…