Trust, tribes and traction: How innovation can help
Trust, tribes and traction: How innovation can help https://csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/trust-tribes-and-traction-how-innovation-can-help.jpg 657 404 C-Suite Network https://csuiteold.c-suitenetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/trust-tribes-and-traction-how-innovation-can-help.jpg
Every year, global marketing consultancy Edelman publishes the Edelman Trust Barometer, its annual measurement of trust based on a global survey. The survey’s Australian 2017 results showed that trust in non-government organisations, media, business and government had fallen significantly compared with the previous year.
In fact, trust in business had dipped below the 50% line into the ‘distrusted’ zone. Further, CEO credibility dropped to an all-time low, and 59% of respondents felt the overall ‘system’ was failing.
The Edelman results are not alone. PWC’s Australian 2017 CEO survey showed yet another increase in the percentage of CEOs concerned about lack of trust in business (63%), higher than the global average.
Australia, along with the rest of the world, has developed a trust crisis. A common response to this is for CEOs to try to rally their troops (tribe) around a purpose. That’s a hard thing to do with a sceptical audience.
To top that off, business leaders are now in a time trial to keep up with markets that are shifting fast. Generating traction on new growth initiatives, in the face of this disruption, is now feeling distinctly overdue for many.
This quest for trust, tribes and traction needs some solutions.
One of the ways to help reach these goals is to work more effectively on innovation. While many companies are talking innovation, many are merely doing the ‘idea thing’; far fewer are launching those ideas.
When you teach a daughter, son, niece, nephew or neighbour to ride a bike, you can instruct the young rider as much as you like but they’ll never learn to ride until they actually get on the bike. You start by holding them and issuing lots of advice but both of you know that they ultimately have to stay upright by their own effort.
We need innovation teams to ride their own bike; we can’t keep holding, controlling, catching and admonishing them to…
