There is a line of thinking that assumes that to be innovative, a concept has to be new or never tried before. I heard that assumption challenged recently while traveling abroad. Could innovation include the restoration of processes that worked well in the past but were forgotten or changed with less than desirable outcomes?
Twice this week, I was working with teams that organically discovered a need to go back to a past practice. One involved a method that had been effective in curbing theft, but the employee that had been in charge of the process left and her accountability procedure thus became dormant. A team brainstorm revealed a need to revisit the method and to bring it back in order to progress forward.
Another way to view a visitation to the past is to think of it a “going back to basics.” Perhaps a newer way of doing things has become too complex or burdensome. Maybe it has missed its mark. Stripping things down helps an organization identify what is really needed because they now have experience with a newer method and a history that can tell them what has been the thing that worked the best over time. From there, improvements can be more easily identified and tried out with confidence.
Questions to Help Assess
• Is what we are doing now working?
• Have we had success with this challenge with a related process or procedure in the past?
• Are there aspects of the problem now that could be well served by this past procedure?
• Is there a way that the past method could be improved upon by combining it with a newer technology or idea?