It's got to hurt....

Yesterday a citizen from Gatineau was publishing an comment in LeDroit newspaper about innovation.

He was talking about the how messy and broken our roads are by referring to their numerous holes they have (nid de poule in French). He was somewhat pissed at seeing how the blue collar can mow lawn and do all sorts of tasks with efficiency by using various smart tools and comparing this to how poor they do the job at fixing the roads.

He was, in other words, asking them to innovate and fix this problem once for all.

That made me realize that it's got to hurt for one to innovate. The cities by sending a team of 5 with one rake and one shovel to fix these holes are not creating a context that will trigger innovation.

Similarly, I got a urge to improve (and maybe innovate) this week following a rare but terribly bad project customer survey. That whipped me to ensure we put in place the measures to avoid these problems in the future - even if they are not common. This is my role after all.

When I look at the feeling I got this week related to that, it seems more and more obvious to me that to improve "it's got to hurt", and believe me it hurt.

Innovation does not imply improvement, nor does improvement impliles innovation. It seems however, that adding some pain in the mix you might get one or the other, and if you have the good people in place, you may get both.