For Innovation, Don't Round up the Usual Suspects

This is the final #RCUS – Random Collisions of Unusual Suspects post. It’s one week til BIF7, time to talk about S – Suspects.  The word has a negative connotation: criminal, shady, basically no good and so does its origin.  Suspect comes from the mid 14^th Century Old French suspect meaning suspicious from the Latinsuspectus/suspicere meaning look up at, mistrust, suspect, look at secretly, distrustfully.  The noun form’s first recorded use was in the 1590s.

Being suspicious is not always a bad thing.  How many of us have been viewed suspiciously because we were challenging the status quo or not playing by the rules?  If we are trying to do something new then we are suspects.  As long as what we are doing is good, benefits customers (and thereby society), creates real value (and is moral and legal), then it’s just fine to be a suspect.  When others regard us with that raised eyebrow, we know we’re on the right track.  If you haven’t been viewed suspiciously, while you may get the big corner office, so what?

Who are the suspects in your organization? How do you treat them? How do others treat them? Perhaps its time to listen to your suspects and let them collide with others in your own organization let alone the outside world.  Today’s Status Quo was once suspicious.  Think of the radical troublemakers we call our Founding Fathers who created an amazing country and democracy that still shapes the world in unprecedented ways; think of Henry Ford who dared to not only obsolete the horse & buggy but also pay his people well enough to buy what they made; think Galileo, Zweig, Watson & Crick, Tesla.  What are you doing to encourage your suspects, to put them (and yourself) in situations to make a #RCUS?  Just try.

So, go make a #RCUS – Random, at the edge, Collisions, that create energy, of Unusual, not ordinary, Suspects, suspicious challengers of the status quo.  It may be a bit scary, strange and incredibly rewarding and fun.

p.s. If you can’t make BIF-7, it will be live streaming – check the website for details!