Stifling Initiative: 10 Simple Rules to Crush Innovation and Maintain a Culture of Inertia

An amusing and insightful article. We especially like the description of how one can use a requirement for a "formal written proposal" following specific administrative guidelines to quash a new idea:

[P]eople hate change. It causes the status quo to become unsettled and the familiar starts to go away, replaced with uncertainty. Our comfort zone is demolished and we have to try to resettle into uncharted territory.

If we've learned a routine and it seems to work, there is absolutely no reason to have to do it differently. After all, the experts will agree that there is nothing new under the sun. So-called innovations are only the status quo in a rehashed, repackaged format that looks new. Honestly, who believes that just because a proposal will generate a slick exterior that the same functional beast doesn't lurk within?

Unfortunately, there are always those who just don't get it. You know-those who think organizations need to adapt to remain competitive, that change is good and results in greater efficiencies, that failure to adapt to "modernalities" is evil and counterproductive. Since they usually mean well and truly believe they are trying to improve our situation, we don't want to cull them from the herd (besides, who wants the hassle of trying to break in the newbie?). It usually suffices to discourage these people to the point that they fall in line and stop agitating. How do we get them to stop? How do we encourage the status quo without driving them to leave?