It is easy to fall into the innovation trap. If someone else has invented it, wrote it, thought it before you did, it is no longer worth doing. No matter what the ‘it’ is. Until, of course, you realise there is very little truly new or innovative things. Often we call ‘it’ innovative when we haven’t seen it before. But just because we haven’t seen it before, doesn’t mean it’s new.

Just because it has been done before doesn’t mean it no longer has value. In fact, it might have enormous value because you have an example to point to. And just because it’s been done before somewhere else, does not mean it has been done here. No matter where ‘here’ is.

There is little about organisational and system change. It’s been going on for years. And it’s not getting any easier. Sometimes it’s hard to celebrate changes others have made or ‘beat us to’, but applying it in your context, in your organisation, might just be what you were brought on to do. Not to change other organisations, but yours.

We all ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’, so why do we think we are different? Perhaps when we can celebrate that it’s been done before, we can move to applying it here, where we are.

The choice is up to us.

Photo by David Iskander