I’m going to be blunt… Stop asking your people to innovate if you haven’t cleared the path for them to do it.
Most innovation efforts fail before they even begin. Not because the ideas were weak or the team lacked talent, but because the conditions weren’t there for anything to take off.
The environment wasn’t shaped. The soil wasn’t prepared. It’s the equivalent of scattering seeds across concrete and expecting a forest to grow.
If meetings are back-to-back, budgets are maxed out, and leadership is focused entirely on short-term delivery, what exactly are you expecting to happen? Magical innovation breakthroughs squeezed into the margins of an already overburdened system?
Let’s get real. Innovation doesn’t need more pressure. It needs more permission.
It needs what I call The Enabling Force.
The Enabling Force isn’t a framework or a toolkit. It’s a conscious decision to stop blocking innovation and start making it possible. A commitment to design the space, the safety, and the signals that say: “It’s okay to explore here. In fact, it’s expected.”
The Enabling Force reminds us that innovation doesn’t begin with ideas. It begins with the environment.
There’s a phrase I often use with leaders: To think outside the box, you must first get outside the box. Yet many organisations are still operating inside systems built for a world that no longer exists.
The way you’ve designed the work may actually be the very thing holding you back. Or, as W. Edwards Deming put it, “Every system is perfectly designed to deliver the results it gets.” If innovation is stuck, then stop looking for better ideas and start looking for a better system.
Too many leaders ask for innovation but do nothing to enable it. It’s like shouting “Be creative!” at someone, handing them a spreadsheet, and expecting brilliance by Friday. It doesn’t work like that.
Innovation cannot be demanded. It must be made possible.
If you want innovation to show up, it needs to be embedded in the rhythm of work. Not as a once-a-year strategy push, but as an everyday possibility.
Here’s what that actually looks like:
1. Give people time and space
Innovation doesn’t happen when everyone is already maxed out. It happens when people have the space to think, explore, and step back. This means ringfencing time, protecting creative energy, and giving people a moment to breathe. It is a strategic and conscious prioritisation. Fortunately, there are now many AI efficiency solutions that can support you to create this time.
Without time, people default to what they know. Without space, they repeat what’s been done before.
2. Make it safe to experiment
If people are afraid of getting it wrong, you’ll never get their best thinking. You’ll get what’s safe, or worse, you’ll get nothing at all.
Psychological safety is not about coddling. It’s about unleashing. When people know they won’t be judged, blamed, or ignored, they bring their full selves to the table. They question, challenge, and create.
Not all ideas will be brilliant, but wouldn’t you rather nine bad ideas and one brilliant one, than no ideas at all?
3. Replace permission-seeking with protection
Innovation doesn’t need a permission slip. It needs protection. It needs leaders who say, “You’re covered. Go try it.” The teams doing the best work aren’t waiting to be told what to do. They’re backed by people who clear the way.
4. Stop confusing activity with progress
Hackathons, idea contests, and innovation sprints are fine, but they’re not enough. If you’re only celebrating the quantity of ideas or the number of innovation days you have, rather than the value of learning, you’re doing what I call Innovation Theatre.
The goal should be meaningful movement. That only comes when teams are supported to turn ideas into small experiments into real insights.
So before you celebrate how many post-its are on the wall, you need to ask “What am I doing to encourage us to move from ideation to action?”
This is where many teams stall, not because there isn’t a desire to innovate, but because nobody is sure how to move the ideas forward and everyone is afraid of getting it wrong.
This is where intent, open-mindedness and the vulnerability to not have all the answers, opens the door to innovation. If the team knows it’s better to try and fail, than make no progress at all, then they will give it a go.
The Enabling Force is where it starts. Quietly, deliberately, and necessarily.
Get this right, and you won’t need to push for innovation. You’ll unlock it.
Clear the path. Prepare the soil. Make it possible.