Fresh or Stale?

Last year I was talking to Bob Nicholson, attorney with the firm Beckman Lawson about family businesses. Bob hosts a radio show, Your Business Matters on WGL AM/FM Saturday Mornings at 8am.

Bob told me that statistics show that by the time a business is in the hands of the third generation, there is a high failure rate compared to the previous two generations. I saw this happen in my own family with my grandfathers company, which my Uncle took over and then my cousin had to sell it.

Perhaps it is too much inbreeding, where there is not a clear view of the business in the changing marketplace. If this sounds like you, here are some ideas to stay fresh instead of stale:

Find a Fresh Pair of Eyes

"Let's face it," writes Bill Taylor in a post at Harvard Business Online. "Most companies in most industries have a kind of tunnel vision. They chase the same opportunities that everyone else is chasing, they miss the same opportunities that everyone else is missing." It's an atmosphere that stifles innovation, and can create an unsettling sense of corporate déjà vu as companies continue to use the same old thinking with each new initiative.

If you're caught in a cycle of "been there, done that," Taylor says you need a good dose of vuja dé. Coined by the late comic George Carlin, the remixed term refers to an active search for the opportunities your competitors don't—or can't—see. It's about breaking away from the pack mentality and approaching each new challenge from an entirely new vantage point.

"The most creative CEOs I've met don't aspire to learn from the 'best in class' in their industry—especially when the best in class aren't all that great," he says. Instead, they look far outside their industries and their standard way of thinking for solutions that lead to groundbreaking change.

The Po!nt: "[W]hat's valuable to innovation is vuja dé," says Taylor, "looking at a familiar situation with fresh eyes, as if you've never seen it before, and with those fresh eyes developing a new line of sight into the future."

Source: Harvard Business Online. Read the complete post here.

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