Be Cranky, be Bold, be Risky: Digress to Initiate is a success habit

Often, I had realized (thanks to my boss for pointing it out) that the team which signs up for a bold new initiative or idea, digresses a bit to get the mojo to make the initiative a success. I deliberately follow what my mentors taught me: "Be cranky, be bold, be risky". It was too personal a learning that I didn't pass it along. But when I observed my teams who are ready to take up new ventures, I realized that they have taken these lessons onto themselves.

Be it a new productivity tool, a process change initiative, a team wide initiative like Knowledge Management, a New Product Implementation, an over-committed project, deadlines that are in past, initiative takers do not follow the path of management, existing processes or rules of organization. They need to digress, they need to create fun, they want to find  doing something out of realm, each one have to find out the personal connection, and they need to reinvent new methods for the initiative to succeed.

While lots of books have been written on how innovations, new products happen with top-down evangelism and many celebrated failures before a great hit and a sustainable model is evolved, I think often overlooked fact is how many times digressions has taken place by individuals and how it helps initiatives thrive in organizations and particularly when it is driven bottom-up and has created blue-oceans across industries.

At least my team seems to find their mojo from this and hence almost any new initiative often has a tangible and good end signalling start of a new phase. How has initiatives been shaping in your workplace ?