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A crucial element to the survival of any organization is the ability to innovate, adapt, and to effectively embrace and navigate change. Often what stands in the way for companies to do any of these things successfully is not the capability of their people, or technology, or lack of creativity; it’s mindset.

Limiting beliefs about what’s possible crush innovation, creativity, and advancement for organizations.

A mic drop case in point.

Before COVID, if you were to ask every company in the universe if it would be possible for all or most of their employees to work from home, nearly every one of them would have said, “No, it's absolutely not possible, we couldn’t do it. People wouldn't be productive, there would be too many problems, not a chance.”

Those companies would claim until they were blue in the face that there's no possible way that they could have a remote-working teams and have that be successful for their business.

Well, well, well. Bullsh*t.

Even though many organizations argued for years that it wouldn’t be possible or manageable, and denied people the ability to work remotely even part of the time, COVID comes along and they pretty much pulled it off immediately, and relatively flawlessly.

This is just such a glaring example that as soon as organizations have no choice but to do something, they magically find creative ways around all the barriers that they argued made something not possible.

A consequence of mindset, not what’s actually acheivable.

Most organizations have made a switch to remote teams, and they've pulled it off just fine. It’s not without challenges, so now companies are learning, adapting, figuring it out, and improving the experience along the way.

Companies now understand that it is possible, it’s just a matter of working out the kinks and figuring out the best way to go about it.

A lot of times, we humans love to equate “We're not doing this right now, and I don't see this when I look around,” to, “It's not possible to do this thing.”

Limiting beliefs that we hold allow us to take any barrier that exists and use that as an excuse to affirm, “That's the reason that we can't do this.” Alas, necessity is the mother of invention. The second we have no choice, our creativity and resilience come to life and we get work finding solutions. And the more dire the situation, the quicker and more creative the solutions.

Creativity & innovation tip: the “Have To” lens

Adopt that mindset as an organization to find creative solutions. When faced with an idea or challenge that you initially envision as being impossible, try asking the question, “If we had to, with no other choice but to do this or go out of business, how would we make it happen?”

As soon as that becomes the filter of our focus, we put a deeper, a more intentional creative resiliency to our solutions. We know that necessity is the mother of invention, so see what creative solutions you can give birth to if you invite her to the conversation.

It’s amazing what people can come up with when they have to survive. And when you’re talking about staying relevant and adapting to an ever-changing and quickly shifting business landscape, your ability as a company to adapt, innovate, and embrace change can often be the life or death of your business.

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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop 

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