Unstick Innovation Blocks with Fresh Eyes

– Who to invite and why

First published on LinkedIn in July 2026

When you know you have  strangers coming to view your home, you start to see everything in it with fresh eyes – items that could be repositioned, clutter to clear away, and surfaces to clean that previously hadn’t been noticed.   I’ve recently put my home on the market and, at a height of 5’ 3”, I discovered dust I’d missed on the higher shelves.  But now, looking at everything through others’ eyes, my home is looking better than ever!

Outsiders as mitigators of familiarity

It’s true though, isn’t it – newcomers and outsiders present rare opportunities for us to see how things look differently to them.  They can spot things about your organisation that are as invisible to you as the water is to the goldfish in their bowl.

If there is so much that we don’t see in our familiar environments, either through familiarity or lack of fresh perspectives, how can we make informed choices about how best to improve things?  And where is the motivation to innovate?

The danger of sticky cultures in a fast-moving world

Just like we each set up our homes in our unique ways, organisations develop a unique culture, a complex set of implicit rules and norms for getting things done.  And culture is sticky…habits form and comfort zones develop around what is tried and tested. 

Ironically, perfectionists and detailed-focused people can be the least willing to change. They have invested much in making the current way of doing things as good as it is.  Or rather was, because the world moves on rather swiftly these days, and before you know it, someone else is doing it better. 

The curse of success

Often, organisations that readily adapt to change and develop innovations fastest are market entrants not the long-established market leaders. Newcomers are unencumbered by the history of the painful, yet rewarding, journey to arrive at the levels of excellence your organisation may have achieved.  They, in effect, ride on your coat tails.  So, if your organisation has been around a while and prides itself in what it does, it could be the giant on whose shoulders your competitors stand.

And here’s the really scary part – the kinds of employees that get attracted to, and are needed by organisations with established excellence, tend to be those who seek secure environments. They enjoy getting their teeth into extended, meaty projects.  They excel at improving on what went before, building carefully, and incrementally.  These are the very perfectionists I mentioned above. 

It is inevitable that baked into the lifecycle trajectory of most successful organisations is their increasing propensity to resist change.  And unfortunately, this is not great for innovation. 

The gift of “other eyes”

Smart leaders across any established organisation will be aware of this.  What do they do about it?  If they’re smart, they’ll regularly invite a cognitively diverse mix of “other eyes” to view their activities and then listen intently to what the owners of those eyes have to say. 

Such as…

Customers

They are the reason your organisation exists, so you’d better know what they want.  It pays to build more than a transactional relationship.  Show you care, not just about their present needs but their future needs too.  And not just about the needs your organisation can meet, but all their needs in the round.  You might discover that you are core to their business, which brings with it great risk but also great opportunity – provided you get things consistently right for them.  You might discover that, despite how things may have been in the past, you are not core to their needs.  And wouldn’t that be an issue if most of your business happened to be with them!  So, be open to discovering what you aren’t expecting – about the competitors they are considering, about the shifting sands of their context, their future strategy, and more.  All this is invaluable to building your strategy.

Stakeholders

These deserve a whole article to themselves.  You’ll have both internal and external stakeholders.  Often the internal are the poor cousins, just like we humans are notoriously bad at listening to wiser parts of ourselves.  The wannabe slim part of us can be ignored by the inner voice that justifies two generous scoops of calorie-dense, award-winning Devon ice-cream from the nearby stall because it’s a very hot day.  Internal stakeholders often have some of the most important things to say when it comes to seeing opportunities for positive improvement and innovation – but sometimes they go unheard.  It’s important to have a good look around your organisation and notice if you are not, perhaps, giving as much voice to all your internal stakeholders as you thought.  If that is the case, there will be a cost, and many lost opportunities.  Maybe it’s time to do something about it.

New hires

There is nothing so fresh as the eyes of a new recruit.  They are looking at everything with two unconscious questions in mind – “How do things work around here?” (so that I can learn to succeed and belong); and Why? (so, I understand the logic, especially if it isn’t obvious).  But you’ve got to catch them quick before they accept your norms.  Do your best to answer the Whys, especially when something seems odd to them that you take for granted.  Should the realisation sink in that your answers are out of date or no longer make sense, notice your instinct to defend, and instead rejoice!  Together you may have just hit upon something that could change things for the better.  OK it might be trivial.  But sometimes, just sometimes, it could turn out to be an opportunity that liberates valuable resources, or open up enough thinking space to conceive a rewarding innovation.

Skilled advisors with breadth of sector experience

I know I am biased, but I really do think these are underestimated.  Ideally you want a diverse selection who are on your side, but also are very good at asking the awkward Whys, who have a creative mind and a wealth of stories about how other organisations tackle similar issues and their reasons. 

Peers from other organisations

This is, I suspect, the most neglected opportunity.  Perhaps because it’s so hard to find places where you can meet them and have decent interchanges of perspectives and experience.  In the pre-Covid world people seemed more willing to travel to attend in-person trainings, conferences and networks.  And even then, it was potluck if you met someone interesting.  However, you can hit gold if you seek learning events with curated group of peers from non-competitive organisations, designed to address real issues, where you not only get invaluable input from respected peers AND an experienced advisor, but you can speak freely in confidence.  Cue the Innovator Circles and Masterclasses run by Active Insight.

So, what are you doing to bring in trusted and diverse viewers to your professional “home”, to shed light on where you and your colleagues may be missing the “dust”, and point out where you could be sitting right on top of solutions, resources and opportunities that are hiding in plain sight?  

Do get in touch – we’ve love to have a no-obligation conversation about how we can help you unstick innovation blocks with fresh eyes.

© Siobhan Soraghan 2026