Run a Regular Attitude Inventory

“In a world of rapid and constant change, many people still manage to think that they can get away with routine.”

Years ago, in a piece I wrote for the Globe & Mail, I suggested something simple: undertake an “attitude inventory” during your next staff, board, or executive meeting. Not a strategy review. Not a SWOT analysis. An honest look at the attitudes actually running the room.

The reason it matters is that innovation killers rarely announce themselves. Nobody stands up in a meeting and says “I’m choosing tradition over the future today.” Instead it shows up as: we’ve always done it this way, that’s too risky right now, let’s wait and see, the mission statement already covers that. Left unchecked, those attitudes calcify into culture, and culture is a lot harder to fix than a bad decision.

An attitude inventory is just the discipline of naming those excuses out loud, on a schedule, before they’ve had time to become invisible.

Here’s how you can begin to run an attitude inventory and turn what you hear into action.