Embracing your inner innovator

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Innovation is the act of seeking problems to solve and the best way to solve them.  From that perspective, you are all innovators. Problem-solving is what each and every one of you spends your day focusing on. How to keep the storm at bay. How to keep the fire from your doors. How to turn parking lots into points of care.

Innovation often conjures the image of the sole inventor, hunkered over a workshop table, sawdering circuits deep into the early morning. Or in the tub, having eureka moments during a soak and cigar or glass of wine at evening’s end.

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Maybe, as a country, this is an image we want to embrace, in a culture that often paints pictures of solitary pursuits and individual accolades. Maybe this manifestation of innovation acts as a balm to our increasing isolation, lives marked by unique IP addresses and contactless deliveries. But what we hold onto doesn’t always help us. How long can we continue to believe that our favorite team will always win and that the act of wishing will forever make it so? Those guileless beliefs all presuppose that effort is not essential to eminence. That aloneness is absolute to ascendancy. 

But it is an act of strength to jettison myths when they no longer serve as lighthouses by which to navigate the waters of life. We face a future uncertain today, and will face that same uncertainty tomorrow. In that fog, the vision of innovation as a solitary activity is a siren song, beautiful to the ear as it leads one toward doom.

This past year, HFM’s Power Skills series has viewed the role that communication, social and emotional intelligence, critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, leadership, professional attitude, work ethic, career management and intercultural fluency play in impactful innovation.  Why did this year’s series focus on the role power skills have on innovation?  Was this just a yearlong branding stunt for the American Society for Health Care Engineering’s  Health Care Facilities Innovation Conference? Well, I can tell you this certainly is not not a branding stunt. But I can also tell you that it is because when you examine these 10 interpersonal skills, you realize that they all focus on effectively interacting with other people. 

Developing these interpersonal skills allows us to be fully present in our interaction with others. To be able find joy in other people’s joy and solace in other people’s pain. To be able to get to the core of a problem someone else is facing and know how to come together around a shared goal. To be able to lead we happy few. To be able to look others in the eye and warmly say, “Good morning.”  To be able to seek growth from mentors and share lessons learned with mentees. To be able to say, “Yes” fully when someone asks, “You know what I’m sayin’?”

Almost everyone who reads this article spends their days focused on supporting the nation’s health care system in one way or another. Why do we do that? What is the end goal of health care? It is people, people who love people and care for the  well-being of others. And then there are those who care for the caretakers themselves, providing the right environment for healing. In none of those actions are the payoffs delivered alone. In none of those actions are the efforts taken alone. Health care teaches us that WE NEED EACH OTHER to survive, to thrive.

This is a lesson that our Neolithic ancestors understood when they crafted stone structures together, ancient hearths and homes, ancient venues for ritual and renewal.  Not one of our ancestors survived the winter on their own. Not one of our ancestors innovated with new tools, new methods for cultivation for their own gain alone.

Throughout its years, this is a lesson our culture spends cycles of remembering and forgetting, sometimes practically at the same time.  I’ll say it one more time for the cheap seats. WE NEED EACH OTHER to survive. WE NEED EACH OTHER to thrive.  Innovators are empathizers.  Innovators see someone who has fallen into a hole and figure out a way to help them get out.  Or at least to figure out the best way to jump in there with them.  

This is the reason why it is important for you to improve your communication, social and emotional intelligence, critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, leadership, professional attitude, work ethic, career management and intercultural fluency skills.  Working on these power skills is a visible act of compassion for those you interact with daily.

Over the past year, we’ve explored the benefits improving these skills have on the act of innovation. But, as we reflect on this past year, spend a moment to consider how your improvement around these 10 power skills has played in your interactions with your family and neighbors, and with those who share your city, state and nation. Your improvement in these 10 power skills is an affirmative statement to being there for others and empowering them to be there for you in return.

So, as we ring out 2024 and ring in 2025, embrace your fellow humans. Embrace those you approach with love and those you retreat from with fear. Embrace your own need for others, and your own hopes to improve other’s lives through actions big and small. Embrace our need for one another, our need to find problems and solve them together to make our lives together better. Embrace your inner innovator.