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Complacency Stunts Innovation
Complacency is often mistaken for stability, the feeling you’ve “made it” and now you can sit back and revel in what you’ve built. However, that ideology carries far more pitfalls than we realize. Complacency is even more detrimental in the environment we live in today, dominated by exponential digital disruption.
It’s essential to eliminate complacency with both an anticipatory mindset and a willingness to act on the abundant opportunities ahead.
Why Is Complacency Dangerous?
As I mentioned above, complacency is disguised as stability. This state of mind only comes when you have experienced a long history of success and are in the wake of positive news — goals reached, benchmarks achieved and other measurable successes and satisfaction. Your hard work and resulting success can create a level of comfort that blinds you to the Hard Trends predicting incoming disruptions.
Complacency also has individualized impacts. For instance, employees who have only a few years before retirement may have found success by doing what they’ve always done, so why take the time to learn new things? The same can hold true for newer employees in an organization, as changing may seem like a risky proposition in the early stages of their career.
