Inspiring Your Team to Embrace the Unknown
GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato
Every great innovation, like every great story, begins with a choice: to stay in the comfortable, known world or to answer the call to adventure and venture into the unknown. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I’ve seen countless organizations struggle with this fundamental challenge. We often focus on the mechanics of innovation — the processes, the tools, the metrics — but we fail to address the most critical element: the human spirit. To truly innovate, we must stop seeing it as a predictable business process and start seeing it as a hero’s journey, a narrative arc that inspires, empowers, and guides our teams through the uncertainty and risk required to create something new.
The Hero’s Journey, a concept popularized by mythologist Joseph Campbell, describes a universal narrative pattern found in countless stories, from ancient myths to modern blockbusters. It involves a hero who leaves their ordinary world, confronts trials and tribulations, gains new knowledge, and returns transformed. This framework is not just for fiction; it is a powerful metaphor for the human experience of change and growth. By re-framing the innovation process through this lens, we can transform it from a daunting, risky endeavor into a compelling adventure that people are excited to embark on.
The Innovation Journey: A Modern Myth
Let’s map the stages of the hero’s journey onto the innovation process to understand how we can better lead our teams:
- The Ordinary World (The Status Quo): This is your company’s comfort zone—the familiar products, processes, and market position. It feels safe, but it’s also where stagnation begins. The hero (your innovator or team) is living in this world, and for a time, it feels good.
- The Call to Adventure (The New Idea): A new market trend, a customer pain point, or a disruptive technology emerges. This is the call, the first glimmer of an opportunity to do something different. It is often met with resistance and fear.
- Refusal of the Call (The Resistance): This is the most common stage. The team hesitates, citing risks, budget constraints, or a lack of resources. The “we’ve always done it this way” mindset is a powerful force of gravity. Leaders must recognize and address this fear head-on.
- Meeting the Mentor (The Leader’s Role): This is where you, as the leader, step in. You are the mentor who provides guidance, psychological safety, and the tools needed to start the journey. You don’t have all the answers, but you offer wisdom, support, and the courage to take the first step.
- Crossing the Threshold (The First Step): The team commits to the project. This is the moment they leave the comfort zone. It could be launching a small pilot project, building a prototype, or securing initial funding. This is where the risk becomes real, and the journey truly begins.
- Tests, Allies, and Enemies (The Innovation Process): This is the long middle part of the journey. The team faces challenges—technical hurdles, budget cuts, internal skepticism, and market feedback. They also find allies—champions within the organization, external partners, and supportive customers.
- The Ordeal (The Crisis): Every innovation journey has a moment of crisis—a failed prototype, a critical negative review, a major competitor launch. This is the low point, where the team’s resolve is tested. This is where resilience is built.
- The Reward (The First Success): After the ordeal, a breakthrough occurs. A successful pilot, a positive beta test, or a critical finding. This is the hero’s reward, the moment of validation that fuels the rest of the journey.
- The Road Back (The Scaling): The hero must now return to the ordinary world, but they are not the same. They must scale their innovation, integrate it into the business, and convince the rest of the organization of its value.
- The Resurrection (The Big Launch): The final test. The public launch, the full-scale rollout. It is the culmination of the journey, where the innovation is either reborn as a new product or fails to make its mark.
- Return with the Elixir (The New Normal): The hero returns, bringing with them a new product, a new process, or a new way of thinking. The organization is forever changed. The hero, and the team, have learned valuable lessons and are ready for the next adventure.
“An innovation culture isn’t built on a process flowchart; it’s built on a shared narrative of courage, resilience, and transformation.”
Case Study 1: The Pixar Journey from Toy Story to a Studio
The Challenge:
In the early 1990s, Pixar was a small computer graphics company with a radical idea: to create the world’s first feature-length film entirely with CGI. This was a monumental risk. They were leaving the “ordinary world” of short films and commercials for the unknown world of feature animation, competing with titans like Disney. The “Call to Adventure” was clear, but the “Refusal of the Call” was a powerful force from Hollywood and even within their own company, who doubted the technology’s ability to tell a compelling story.
The Heroic Innovation:
Pixar’s leaders acted as mentors, providing a clear vision and psychological safety for the team. The “Crossing the Threshold” was the initial investment and the start of production. The “Tests and Ordeals” were numerous—technical challenges (rendering a single frame took hours), a near-catastrophic script rewrite, and a constant battle to prove the viability of their approach. But they had allies in Steve Jobs and a dedicated team who saw the vision. The “Reward” was the first successful test screening, and the “Resurrection” was the theatrical release of *Toy Story*.
The Result:
The success of *Toy Story* was not just a commercial win; it was a testament to a heroic innovation journey. It proved that a team, when guided by a compelling narrative and a resilient leadership, could overcome seemingly impossible obstacles. The “Elixir” they returned with was not just a successful film, but a new model for animation and a creative culture that continues to define the industry. The journey transformed them from a tech company into a storytelling powerhouse.
Case Study 2: The Dyson Story – A Relentless Pursuit of an Idea
The Challenge:
In the 1980s, the vacuum cleaner market was a comfortable, established world dominated by large corporations and bag-based technology. James Dyson’s “Call to Adventure” was a simple observation: vacuum cleaners lose suction because their bags clog with dust. His idea for a bagless, cyclone-based vacuum was a radical departure, a clear challenge to the status quo that was met with widespread “Refusal of the Call” from every major manufacturer who dismissed the idea as commercially unviable.
The Heroic Innovation:
Dyson’s personal journey is a powerful example of the hero’s arc. He acted as his own mentor, and his lab became the “Unknown World.” The “Ordeals” were legendary: 5,127 failed prototypes over five years, countless rejections from manufacturers, and a constant struggle for funding. His “Allies” were his family and a few dedicated engineers. The “Reward” was the successful creation of the first Dual Cyclone vacuum. The “Resurrection” was its launch in Japan, followed by its triumphant return to the UK market.
The Result:
Dyson didn’t just innovate a new product; he innovated an entire industry. His “Elixir” was not just a successful vacuum cleaner, but a new design philosophy built on relentless experimentation and a refusal to accept the status quo. His story proves that a single-minded pursuit of a new idea, when framed as a heroic journey, can overcome immense odds and redefine an entire market, inspiring an entire generation of innovators to follow their own calls to adventure.
Conclusion: Lead the Journey, Don’t Just Manage the Process
The future belongs to the organizations that can consistently and courageously innovate. And to do that, we must move beyond the sterile, process-driven view of innovation and embrace it as a heroic journey. As leaders, our role is to act as mentors and guides. We must frame the challenges not as roadblocks, but as trials. We must celebrate the small victories as rewards and offer support during the darkest moments of the ordeal.
By telling a compelling story about the change we are trying to create, we can inspire our teams to step out of their ordinary worlds and into the unknown. We can transform fear into courage, hesitation into action, and failure into a source of valuable learning. The journey is difficult, but the rewards—a transformed organization and a team of true innovators—are immeasurable. It’s time to stop managing innovation and start leading the adventure.
Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.
Image credit: Pexels
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