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Beating the Bougainvillea Blues

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Why cutting back can sometimes be the best innovation option

Beating the Bougainvillea Blues

GUEST POST from John Bessant

Every year about this time we move southwards. Like very late swallows. Desperately seeking some of the yellow stuff to help recharge our solar cells and thaw out frozen fingers. Our preferred destination is Cyprus, Aphrodite’s island, a jewel set in the Mediterranean whose long history of invasion by others suggests significant local attractions. In particular it has a track record of sunshine hours which is hard to match, an average of 300 days per year.

(Of course that begs the question of what climatic shape the other 65 days take and it would be greedy to expect the absence of a few drops of rain or the odd cloud or two….)

Unfortunately the changeable element in the weather pattern has a predilection for December/January and so this year we have enjoyed a meteorological smorgasbord in which the weather has been experimenting with all the things it otherwise never gets a chance to play with. Including hail, thunder, snow (visible in the distance dusting the mountaintops), winds, even waterspouts out at sea.

Plus rain. Quite a lot of it. In fact enough to challenge even my generous view that it’s OK to wash out another day of my sunshine stay because the dams need filling up ready for the dry spring and summer.

Despite this I’m mostly doing fine with my optimism, enjoying the peace and beauty of the island (when we can go outdoors) and compensating for the lack of sunshine by drinking its distilled variety in the form of local wines to accompany local foods, liberally sprinkled with excellent olive oil, again courtesy of the missing sunshine…

However this morning sees me a little end-of-year blue because I’m pressing my nose up against the rainy window pane to see the bougainvillea. Or rather not seeing it. Let me explain.

When we bought the house one of the things I loved was the bougainvillea. Three trees worth of it, massive gnarled old trunks which spiraled up and over a wooden pergola guiding the branches and leaves to create a spectacular roof of purple and red. Look down on it from the bedroom window and there is your magic carpet waiting for you to climb aboard and fly away, watching the world below through its soft feathery leaves. Look up at it and you have a wonderful cave of shade, shielding you from the fierce summer sun, with its thick green foliage and gentle impossible blossoms. Whichever angle you viewed it from the effect was the same — crystalized summer …

Except that last year the pergola frame on which this whole amazing confection was resting gave up the ghost. Pressed down and strangled by its burden of branches it finally began to lean dangerously to the point where we had to bite the horticultural bullet and rethink.

Our superhero builder Dave sucked his teeth, cocked his head a couple of times then confirmed that we needed to replace the frame with a stronger new pergola suitably secured to the ground. But in order to effect this reconstruction we’d need to cut back the bougainvillea. Big time.

Cue Ollie whose green fingers and experienced brain have learned to work with the island’s fecund sun-rich approach to growth. He reliably reassured us that the project would work and that, while the short-term operation might look a little savage, it would all come out right in the end. He reminded us that this was precisely why the local wines taste so good — because the vineyard owners understand the importance of pruning.

I’d noticed this; the winter round of hacking back the thick bushes which had been so rich in foliage and fruit to the point where there are just a few stumps sticking up like dead men’s fingers clawing at the sky. And yet by the spring time the whole glorious cycle starts to repeat itself. His parting words were along the lines of ‘trust me… Nature’s got this!’

We bit the bullet. So what greeted us this year on arrival was a somewhat stark reduction in the foliage. In fact no foliage at all, just a couple of very lonely-looking stumps…..

Not so easy on the eye but I’ll try to have faith. And at least it offers an interesting metaphor for how we might think about innovation management at the start of a New Year.

It’s a safe bet to assume that there are plenty of resolutions buzzing round the brains of those with a stake in helping create value from our ideas. Lots of good intentions about doing things differently in 2025, expansive plans to try out new approaches, deploy new tools, do new stuff.

And there’s no shortage of new things to try. There’s a whole industry out there dedicated to challenging us to revise our innovation approaches — research papers, conference speeches, benchmark case studies, even, dare I say it, the odd blog or two like this one. The invitation to re-frame, to reinvent ourselves comes at us from multiple angles — and there’s a bewildering but enticing display of new tools and techniques which threaten to turn us into children running through the innovation sweet-shop on a serious sugar high.

And now we have AI. You don’t need to be Cassandra to be capable of making a pretty safe bet — 2025 will be the year of AI moving mainstream. Already a majority of organizations report experimenting with the enormous opportunity; it won’t take long before that converts to proven improvements in practice. Changing the ways in which we work with innovation, the products and services we offer and the different targets we try to reach.

The danger in all of this is that we keep adding to our repertoire, adding more and more growth to our innovation operations. We risk them becoming a close cousin to my bougainvillea thicket, overgrown to the point of collapse.

Innovation is all about creating and developing ‘routines’ — patterns of behavior which enable us to repeat the innovation trick. We learn over time effective ways to make it happen — how we search effectively, how we choose amongst different opportunities, how we implement in agile fashion, streamlining the process of converting ideas to value. Over time we build on those which work for us, embedding them in ‘the way we do things round here’, shaping them into the kind of innovation system which the International Standards Organization now recommends. Not just slogans about the importance of innovation but the structures, processes and policies to enable those behaviors.

Managed well this is a prescription for healthy growth. But it’s not a matter of abstract systems or process flow charts; it’s much closer to the challenge of planting and tending an orchard. A rich harvest of innovation fruit comes from strong branches on trees which have matured thanks to careful cultivation. Maintaining what’s already established and allowing for new shoots, sprouting in new directions, opening up more possibilities for future growth.

This doesn’t happen by accident. We need to think about ‘innovation horticulture’ — how best to manage the orchard.

Orange Grove

That’s a lesson which has been learned quietly by many organizations, who’ve been playing the innovation long game. Members of the ‘Hundred Club’, those who’ve survived and thrived over a century or more. Organizations which have ridden out some stormy weather by a commitment to innovation and to creating the kind of innovation system of which the ISO would be proud.

What they have in common is the ability to maintain what works, not just following fashion but carefully reviewing how they manage innovation on a regular basis. They’ve become skilled at enabling new growth through adding new routines, analogous to planting new saplings or grafting new strains on to old branches. Above all they’ve mastered the art of pruning to create space for this to happen.

This is the key part of the dynamic capability which innovation represents. The ability to step back and review, asking three simple questions. Of the innovation routines, the way we manage the process:

· What do we need to do more of, reinforce and strengthen?

· What do we need to do less of, even stop?

· And what new routines do we need to develop to cope with new challenges?

It’s as much about letting go as it is about adding new approaches. And it is crucially about strategically identifying where we need the new growth to come from. Just like a skilled gardener cuts back deep but also makes sure she has identified the spurs, the tiny buds which will provide the sites from which new things become possible.

This extended gardening metaphor might sound a little fanciful but we’ve got plenty of examples to illustrate it. Think about 3M, one of the longest established innovation gardens, still able to grow vigorously in new directions after well over a hundred years. During the early part of this century the company invested heavily in developing routines around six sigma and process improvement, securing significant gains in terms of productivity. But it soon became clear that the relentless focus on doing what they already did but better was driving out their capacity for breakthrough innovation. So the program was pruned to allow more exploration space. Importantly it wasn’t abandoned but rather trimmed back to enable new growth to come through.

Or Procter and Gamble, making the bold decision to cut back on the long (150 years) tradition of routines built around research and development and making the radical shift to a more open approach. ‘Connect and develop’ is now at the heart of how they innovate, drawing in a steady flow of ideas from outside the company alongside their internal capabilities. It has taken a quarter of a century for these new routines to mature but they now yield significant gains across the innovation spectrum.

Or the German company Hella, experiencing a key challenge around its rapid growth from being a successful 19th century start-up to a large established player. Its early experience helped create routines around new opportunities, triggered by new technologies and by discovering new market niches. There was plenty of innovation activity, a veritable hive of creativity with bees buzzing in and out working on a growing number of projects. But proliferating projects meant increasing costs and growing confusion around priorities which could only be solved by adding more minds to the mix. In the end the innovation engine began spinning out of control, overheating with all the innovation efforts.

It came to a head with a review which suggested that of the roughly 4000 products in the range at that time the vast majority took up time and effort but made little contribution. In particular it suggested that:

· 95 products were responsible for around 80% of turnover and 34% of R&D costs

· 305 were responsible for 15% turnover and 35% R&D

· 3100 were responsible for 5% of turnover and 31% of R&D !!!

The answer wasn’t to slam feet on the innovation brakes and stop. But it was about pruning, cutting back on most of the projects and focusing attention on those with strategic contributions to make. And having done this, to put in place new systems for project selection, portfolio management and regular staged reviews.

So whilst I’m still harboring doubts I’m hoping to see a bougainvillea renaissance beginning on my next visit. A sort of blooming version of ‘Field of Dreams’. As with baseball teams so with pergolas and bougainvillea bushes. Create the space — and the new growth will come.

Of course it’s not just about cutting back to make space in our innovation garden. The other side of this involves introducing new routines to enable new growth. But these by their nature will be young seedlings, not well-established trees. They need careful tending and experienced innovation gardeners understand the importance of supportive structures and growth regimes to help them take root. Using canes and trellises, introducing fertilizers and nutrients and above all keeping a careful eye on these early-stage experiments. They won’t all survive but those proto-routines of today could become critical capabilities in the future so it’s worth investing the time and effort now.

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Image credits: Dall-E

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Building a Resilience Infrastructure

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Policies, Practices, Routines

Building a Resilience Infrastructure

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

Introduction: Shifting from “Bouncing Back” to “Bouncing Forward”

In an era of continuous and accelerating disruption, we must fundamentally rethink our relationship with change. Resilience is no longer merely a reactive trait—a mechanism for “bouncing back” to the status quo after a shock. Instead, it must become a proactive infrastructure designed for “bouncing forward.” It is time to stop treating change as a frustrating anomaly and start designing organizations where continuous adaptability is the baseline state.

As we view this through a human-centered lens, a critical truth emerges: true resilience doesn’t live in risk-mitigation software or crisis management manuals. It lives entirely in your people. Therefore, a modern resilience infrastructure must be intentionally designed around human capabilities, human behaviors, and human limits. Our goal is to systematically mitigate change fatigue while actively fostering the psychological safety required for a true innovation mindset to thrive.

To move from theory to action, we must operationalize adaptability. This requires building a sustainable resilience infrastructure supported by three interconnected pillars:

  • Policies: The structural foundation that provides empowering guardrails rather than bureaucratic roadblocks.
  • Practices: The operational engine and methodologies driving human-centered change.
  • Routines: The cultural heartbeat that makes organizational adaptability a daily habit.

Pillar 1: Policies – The Structural Foundation

In most organizations, policy is synonymous with control. However, in a resilience infrastructure, policy must shift its purpose from control to enablement. To build an organization that can pivot without cracking, we must design structural guardrails that provide clarity without inducing rigidity.

Redefining Policy for Agility

Traditional, rigid policies are the natural enemy of innovation. We must transition toward “adaptive policies”—frameworks that are designed to scale their level of oversight based on the environmental context. When the pace of change accelerates, our policies should facilitate rapid response rather than acting as a bureaucratic anchor. This is about moving from a “rules-based” culture to a “principles-based” culture.

Decentralized Decision-Making

Resilience is strongest at the edges. Experience design teaches us that the employees closest to the customer and the frontline problems are the ones best equipped to navigate a sudden shift. Policies must be rewritten to push decision-making authority down the chain, empowering teams to act on real-time insights without waiting for a centralized hierarchy that may be disconnected from the current reality.

Structural Commitment to Psychological Safety

You cannot build a resilient infrastructure on a foundation of fear. Psychological safety must be more than a leadership buzzword; it must be a structural standard. This means instituting policies that protect employees when they experiment, fail, and share uncomfortable truths. If the “cost of failure” is a career-ending move, your people will choose silence over resilience every time.

Futurology as a Governance Standard

Finally, resilience requires looking beyond the immediate horizon. We must institute policies that make long-term scenario planning and “horizon scanning” a mandatory part of our governance. By making futurology a standard requirement for annual strategic resource allocation, we ensure that the organization is not just reacting to the present, but is structurally prepared for multiple possible futures.

Pillar 2: Practices – The Operational Engine

If policies provide the “why” and the “what,” then practices are the “how.” These are the repeatable methodologies and disciplines that keep the organization’s resilience muscle in a state of constant readiness. To build a resilient operational engine, we must integrate the tools of futurology and experience design into our everyday work flow.

Continuous Foresight and Innovation Portfolios

In a world of constant flux, episodic strategic planning is dead. We must replace the “annual retreat” with a practice of continuous foresight. This involves maintaining a balanced innovation portfolio—investing not just in the “Now” (core business optimization) but also the “Next” (incremental shifts) and the “New” (disruptive breakthroughs). Resilience comes from having multiple bets on the table, ensuring that when one path closes, others are already being paved.

Experience Design in Change Management

The greatest failure in organizational change is treating it as a technical rollout rather than a human transition. We must apply experience design (EX) to the change process itself. By mapping the “Employee Change Journey,” we can identify the specific moments where friction occurs and design interventions that support people emotionally and cognitively. Resilience is maximized when change is designed with people, rather than pushed onto them.

The Practice of “Pre-Mortems”

Resilience isn’t just about surviving a crisis; it’s about anticipating it. We should systematize the “pre-mortem” practice: before any major project or pivot begins, teams must imagine it has failed and work backward to determine why. This disciplined habit of visualizing failure allows us to build preemptive mitigation strategies into the very design of our initiatives, turning potential roadblocks into anticipated turns.

Cross-Pollination and Ecosystem Building

Isolation is the precursor to obsolescence. Resilience requires a radical commitment to cross-pollination. We must develop practices that actively break down departmental silos and encourage collaborative problem-solving across functions. Furthermore, true resilience extends beyond our walls; we must build ecosystems of partners, customers, and even competitors, creating a web of support and shared intelligence that no single organization could maintain on its own.

Pillar 3: Routines – The Cultural Heartbeat

While policies provide the framework and practices provide the tools, it is routines that provide the consistency. Resilience is not a grand gesture performed only during a disaster; it is a muscle built through the daily, mundane interactions of every team member. To make adaptability a permanent part of our culture, we must turn it into a habit.

The Power of Micro-Adaptations

True organizational resilience is the sum of a thousand micro-adaptations. We must design routines that encourage small, low-stakes pivots every day. When teams are accustomed to making minor course corrections in their weekly sprints, the “muscle memory” required for a macro-level organizational shift is already in place. We must stop waiting for the “Big Change” and start practicing the “Small Change” constantly.

The “Sensory” Routine

Resilient leaders don’t guess; they sense. Establishing a routine “sensory” loop—such as a fifteen-minute daily stand-up focused specifically on external signals and internal sentiment—keeps a pulse on the human-centered metrics that matter. We need to monitor change fatigue, creative energy, and engagement levels as rigorously as we monitor revenue. If the human battery is low, the resilience infrastructure will fail regardless of how good the strategy is.

Structured Reflection and Socialized Learning

Learning must be systematized, not left to chance. We must embed structured reflection into our standard weekly cadences. Whether through “after-action reviews” or retrospective routines, the goal is to ensure that every setback is converted into documented, socialized intelligence. A resilient organization is one that never fails at the same thing twice because the routine of learning is faster than the pace of disruption.

Rituals of Celebration

Finally, we must design routines that celebrate the behaviors of resilience, not just the successful outcomes. If we only celebrate “winning,” people will hide their mistakes. Instead, we must create rituals that honor intelligent risk-taking, rapid pivoting, and radical collaboration. By shining a light on the process of adaptation, we reinforce the cultural truth that in this organization, the ability to change is our greatest competitive advantage.

Conclusion: Future-Proofing the Human Experience

Building a resilience infrastructure is not a project with a defined completion date; it is a fundamental shift in how we conceive of organizational existence. We must move away from the fragile architecture of efficiency and toward the robust architecture of adaptability. By aligning our Policies, Practices, and Routines, we create a living system that does not merely survive disruption but is fueled by it.

The synthesis of these three pillars creates a powerful synergy: Policies give your people the permission to act, Practices provide them with the tools to execute, and Routines build the muscle memory necessary to sustain momentum. When these elements work in concert, the organization stops fearing the “Great American Contraction” or the next wave of AI-driven displacement and starts seeing them as canvases for new value creation.

As we look toward the next decade, the ultimate competitive advantage will not be found in the size of your balance sheet or the proprietary nature of your tech stack. It will be found in your Return on Adaptability (ROA). The organizations that thrive will be those that have fundamentally redesigned the human experience of work—transforming change from a perceived threat into a celebrated opportunity for continuous innovation.

The future belongs to the resilient. It’s time to stop waiting for the dust to settle and start building the infrastructure that allows you to dance in the whirlwind.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between organizational resilience and crisis management?

Crisis management is a reactive function designed to minimize damage during a specific event. Organizational resilience, specifically a “Resilience Infrastructure,” is a proactive, systemic capability that allows an organization to absorb shocks and “bounce forward” into a better state of operation by design.

Why is “Psychological Safety” included in a policy framework?

Innovation and resilience require employees to take risks and report failures early. By codifying psychological safety into policy, an organization moves beyond leadership lip-service and creates a structural guarantee that employees can experiment and adapt without fear of retribution.

How do routines differ from practices in this model?

Practices are the specific “how-to” methodologies and skill sets (like Customer Experience audits or Pre-Mortems). Routines are the rhythmic, daily habits that ensure those practices are actually used. Practices are the tools; routines are the heartbeat that keeps the tools in hand.

Image credit: Google Gemini

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