A Recipe for Strategic Vision

Luc de Brabandere is a vice president and director in the Paris office of The Boston Consulting Group. Earlier this year he published a book entitled, The Forgotten Half of Change, a short version of which appears as an article on the BCG website. That forgotten half, de Brabandere says, is the creativity half -- as opposed to the innovation half. Innovation is about making new stuff. Creativity is about imagining the same stuff differently. The former changes reality, the latter perception. Perception can be a problem if it makes you do things that get in your own way, and not do things that would make you more successful.

"Being creative isn't easy. It requires more than a quick course in 'thinking,' because our minds insist on seeing the world as it was."

--Luc de Brabandere

People can act in new ways, when forced, but the new behavior won't stick unless people see the logic in it for themselves. It's not good enough just to demand new behavior, you have to create (first in your own head, then in others') a vision of reality that "rationalizes" a new successful behavior. The irony is that the vision itself results from a subconscious, i.e., non-rational, process.

Perception is reality is a cliché, among marketing types. But this says perception and reality are different -- albeit tied at the hip. Each half has its own rules although you have to be good at both to be successful at either. One really important corrollary of all this is that organizations don't get a choice about which to excel at: being a builder of perceptions or innovations.