3 ways innovators balance conventional employees

By Tori Utley, for Forbes.com

No workplace would be complete without the complementary personalities of innovators and keepers of order. You must have both or innovative efforts will be useless.

Rule-following, protocol-loving coworkers and managers may think that their innovative counterparts are mortal enemies, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. You see, without their traditional thinking, innovators would not have the parameters, the guidelines, or the understanding to know where and how to push the limits to create. We, the innovators, want to be your allies.

For too long, those with different viewpoints have clashed. It can be a collision between Type A and Type B personalities, a struggle between introversion and extroversion, or just a clash in disposition. Whatever it happens to be, the struggle leaves many thinking that those who think differently are annoying, irritating, or either too much or not enough. This belief is false.

For an innovator to function, he or she needs orderly counterparts. We need to know the landscape before we can change it. We need to know the rules before we can break them. We need you, the more conventional thinker, in order to move the needle forward – you help us change industries, take our companies to the next level, and create incredible products. Without you, we would lose our direction.

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