Nothing. That's what a senior manager in my organization said his group was working on during a high level meeting with other senior managers and executives. His group was working on nothing. People are speculating that he was trying to point out that our pipeline of new product ideas is a little dry. It doesn't matter if he was just being frank or trying to make a point. He willingly stood up in front of other leaders and confessed that his people are waiting around for somebody else to tell them what to do. He could have brought forward a list of proposals that his team has developed. He could have discussed research into some aspect of a formulation that could dramatically improve the quality of our products. He could have described work being done with other organizations to resolve some long standing problem. Nope. We're working on nothing.
That response makes R&D look like the flashing cursor on a computer monitor. Just sitting there, waiting for input. Waiting for instructions. Tell us what to do. Give us something to work on. Why should we put these kinds of limits on our potential? Rather than exploring our boundaries and finding new ways to broaden our capabilities, we're plotting ways to make other parts of the organization look bad. We're not machines. We're capable of doing more than merely executing instructions.
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