I’ve been blogging some thoughts on church innovation, sparked by Tom Kelley’s book The Ten Faces of Innovation. The subtitle of the book is "Strategies for beating the devil’s advocate and driving creativity throughout your organization."
Well, Seth Godin has a scathing post up of actual quotes taken from blogs that illustrate how a devil’s advocate can crush innovation and keep the status quo firmly in place. Some of my favorites:
- "That will never work."
- "Can you show me some research that demonstrates that this will work?"
- "Well, if you had some real-world experience, then you would understand."
- "Well, this might work for other people, but I think we’ll stick with what we’ve got."
- "It’s never been done before."
- "We’ll get back to you on this.