Monica Eaton Says Keeping an Open Mind is Essential
Chargebacks911® COO Monica Eaton, a globally-respected business leader, was asked to share her insight on business innovation as part of a new feature for InformationWeek.
As a trusted business technology resource, InformationWeek offers independent insight and advice to help today's IT leaders navigate the fast-changing technology landscape and identify the best strategies and tools to drive their organizations forward. The site allows peers to explore new ideas, find answers to their business technology questions, and solve their most pressing problems.
Knowing what you know is an important step in assessing your own value as a leader. Of course, the flip side of that is knowing what you don’t know. As Monica notes in the piece, keeping an open mind is an essential quality for any good leader.
“[S]uccessful innovators must be smart enough to know when they're being dumb,” she says. “It's not always easy, because we tend to favor our own ideas and [are] slightly more critical of others.”
Innovation is predicated on exploring the unknown and challenging old ideas. Therefore, no truly innovative person can go through life thinking that they already have the answer to every question. Monica even bakes this worldview into the structure of Chargebacks911 itself.
“We issue weekly and monthly employee awards where great ideas are acknowledged and rewarded. No matter if it's your first day or the first day of your second decade, we have a process for new ideas to be submitted at morning meetings, planning sessions, team conferences or even anonymously.”
