Thoughts inspired by Deborah's posted comment. In the last remake of Mutiny On The Bounty there was a scene where all was going well. Weather was clear, sky was blue and a brisk wind was moving the ship forward. The second in command and his crew were happily going about their routine work.  The captain, Bligh, was standing on the upper deck. Apparently doing nothing. Suddenly he turned to his second in command and ordered the sails to be brought in. A lot of work on a full sailing ship, particularly if it turned out to be a wrong choice and they had to be put out again.

The deputy objected strongly, the crew started to mutter (Blight was after all a bit of an autocrat and didn't generally win popularity contests with his crew). After waiting for a few minutes, Bligh snarled somewhat, then stepped back and bowed to his deputy's view. The order was rescinded. The captain turned and went down to his cabin. Within moments the sky turned black and as if from nowhere a storm arose. Of such ferocity that if the sails were not rapidly brought in, the ship would be in serious danger. A lot of frantic hard work ensued under very difficult conditions.

On our leadership courses we start by teaching our Leadership Behaviors model, which categorizes everything a leader should do into just three areas. The third area we introduce as "Do Nothing". Of course this generates some humor and the natural reaction of "yeah, right. As if I have time to do nothing!". We introduce it this way deliberately to generate this reaction, then explain that what we really mean is that a leader, at any level in the organization, has to spend a certain amount of time thinking. Smelling the horizon. Matching patterns in their brain. Considering, even though all is well today, what may be coming next. Speculating on what the organization might need from their unit a week, a month, a year from now. Observing and listening to what is happening amongst the crew. Did someone making a minor adjustment to a sail just have to put a slightly different effort in? Was that caused by a minor wind pattern change that might herald a coming storm?

And all this is observing and thinking that takes time. So compared to how you currently spend time as a busy firefighting problem solving manager; you need to be able to free some of your current time to watch, listen and think.

Then the ideas being generated within the organization can be valuable inputs.

So maybe the inhibitor to leaders giving due consideration to the idea generators is just a factor of the lack of Do Nothing time.