“Bozo” – A helpless looking clown, always finding negative implications in every activity or event. A person who tries to find a way to keep you from moving forward, making excuses like “we’ve always done it this way, or this isn’t our culture” when presented with a new opportunity or challenge. Usually associated with people who are uncomfortable with learning new techniques, processes, or relationships.

Guy Kawasaki of Garage.Com, a venture capital firm, used to have a segment in his presentations called “Don’t let the bozos weigh you down.” This segment discussed how every organization will have a body of people who will simply try their best to stop innovation, the development of new products and services, and the introduction of something new into the daily work function. These people are “bozos”. If you want to avoid the pain of dealing with bozos in your business planning, you need to develop techniques to identify and prevent bozos from interfering with the potential future activities of your organization or business.

Due diligence on any innovation or change in the direction of an organization is a clear requirement: no one wants to run a company like a small dog that plays with toys, chasing everything that seems funny without following any action. A manager must rely on staff to provide a good system of checks and balances to manage the risk associated with any change.

However, none of us are immune from the effects of a global economy accelerated by the use of global telecommunications networks and innovations in business processes. With very few exceptions, our organizations must move forward, offering products and services demanded by a market of “savvy” consumers, or risk being replaced by another company. Competitive companies are always taking managed risks to innovate and outperform their business or organization by offering a better, faster, cheaper and more modern product. If you lose your place as a market leader due to infighting in your attempt to innovate, you will ensure that the bozo has successfully achieved its goals. If bozos are successful once, their chances of further hurting your innovation efforts will increase.

Bozos only serve to drag an organization through endless complaints, justifications for rejecting change, and comments about the “old days” when “things were better.” We have to limit the Bozo factor in our planning, while ensuring that due diligence is maintained. At worst, the bozos will simply refuse to perform tasks associated with the development and launch of new products, sabotaging your efforts to move the company forward.

Look for the signs of bozos in your office

The bozos are quite easy to identify. They are the people who generally use phrases like:

or “It’s not my job”

or “I have not been trained”

or “We have always done it this way”

or “Why should we change?”

or “It won’t work”

or “It is impossible”

or “No one else is doing it”

or “I don’t have enough time to learn a new job or technique”

or and many other similar sentences

The bozo is dangerous in other ways. While trying to innovate and move their company to market, the Bozos diligently try to “rally” the other employees around their justification for not supporting change. Most employees fully understand that if they are not always learning and trying to improve themselves, eventually someone will replace them, but the bozo wants to contribute to their possible unemployment situation by dragging them into a condition where management must decide to surround them, over them, or in the worst case “through them” to achieve the objectives of the company or the organization.

If you overlook bozos in your business planning, use due diligence, study your market conditions, trends and futures, you can avoid bozo factor in business planning. Paraphrasing the creed of the French Foreign Legion (March or Die), to survive in the global economy and in the marketplace, all companies must constantly plan for innovation, providing a product that is better than the competition, wherever the competition is. Innovate or die: managing risk.