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“The most sought-after quality in employees is creativity. The most rewarded trait is compliance.”
I heard that line years ago and never tracked down who said it (if you know, let me know, because it was based on a study I’d love to read…). But I've been repeating it ever since, because in 30 years of working with organizations navigating change, I've watched it play out constantly.
I talked about this recently on David Newman's Selling Show podcast, and the conversation got into something I think a lot of leaders feel, so I wanted to pull the thread a little further here.
Companies say they want innovative, creative, change-ready people. Then someone comes up with an idea that's a little out of the box and they hear, "Yes, but be serious." Or they try something new and it doesn't work, and instead of getting credit for the attempt and the learning, they get criticized for failing.
After enough of that, people stop trying. Not loudly. That's the thing that catches most leaders off guard.
We spend a lot of energy preparing for resistance. We build the business case, get the slide deck ready, anticipate the objections, etc. And resistance is real. But resistance means someone still cares enough to push back. The much bigger problem, the one that's harder to see and costs more over time, is apathy.
Apathy looks like compliance. It's the person in the meeting, pen in hand, nodding along. When you announce the change they say "okay." Not because they're on board, but because they don't have the energy to argue even when they think it's a bad idea. Gallup has been tracking this for years. Roughly 70% of US employees are disengaged. That's not the vocal resistors. That's the quiet bulk of the room.
Quiet quitting is apathy. Burnout that leads someone to leave without ever telling you they were unhappy is apathy. You don't see it coming, and by the time you notice it, it's already cost you something.
And apathetic people don't innovate. They don't bring new ideas. They don't take risks. They do what's required and nothing more. Which means the organizations that most need creative, change-ready people are often the ones that have spent years, unintentionally, building cultures where creativity feels pointless.
What To Build Instead
Google figured out years ago that the highest-performing teams had one thing in common above everything else: psychological safety. Not skill, not experience, not raw intelligence. The feeling that if I share an idea, raise a concern, or ask a question, I won't be punished for it.
That's the environment where creativity actually shows up. And it's built or eroded one interaction at a time, in how leaders respond when someone takes a risk and it doesn't land, in whether the default in your team is "yes, and" or "yes, but."
So what does that look like in practice? Three things I've seen work:
1. Catch your yes-buts before they land. Most people don't realize how often they're killing ideas in real time. Start paying attention to your own language in meetings. How often are you adding to what someone said versus redirecting away from it? The awareness alone tends to shift things.
2. Reward the attempt, not just the outcome. If the only thing that gets recognized is a successful result, people will stop attempting things that might not succeed. That's how you get compliance. If you want creativity, the attempt and the learning have to count for something, even when it doesn't work.
3. Ask more before you answer. The instinct when someone raises an objection or a new idea is to respond with your own point of view. Try going one round deeper first. "Tell me more about that." "What's driving that for you?" Not every idea needs to be accepted. But people need to feel heard before they'll keep offering things.
None of this is about being positive all the time or pretending change is easy. It's about building the conditions where your people feel like it's worth trying. Because right now, in most organizations, the gap between what leaders say they want from their people and what they actually reward is wide enough that people notice.
They just stop saying so after a while.
Where To Learn More
I got into a lot of this on a recent episode of David Newman's Selling Show, including the specific difference between resistance and apathy, why apathy is the harder problem, and how the "Yes, And" mindset from improv comedy translates into a practical framework for leading people through change. David is one of the sharpest interviewers I've worked with, and the conversation went places I didn't entirely expect.
If you're currently leading a team through any kind of change: a reorg, an AI rollout, new leadership, new values, or the constant accumulation of more-with-less, I think you'll find something useful in it. The episode is called "Say ‘Yes And’ to Change" on The Selling Show. You can find it here: https://doitmarketing.com/podcast/avish-parashar/
P.S. Everything in this article points to the same underlying question: What is your culture actually signaling to people when they take a risk or offer something new? Most leaders I talk to have a feeling about this but not a clear picture. That's exactly what a YES AND Gameplan call is for.
It's a one-on-one diagnostic conversation where we look at your specific team, your specific change, and your specific situation; not just a framework on a slide. You walk out with a clear picture of where the “yes buts” are really happening, what's driving the apathy underneath them, and what small steps would actually move things. No pitch, no deck. Just the dig-deeper conversation most leaders never get to have about what's really going on with their people.
Get info and sign up to get your own customized YES AND Gameplan here