Author: Christo Smith
Innovation is exciting. Stability is reassuring. But in most organisations, they’re treated like opposing forces.
Push for change and you risk breaking what’s working. Protect what’s working and you risk becoming irrelevant.
The truth? You don’t need to choose. The most resilient companies aren’t the ones that swing between chaos and control. They’re the ones that build systems flexible enough to do both.
If innovation is the gas pedal, stability is the steering wheel. Here’s how to stop treating them like trade-offs — and start using them to drive smarter.
The R&D team wants to experiment. Operations want consistency. Leadership is stuck in the middle trying to make both sides happy.
In fact, research from McKinsey found that companies that balance innovation with operational discipline are more likely to outperform their peers in both growth and profitability. Stability provides the platform for innovation to scale. And innovation ensures stability doesn’t become stagnation.
The problem? Many businesses still silo these functions. Innovation gets confined to R&D teams or isolated pilot programmes. Stability becomes synonymous with bureaucracy, slowing decision-making and resisting change. This split creates friction, delays, and missed opportunities.
But it doesn’t have to.
Forward-thinking organisations are flipping this mindset. They’re embedding innovation into stable processes, not around them. And they’re designing systems that allow for experimentation without risking core operations. Think of stability not as a brake, but as a shock absorber. It enables agility without chaos.
Take Amazon, for example. While famous for its innovation, its success relies just as heavily on operational excellence — from fulfilment centres to cloud architecture. It’s not one or the other; it’s both.
Balance isn’t about standing still. It’s about forward motion with control. In practice, this means building systems that can evolve without losing coherence. It’s not just about launching the next big thing; it’s about ensuring that thing works, scales, and integrates with the rest of the business.
A few ways this shows up inside forward-thinking organisations:
The organisations getting this right don’t think of innovation as a sprint, or stability as a wall. They treat both as capabilities that need to be managed, measured, and embedded across teams.
Because the real risk isn’t moving too fast or too slow. It’s building a business that can’t do both.
Before you can improve your balance, you need to know where you stand. Most organisations don’t lack innovation orstability — they just lack clarity on which side is winning out, and at what cost.
Start by asking the tough questions:
When innovation runs wild, stability cracks. When stability grips too tightly, innovation dies. The real risk? Drifting aimlessly between the two.
If your organisation is stuck in survival mode or paralysed by indecision, it’s time to get intentional. VSLS helps leadership teams find clarity, calibrate direction, and move with purpose.
Contact Christo Smit at christo.smit@vsls.com to build the kind of balance that drives momentum — not mediocrity.