Hermie Cartoon: Fight, Flight… or Innovate?

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On May 27, 2025, we recorded our 64th episode of the Harmonious Workplaces Podcast, featuring the remarkable Mary Pat Kochenash. We’ll release this transformative episode on Monday, June 2, 2025. As a transformation leader in high reliability organizations (HROs), Mary Pat reminded us that innovation doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it emerges from environments where people feel empowered to think, speak, and act creatively without the fear that activates our nervous system’s protective responses.

That insight inspired this week’s Hermie the HR Hermit Crab cartoon, “Fight or Flight,” where Hermie grapples with the emotional brain’s reflexes under workplace stress: freeze, fight, flight, or fawn. The cartoon asks a provocative question:

“If innovation requires thought, how can organizations have a competitive advantage, increase revenue, enhance their brand, adapt and grow, produce effectively and efficiently, or serve customers—when our amygdala signals danger at work?”

It doesn’t just stand as a clever cartoon philosophy. Brain science and business psychology research support this.

Innovation Can’t Thrive in Fear

Peter Drucker famously said, “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs.”

Yet innovation – true value-generating, customer-creating innovation – requires psychological safety. When stress spikes, the amygdala (part of our limbic system or “reptilian brain”) hijacks our thinking brain, and we enter survival mode. In this state of mind, new ideas do not flourish. In fact, the stress response shuts down the prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain responsible for logic, decision-making, and creativity (Cohen, Schneider, & Tobin, 2022).

In workplaces where people freeze or fawn in the face of fear-based leadership or toxic cultures, innovation not only slows but also disappears.

Psychological Safety Fuels Ideas (and Revenue)

Harvard professor Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety provides one of the most robust frameworks to understand how inclusive, secure workplaces drive performance. Timothy R. Clark’s The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety gives us a roadmap: 

• Inclusion safety (I feel welcome)
• Learner safety (I can grow)
• Contributor safety (I can add value), and finally,
• Challenger safety (I can challenge the status quo without fear).

Organizations that foster these conditions unlock the highest levels of employee engagement and creativity. Managers and employees do not feel the need to avoid, disrupt, or sabotage change efforts because they feel included, supported, and valued as part of the social group of the organization. With a calmer limbic system, the “thinking brain” can start innovating and communicating effectively.

You’ll see similar themes echoed in our blogs:

• Stay in Your Lane? Or Pave a New One? — where Hermie reminds us that managers often mistakenly perceive boundary-pushing as insubordination, though challenging the process (Kouzes and Posner) leads and facilitates change effectively.
• Building Trust in the Workplace — trust is the foundation of innovation.
• Collaboration: Survival of the Friendliest — it’s not just about survival of the fittest; it’s about how we thrive together.

Want Innovation? Create Safety, Not Distress

When workplaces over-index on control, compliance, and fear, they activate neurological responses that block the very capacities they need: curiosity, openness, risk-taking, and idea generation. As Hermie shows us, no amount of pressure can squeeze innovation out of a brain in a state of panic. We do not mean to imply that all stress equates to harmful stress. On the contrary, eustress – the positive stress response – challenges workers and gives them a sense of purpose and direction. While distress can motivate for a while, it can and likely will result in burnout, reduced employee engagement, and reduced innovation.

Want to flip the switch? Start by investing in psychological safety and explicit signaling.

Free Resources to Foster Innovation & Safety

• Signaling White Paper — Learn how to clarify intentions and foster understanding through workplace cues.
• Psychological Safety White Paper — Understand the neuroscience of safety and how to apply it at work.
• Workplace Culture Scorecard — Measure what matters and identify culture gaps that hinder performance.

Ready to Rewire for Innovation?

Schedule your Visioning Session with Harmonious Workplaces. Let’s create a culture where ideas flow, people grow, and your business wins.

Not Sure Where to Start?

Try our Harmonious Health Check™ — our organizational diagnosis designed to identify what’s working, what’s not, and what’s getting in the way. In just a few steps, you’ll get actionable insights based on evidence-based OD methods and real-world experience across industries. It’s the first step toward meaningful, measurable change.