Every company has check-the-box employees. These are people who keep their heads down and move through a steady list of to-do items.

Sometimes these are the tankers who were hired to keep the machine going. I have also found this in tankers disguising themselves as speedboats. These people like to check LOTS of boxes every day to show how busy they are.

But we need people who lift their heads up to identify and solve issues.

Take, for example, the lowly highway stripe. Before 1911, roads had no dividing lines to help people know when they'd strayed too far over. Maybe this wasn't a big problem on straight roads, but there were countless wrecks around curves as people drifted around the turn.

Check the box people don't see or solve this problem. But a guy named Edward Hines, who was a Michigan county road commissioner, saw the problem for what it was—solvable. He had his crews add lines to the center of the roads, and thereby changed the way we navigate highways around the world.

It wasn't a crazy invention or expensive idea.

But it wasn't anyone's job to solve this issue, either.