Demystifying Innovation Culture Efforts is a comprehensive eBook that distills Bob Eckert's and Natalie Jenkins' research and experience down to 12 Strategic Action Areas that leaders need in order to build a sustainable culture of innovation. In this series of articles, we will take each of the 12 Strategies in turn. Recently we featured:
Skills, Accountability, Key Measurements, Technology, Environment, Experimentation, Focus, Strategy, Governance
(click here to download the complete eBook, webinar and videos) ___________________________________________________________________________________
Series 10: Deep dive into LEADERSHIP
LEADERSHIP: Leadership actions demonstrate support for innovation fostering activities.
Göran Ekvall’s research on innovation dynamics demonstrated that between 40% and 80% of the statistical variance for a climate of creativity in an organization is accounted for by...
Most successful middle level managers learn that a big part of how they are personally evaluated is, “Do they keep people from screwing up?”. An important measure, to be sure. But it can too easily get out of balance such that the creativity of their people is squashed. A simple tool to learn (and one it may take a lifetime to perfect) is the Praise-First POINt tool. Utilization of the tool – in part or whole depending on the moment – drives leader comportment in an innovation positive direction. The core concept of this tool is to look for what is good in new thinking before attempting to challenge or improve it. This simple change in behavior by a boss, (or parent) if habituated, is the single greatest behavioral move we know of to foster an innovation positive climate.
Success Tip! If there was a single characteristic that we could nail down as being important for an innovation-inspiring leader, it would be curiosity.We are all super busy and it’s hard to find time to be in learning mode for anything other than what’s going on in our line of responsibility. Place it in your intention to build a learning culture amongst your leaders from the very top, down to the new managers. Put opportunities for new learning on meeting agendas and place learning challenges on performance objectives. Foster and reward curiosity. And then go a step further.
Charge your executive team with strengthening their own emotional intelligence and with doing the same down their reporting lines. Most of the human factor issues that impede personal creative thinking, group creativity, and delivery of innovation, can be traced back to low personal awareness and skill in managing the thoughts that drive behavior. Everything that becomes innovation requires productive human interaction. Wise, mature people do better at this than unaware, immature folks. Go after mechanisms to support a wisdom culture. Your shareholders, employees, and customers will be extremely appreciative that you did.
There is a seductive danger for human beings as we move upwards in an organizational hierarchy. We are a species that tends to defer to those with more authority, which can create the delusion that the higher an individual ranks within the hierarchy, the brighter they are. This typically creates arrogance which:
- Stifles curiosity
- Undermines learning
- Corrodes the ability to make new connections
- Kills creativity
- Stops innovation before it has even begun
Systems of leadership development must drive leaders toward curiosity as a cognitive habit. The best long-term leaders of innovation are humble, curious, courageous, tenacious, and have passion for their work. They hold themselves to integrity with these qualities as an aspirational value system, and invite coaching from others for the sure-to-come times when they are out of integrity with these values. They have incorporated a belief system that understands there is no such thing as a grown-up. Just growing-ups and stuck people. No one is one or the other all of the time. Growing-ups are gentler in their judgment of the growth needs of others because they see the growth needs in themselves, thereby reducing the time-wasting defensiveness that gets in the way of improvement.
In-depth articles on each of the values can be found here:Humility, Curiosity, Courage, Tenacity, Integrity, Passion
To truly help people be great, an Innovation Leader must be an example of being “great” themselves. Otherwise their inspirational attempts lack any real power or energy to cause effect, and they appear to people as hypocrites. If you want to build a sustained innovation culture, you must have a leadership development program, and performance metrics, that develop the kind of leader we have described above.
LEADERSHIP
Real-world Examples:
Forbes announced their "The World's Most Innovative Companies" list in August 2013. Apple Inc. had fallen off the top of the list and at the time of this writing sits at 79.
Why? The key point for us is that the arrogance of being the leader that has all the ideas doesn't build a sustainable innovative company. To quote the Forbes article, "The more enlightened leaders know the importance of building creative capabilities in others. As Salesforce founder Marc Benioff emphatically put it during a recent conversation with us, ‘I can't do it all. I don't have all the ideas. That isn't my job. My job is to build a culture of innovation. That's something we try to enforce. We encourage it. We value it. We notice it. We compensate for it. We require it.’ Salesforce, by the way, has been No. 1 on the "Innovative Companies" list for the last three years running.”
We have been working with a senior leader in the Building Products Industry who is responsible for growing an innovation culture in his organization, and is making great strides. His general curiosity, across many domains, is an inspiration to us. When he was an expectant father of his firstborn, he asked three other CEOs with whom he was having dinner for some man-to-man advice on parenting and relationship management. He got two hours of insightful commentary and advice from men who had already negotiated this process in various forms. He asked. He showed vulnerability. His humility, curiosity, and courage served him, as it does his business.
Bob Eckert, CEO of New & Improved, shares some thoughts - and an embarrassing personal example - about the innovators values:
Learn more about all 12 Strategic Action Areas
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