By Tony Vengrove
It’s remarkable: as countless authors and bloggers have waxed poetic about innovation the past several years, most ignored the lack of a clear relationship between specific leadership behaviors and innovation. What does it really take to lead innovation in a corporation? There’s not a tremendous amount of consensus on this critical question.
Instead, we’ve been inundated with thousands of philosophical articles about what innovation is and isn’t, or what it takes to “make it happen.” It sounds so simple – implement a process, follow these 10 tips, and out pops a billion dollar new product. Sure thing.
For those of us who work on the frontlines of corporate innovation, these articles may provide some inspiration and insight, but they rarely deliver on “making innovation happen.” Innovating is just not that simple.
And instead of actually delivering any game-changing innovation, these people who brought you all that sure-fire innovation advice are now back proclaiming that what your organization truly needs is to foster “unbridled creativity.” That’s the ticket! Never mind that we didn’t accomplish any innovation.
I hate to sound cynical, but the problem isn’t a lack of creativity, or ideas for that matter. Most employees are dying for the chance to be more creative at work. The challenge is that many senior leaders simply don’t have a toolbox of creative leadership skills to effectively lead innovation and manage their organization’s creativity. You can have the most innovative people on earth working for you, but if your management team flinches at every sign of uncertainty or risk, the ideas will hit a brick wall.
Senior leaders today sit where they are as a result of their superb analytical skills. They’re exceptional at overseeing processes and business systems to consistently deliver financial results while managing risk. These skills are critically important for innovation, but not necessarily at all stages of the process. If an idea in its infancy is bombarded with too much logic, more than likely it will get suffocated.
If a company wants to produce something truly novel, they better learn how to complement their analytical skills with creative leadership abilities, because most disruptive ideas take a lot of time and patience to shape into existence.
Consultants can strut their philosophy like ostentatious peacocks in search of a mate; but let’s be honest, until they help their clients develop the creative leadership skills necessary to create an idea-friendly climate, much of what they offer won’t significantly improve long-term innovation performance.
In the coming weeks, my Idea Climatology blog will focus on Creative Leadership. We’ll dive deep into specific skill areas that all leaders must develop as they pursue an idea-friendly climate. In addition, we’ll introduce an on-going series of interviews with business leaders who will share their perspective about what it takes to lead others in creating and commercializing ideas.
Stay tuned. I think you’ll get tremendous value from this series!
Miles Finch Innovation helps companies navigate the messy territory of corporate innovation. We’re strategic thinking partners who can help you get unstuck and identify creative solutions to your toughest challenges. We also love to train and speak on the subject of Creative Leadership. Email us or call us at 860-799-7505 to learn how we can help you unlock the creative potential of your employees.
Photo: Getty Images/TrulyDeeplyMadly
Comments
6 responses to “An Ostentation of Peacocks”
Thanks for commenting, Jennifer! I agree with you and would add that in addition to “learning more,” there’s also several behaviors leaders need to unlearn! 🙂
I couldn’t agree more. We certainly don’t have a shortage of great ideas in the world, but we have a shortage of leaders who can help innovation happen. I don’t think it is the fault of leaders. This is the way they were taught, and what has worked for them for years. As we are evolving our knowledge of how companies work and succeed there are many things to learn. The good news is these to leadership skills are totally learnable. Leaders just need to take their time to learn something new. Looking forward to the series.
Thank you for pointing out that semantic detail, Andy. I believe it’s a detail worth editing in the original post and I will do so.
I agree with your thoughts about risk as well. The only thing I would add is that there’s a time and place to introduce risk assessment into the conversation. In my experience, people are easily tempted to discuss risk way too early. When an early, rough idea is labeled risky right out of the gate, it reduces its odds of getting the support and attention it might need to be shaped into a diamond. This premature judgement usually leads to its dismissal.
Thanks, Steve. I’m not trying to gang up on executive shortcomings — I have tremendous respect for the complexity they have to deal with. I’ve always believed that strengths in excess can become weaknesses. In the case of innovation, many strengths of current executives could quickly turn into weaknesses if utilized at the wrong moment.
Tony – excellent points – though I’d like to call out a subtle but very important semantic issue about successful senior leaders: they succeed not because they know how to mitigate risk, but because they know how to manage it. Mitigation means a lessening or reduction of something, which should not be prescribed in the approach to innovation. Instead, the companies that are successful innovators excel at managing risk, because doing so means 1) understanding the organization’s capacity for risk acceptance, 2) having the ability to embrace the right risks, and 3) avoiding the wrong ones.
I think part of what you are opining are managers who only know how to mitigate risk, and in doing so, they establish a culture of avoidance and CYA. Little wonder that creativity is stifled in those environments.
Spot-on, as usual. Execution requires skilled, tenacious leadership. Most execs are neither – at least when it comes to leading out-of-the-box initiatives.