I’m a learner. There are many sources of learning, podcasts are one of them. I listen to quite a few on a weekly basis and have learned, and keep learning, from listening to podcasts. So I was a little surprised by a tweet I came across last week where Vedant Rusty said the following:
Last week I wrote about how to take the sting out of failure. Today, I want to share with you snipet of a speech on success and how failure drives it. It all starts with mistakes, we’re taught in school (this needs to change) that giving wrong answers and making mistakes is bad. And it continues on to our jobs and our daily lives, society as a whole would rather never make mistakes than to make them.
Results don’t happen on their own, and you can’t do everything yourself. You have to collaborate; with insiders and outsiders. And mastering this unique skill in a world of work that is becoming more remote is essential. Think about people with whom you collaborate a lot, what makes them great? Why do you keep coming back to them? What is it that you enjoy about collaborating with them? I know this is an open ended question, and subjective to people’s own preference but let’s give this a shot.
Why a moonshot mindset? Peter Diamandis says that having a Moonshot Mindset means applying 10X thinking (or 1,000%) to all of your efforts and challenges. The result of 10x thinking are breakthrough technologies and disruptive business models. Moonshot thinking is the opposite of what happens on a day to day basis inside organizations, where incremental improvements (if any) are the modus operandi.
As a general rule, organizations optimize for today. That is, they play the game not to lose; the status quo is more important than the future. But innovation led organizations optimize for both today and the future; but with a long-term focus on protecting the future.
What’s the difference between organizations that are future lead versus those that bend the knee to the status quo?
Innovation led organizations put a bigger focus on ideas that enable the future today. To be idea led is to be open to ideas from anywhere; not just from the boss. Organizations that bend the knee to the status quo are obsessed with certainty and want to avoid any mess.
We’ve all worked at an organization that bends the knee, two things happen: it pays lip service to innovation, and innovation is seen as a waste of time and resources. Typically, the people leading these organizations are Chief Idea Killers; they are first and foremost concerned with maintaining efficiency. It’s their mandate to screen or kill any ideas, if ideas are even encouraged, that challenge the status quo.
And they do this with gusto!
I’ve gotten calls, texts and emails from people I’ve mentored and advised on leading innovation telling me how disappointed they are that their employer doesn’t value their new skills. Or how their boss sees them as a threat because they’re making an impact, in spite of hierarchy. These people work at organizations where hierarchy kills creativity; and this is mostly the norm.
I’m not saying hierarchy is bad. There’s good hierarchy and there’s bad hierarchy; the right kind of hierarchy can help people become better innovators, unfortunately the latter is the most predominant across organizations.
Leaders at innovation led organizations create the context for others to be innovators. Leaders at these organizations lead innovation; they don’t demand it. They create the conditions for others to be the rock stars. They focus on unleashing potential by removing obstacles; not by creating them.
These leaders understand ideas beat hierarchy when trust exists in the organization. So if you want to lead by ideas, don’t hog the spotlight. Remember that it’s not about you; it’s about them. Trust your people, encourage dissent, celebrate the weird to create an organization where new and better worlds can be created.
Thinking is hard. The main reason is because the brain wants to be efficient, so it develops routines and habits that are hard to break. That’s why sometimes your head hurts when you really put your mind to work; you’re forcing your brain to break it’s routine and be unefficient.
One mistake I’ve seen entrepreneurs, and leaders of established businesses, make is to adopt practices from other companies without thinking through how those practices fit withing their existing strategy and culture.
