How has your company adapted to the ongoing pandemic? From big to small the pandemic accelerated technology adoption of many digital tools by every company on Earth, those that haven’t have either struggled to do business or seen their business disappear.
Tag Archives: Innovation
10 Principles For Driving Culture Change
Leadership is influence. Though that influence is constant, there comes a moment where every organization must disrupt itself to change the times or change with the times. When this moment comes, an organization’s culture is either a catalyst or a hidrance to change; most of the time it’s a hidrance.
10 Question Checklist To Help Guide Teams Through The Innovation Journey
In a the past I have been gifted books about innovation to read and review; I’ve read plenty and have published my reviews here. On my own, I rarely purchase a book about innovation, or business, because it’s highly repetitive. Well, one book that caught my attention last year is Eat, Sleep, Innovate: How to Make Creativity an Everyday Habit Inside Your Organization by Scott D. Anthony of Innosight; the consulting firm founded by the late Clayton Christensen.
Intelligent Failure: The Type of Failure That Drives Innovation
When you celebrate failure, you encourage innovation. Does your organization celebrate failure? If your answer is yes, I’d like to know what that looks like and how that’s going for you. If your answer is no, read on.
7 Sources of Power in Business
How do companies maintain dominance in an industry, or various industries, over long periods of time? It comes down to positions of power. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Disney and any other well known brand that has dominated their respective industry have done so by owning a few sources of power.
3 Reasons Why You Should Embrace a Moonshot Mindset
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.
For Innovation Be Led By Ideas Rather Than Hierarchy
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?
Hierarchy kills innovation when its focus is the short-term
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.
Hierarchy leads innovation when it gets out of its own way
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.