Connecting Dots 69 ◎⁃◎ Manager View: a New Innovation Mandate

Big Burn on Blackcomb Mountain, British Columbia, Canada

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Manager View: The New Innovation Mandate

“The blunders are all there waiting to be made, on the board.”

— S. Tartakower, Russian chess master, speaking of the chessboard at the beginning of a game

Imagine you’re a sole contributor in a company, or a specialist who is responsible for a small team. In other words, you manage a specific slice of the organization’s overall work.

One day, you learn that there is a new innovation mandate. You may learn this in an all-hands meeting, in a company-wide email, or from your line manager if the organization is, well, organized. Or you hear via word of mouth from colleagues, in the media, or just through observation, if your organization is, well, disorganized.

However, the mandate comes to you, the executives behind it have been thinking about it for months, and now—just like that—so are you. As a manager, you probably haven’t been given proper tools or training in how to fulfill the new innovation mandate your executive has tasked you with.

Sure, there are books with technical methods like Strategizer, design thinking, Lean Startup, SAFe, Agile, your proprietary consultant-designed 200-page playbook, or a hundred other silver bullet promises. None of them equip you for what’s to come, as they are not conceived for the unique situation that is every organization sui generis at the forefront of their work in the here and now.

But you likely will be made aware that it’s an exciting opportunity that might require a little problem-solving to deal with some growing pains or organizational resistance—all realities quickly brushed over in the exciting promises of a glorious new future.

Beyond Change Management

Change management is the best term most can think of for what’s ahead, but it is wholly insufficient. At its core, innovation leadership for a manager is not change management, as that has a known solution and a known path to completion.

Innovation is a transition. The solution is discovered by validating a number of parallel perspectives:

• Technical perspective - does it functionally work?

• Commercial perspective - does the commercial model work?

• Customer perspective - does it work for them?

• Organizational perspective - will people work together to make it real?

I call them perspectives because you will look at them through the lens of your expertise and the nature of your work. If you work in software, you will naturally have an AI-centric paradigm. If you work in finance, it will be an economic lens. Physical products, a material design lens. Healthcare is a doctor, nurse or administrator’s lens. Or if you make big things like bridges, buildings, or factories, you will bring lenses of civil or structural engineering. And so on—you are the expert in the technical processes, who can expect the real challenge will be the last one—organizational. 

Instead of simply conceiving, designing and tracking a period of adjustment, innovation requires reorientation and emotional processing as the new innovation is discovered and landed through a series of phases, team compositions, and constellations of collaboration across the organization. That’s why it’s a leadership act, an act of driving change with others to realize the ambition mandate.

The Leadership-Management Paradox

The challenge of working through the four perspectives is that you have two primary competing tasks to constantly reconcile:

• Leadership - driving change through collaboration with others

• Management - reducing risk and increasing repeatability through phases of discovery, design, and delivery

Yes, fundamentally, you are dealing with a paradox of how to achieve two opposite tasks in parallel. Logically, you likely already have the capabilities to problem-solve and think through these two tasks. The real challenge of transition is the human factors and negotiating through them in the here and now, practically and experientially.

A huge gap in most organizations is that while they deeply consider and test end customer needs, behaviours, and perceptions, they rarely do so for their own workforce. As a manager, while your task isn’t to “fix” your company, it is to work with the emotional and behavioural dynamics of your peers. 

The Reality of Multi-Party Negotiation

What I’m describing is what’s called a multi-party negotiation. As a manager, you are facilitating a multi-party negotiation throughout your organization that determines just how much innovation the organization can bear right now.

A truth to anticipate is that as the manager:

• You will be idealized

• You will be despised

• Progress requires collaboration

• Progress can be derailed by small events

• Anticipation is your primary task

• Anticipation is empowered by empathy

As your innovation program progresses, the primary question to consistently consider is “how do we work together?” If you, as the manager, feel it’s your role to conceive the perfect solution and ram it through, evidence tells us failure is your likely end.

Failure, after all, is very real. When a new innovation mandate hits, failure isn’t just in the air—people can taste it. Contrary to innovation mythology, smart, well-trained executives are not motivated or inspired to fail fast. They are motivated and inspired to learn fast, identify pain points to resolve them, apply their competence in new ways competently and feel progress.

After all, the point isn’t to innovate for the sake of innovation. The point of innovation is to improve things. In practice, this may prove to be small improvements in ways of working or how the culture operates. Or it may prove to be fundamentally new ways of serving customers or outcompeting competitors.

Protecting Time for the Human Side

The mistake is to under-appreciate the human factors of change. As a rule of thumb, I encourage managers of innovation to invest and protect 50% of their time to address the emotional aspects of innovation. This means the feelings, thoughts, and behaviours that help or hinder innovation success.

It’s a lot of work, and while it feels personal, much of it isn’t about you; it’s about guiding others through the intensity of innovation. You, as the manager, are merely the container for hope and disappointment. However, who better than managers to keep people and their full human capabilities at the center of the work? After all, practical application of capabilities through effective and willing collaboration is the only known way of improving things.

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Connecting Dots 68 ◎⁃◎ Executive View: How to Start a New Innovation Mandate

Mont Garibaldi, British Columbia, Canada

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Executive View: How to Start a New Innovation Mandate

Lately, I've been asked more frequently about how to respond to a new innovation mandate.

In particular, how an executive might best manage the specific change situation that is innovation and its associated behavioural challenges.

First, let's acknowledge that change has been a constant in business since the origin of business itself.

For executives, change comes in two forms:

a. Change you choose

b. Change that chooses you

In the first form, the organization has chosen to change the pace or purpose of innovation. Here, they proactively have a vision to realize in order to achieve more or fewer innovation activities and outcomes.

In the second form, innovation is seen as a way to respond to change being imposed upon them. In this case, they reactively have a technology or social problem to resolve.

In both cases, there is a mandate coming from stakeholders or shareholders to drive change through innovation.

Depending on the organization and its strategy, the innovation mandate will be to:

1. Originate and sell innovative solutions

2. Buy and adopt someone else's innovations

3. A combination of the above

In any of these situations, innovation is an extreme form of change.

As I've previously addressed, for all its idealization, in practice, innovation is disturbing for the employees under your watch.

Innovation also falls into predictable regressive patterns, like the alignment trap.

Because predictable cultural resistance and regressive responses are normal.

Yet rarely is there equal attention to the behavioural performance drivers as the technical processes.

Where to Start?

For an executive, a new mandate poses the question of where to start.

After all, a mandate is not a strategy or a plan.

A mandate is a wish or hope that, through innovation, improved outcomes can be achieved.

The end goal is typically clear. However, the means—let alone solutions—are paradoxically unbounded given that you start within the boundaries of the organization as it is today.

Thus, you must begin the dual task of unsettling and changing current boundaries, authority, roles, and tasks to identify the new boundaries, authority, roles, and tasks.

The existing or immediate recommendations are typically process-centric or pre-existing solutions. This jump to safety is a social defense and way to manage what feels unmanageable within those around you.

However, the emotional and behavioural needs run far deeper than the known knowns already circulating in the organization.

The Moving House Analogy

As a comparison, consider the equally emotional and practical experience of moving house. Your goal may be clear (another bedroom, a view of the sea, and a bigger yard), but every step of the way is uncertain: finding, buying, selling, moving out, moving in, and getting used to the new home.

It's a journey of having to reset boundaries, filled with emotional highs and lows experienced asynchronously and heterogeneously by all family members.

Three Key Phases

As an executive, your role is to be the head of the organizational family to guide them through three key phases of a new innovation mandate:

• Unfreezing boundaries - permission and letting go of the current way

• Moving boundaries - transitional space of determining where to set new boundaries and corresponding authority, roles, and tasks

• Resetting boundaries - firming up the new ways of working and doing what you do

The solution will be emergent, but doesn't need to be chaotic (though it may benefit from some chaos or “Emotional Gearing” at times).

The larger the organization, the greater the number of parallel work streams. The impulse is to batten it down and get someone managing it.

However, this mandate is personal.

Your Innovation Legacy

The reality is that innovation under your watch is your legacy.

You don't have to solve it, but you will shape it—intentionally or unintentionally, for better or worse.

It starts with you and your relationship with innovation, which can be explored through four evidence-based lenses:

• Look back - What has been your previous relationship and experience with innovation?

• Look inside - What drives and constrains your personal motivations to want to innovate?

• Look around - What characteristics, capabilities, and gaps will influence success?

• Look ahead - What capabilities and tasks do you want to develop or delegate to achieve your legacy?

If an executive is not only able to devise a good approach, clear processes, and a great team but also articulate why the new innovation mandate is important for them, it builds trust and self-motivation within their peers.

It also helps you better manage and navigate your own response and those of others to the inevitable ups and downs of innovation.

As was recently highlighted by The Economist, true innovation is not a eureka moment. Rather, “Firms make advances through sustained effort, the passage of time and teamwork” to fulfill their innovation mandate and realize their legacy

That's why I think of innovation as the Olympic gold of business. To become an Olympian and earn that legacy takes working through the days and months of ups and downs that get you there.

It also requires that the executive protagonist of change sets their own goals and development plans in parallel with their team and organization.

Next month, the manager’s view.

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Connecting Dots 67 ◎⁃◎ A New Innovation Mandate

Electric Dreams @Tate Modern

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Starting a New Innovation Mandate

This is the first article of three answering the question of how to start a new innovation mandate from two perspectives: executive and manager. 

In this article, let’s first address what an innovation mandate is and why now. 

Why Now?

Due to commercial, environmental, technological and geopolitical forces, innovation in many organizations has gone from important to vital. 

Innovation, like any form of change, is always important in theory, but it generally needs to be seen as existentially vital to happen in practice. 

This shift from important to vital is why many senior leaders are thinking about how to answer the call of a new innovation mandate that is now central to their role.

With an innovation mandate, you will either be expected to develop new solutions or to adopt new solutions someone else has developed in a way unique to your organization and in service of your performance goals.  

A new mandate to innovate comes from primary stakeholders. Often the primary stakeholder is a board or shareholders, but they may also come from regulators, society, customers and employees. 

The job of an innovation mandate is to state the desired outcomes that innovation will serve and the reasons for doing so. 

This is where many executives and stakeholders currently are. They have a mandate to innovate, and they are working out what exactly they are asking of their teams and organizations.

Where to start?

A new mandate means there is a shift in expectations for innovation due to one or more of the following:

• Rate - increase, decrease or sustain

• Resources - new technology, capabilities or capital

• Return - different desired outcomes from innovation

The trick with a new innovation mandate is that it won’t outline what to make or how to do it. That’s your job. 

A new innovation mandate is not a traditional change management process. That approach is why 94% of executives report disappointment with innovation outcomes. 

Traditional change management is very effective in delivering known solutions to known problems.

Innovation requires change leadership, which develops new solutions to emerging challenges/opportunities. 

Unlike your existing BAU, success or failure is determined by three primary characteristics of a new innovation mandate:

Emotional - Innovation triggers strong emotional influences, and emergent behavioural responses are a central but overlooked aspect of successful innovation leadership

Specific - Innovation is a unique situation of leadership with its own dynamics, capabilities and practices that can be decoded and influenced

Systemic - Innovation plays out as a multiparty negotiation, where how the parties collaborate is a primary driver of whether the desired outcomes are realized or frustrated

That is why traditional innovation processes and theories aren’t enough. They typically have an isolationist approach, are focused on one role (innovator, founder or intrapreneur) and try to force everyone to work a prescribed way. That’s fine for a traditional R&D pipeline, product delivery or other forms of iterative innovation on a well-established mandate, but unsuited to a new innovation mandate. 

How to start?

So if you have a new innovation mandate, start with the expectation that the solution needs to be discovered and will be emergent. Then, intentionally empower two parallel protagonists of the executive view and the manager view. 

The executive holds innovation as one part of the portfolio of tasks in their role. Whether a CEO, CFO, GM, country manager or division head, innovation is one of many topics you are responsible for driving or enabling. It’s not like your other tasks, yet it’s easy to treat it like any other task. 

As a manager, driving innovation is entirely your task. You may be part of more than one innovation initiative, but continuously improving and implementing the solution is your focus, in service of the executive vision and the authority granted to you. 

These two levels form a working alliance that informs each other with links to the primary stakeholders inside and outside the organization. 

For the primary stakeholder triggering a new innovation mandate (e.g. board chair), your task is to protect the mandate developed by the executive, be consistent in the desired outcomes and guide managers towards a balanced risk profile at the portfolio level.

Next month, we'll explore the executive role in delivering the innovation mandate.

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Connecting Dots 66 ◎⁃◎ Innovation Leadership for Busy People

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Innovation Leadership for Busy People

A few weeks ago, I was at a conference in Amsterdam that addressed some serious topics.

For example, economic turmoil, financial fairness and social responsibility of technology.

Solutions to these serious topics were proposed by serious people.

For example, the EU commissioner, the CEO of Heineken and the Queen of the Netherlands. 

Over 24 hours, an overwhelming amount of information, insight and inspiration was shared.

There was so much that could be done and needed to be done.

As well as anxiety that not enough or even nothing might happen.

That’s when I stepped on stage.

Exploring the space between inspiration and action

I had been asked to help the audience shift to action.

To integrate what they had heard into their work and lives.

So that despite being busy people, they could make a positive contribution to one of the serious topics.

Rather than jump to action mode, as is typical in business forums, we explored why this shift from inspiration to action is so hard.

We simply don’t invest in behavioural processes in any serious way, as we do the technical processes of innovation, change and transformation.

Yet, as 1,000 smiling and nodding heads confirmed, we all know the experience of an inspiring start jumping into action, ultimately leading to a frustrating end.

Illuminating emotional influences in your work

Before jumping to action, I invited the audience to think about the emotional environment they would return to the next work day.

And to do so in a science-led way starting with people’s outlook.

Either their own outlook or that of those they work with.

Also, to not just name it but asses it’s dynamic nature. 

Is it balanced, in a surge or stuck at an extremely high or low position?

By assessing the dynamic nature of the emotional material, people quickly identified ways to add, subtract or sustain the emotional energy in the immediately following design workshops.

It turns out that this simple way of naming, explaining, taming and changing behavioural processes of innovation enabled them to take action better.

That’s pretty awesome.

There is nothing more inspiring than 1,200 serious people taking real action. 

To stop being technically busy and start being behaviorally aware.

All that, from just one of the six behavioural drivers of innovation leadership.

They are busy people after all.

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Connecting Dots 65 ◎⁃◎ Closing Innovation’s Culture Gap

Oostende, Belgium. March, 2025.

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Closing Innovation’s Culture Gap

Organizations will often conclude they need to be more innovative—new products, better services, sharper commercial models, novel marketing or improved operations. Usually triggered by a forcing function like market dynamics, competitor adjustments or new technology possibilities. Yet rarely do they ask what in their culture hinders more novel, effective or ambitious responses to these forcing functions. 

All companies already have a culture of innovation as measured by their current innovation outcomes. Often, these outcomes are far from meeting their aspirations. Evidence from McKinsey suggests 94% of executives are not satisfied with their innovation achievements, so it seems even at the world's best companies, there’s a significant aspiration to satisfaction gap.

Many executives I work with appreciate the observation that an organization can only innovate as much as it can tolerate change. The lower the change tolerance, the lower the innovation output and outcomes. The higher the change tolerance, the more ambitious the innovation outputs and outcomes. 

The point of asking a question like “What is our innovation tolerance right now?” is to surface the current innovation culture. Every culture will have a boundary reflecting the types of innovation that can and can’t be tolerated right now.  It’s a helpful question to ask even in times of high innovation tolerance, as the boundary shifts over time.

Most often, there is frustration when a firm isn’t more innovation-tolerant. The antidote many call for is to add or adopt an innovation culture as if it’s a specific and singular type of culture. Yet when you look at a cohort of highly innovative companies like, say, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia, you find fiercely different cultures for how they innovate. 

A way to decode and recode the innovation culture is to look at any organization as neurotic. Neurotic in this context means to be anxious and obsessive about the current way of working. By decoding the dominant constellation of neurotics in an organization, you can identify patterns or behaviours that are getting in the way of faster, better or more ambitious innovation outcomes.

Here are five neurotic styles that I use, developed by Manfred Kets de Vries, that can be assessed and diagnosed in your organization to get under the skin of a culture and what’s going on in the here and now, hindering progress. Maybe you’ve seen one up close?

The Dramatic Organization

Characterized by over-centralization and primitive structures that obstruct the development of effective information systems between levels. Shows up as attention-seeking or excitement-based communications tending to the extremes, gaining more attention than pragmatic insight, findings or recommendations. Action for action's sake and relentless impulsiveness can be avoidance of dealing head-on with existential truths. 

The Suspicious Organization

Characterized by elaborate information processing, centralized control with a low decision-making pace as efforts prioritize excessive analysis of external trends. Shows up as over-involvement in rules and details to vigilantly prepare to counter any attacks fostering a fight or flight culture. Uniformity and fitting can be avoidance of standing out or being perceived to offend others even if in pursuit of the greater good.

The Detached Organization

Characterized by internal focus, self-imposed barriers to information sharing and insufficient scanning of the external environment. Shows up as lacking interest in the present or future and indifferent to praise or criticism. Lack of warmth and rampant insecurity can be avoidance to growing beyond parochial perspectives and taking up one's full potential due to an over-weighted perceived fear of failure.

The Depressed Organization

Characterized by ritualism bureaucracy, inflexibility and resistance to change. Shows of lack of initiative, motivation and awareness of successful comparisons resulting in ‘decideaphobia’ and lack of response to changing markets or society. Unwillingness to take a direction can be avoidance of deep doubts of not being good enough and insecurity despite obvious strengths. 

The Compulsive Organization

Characterized by rigid formal codes, elaborate information systems and hierarchical representation of status coming directly from specific positions within the company. Shows up as heavily top-down dominant with expectations to conform to tightly prescribed rules rather than external evidence or data. Shows up as rigid and inward decision processes with submissive and uncreative employees. Obsessed with a single aspect of strategy (e.g. cost cutting, quality, etc.) can be avoidance of accepting that not all can be controlled and that unexpected events are reality whether we like it or not. 

My central thesis is that every culture is unique and innovates in its own way. To improve or adjust the innovation outputs, one of the best mechanisms is to go beyond simply identifying your “to be” culture and way of working to also identify what in the existing culture is hindering its changeability. 

What I find helpful is to anticipate which of the five neurotics might show up so you can develop strategies to sense and anticipate. Or, if progress has stalled, do a deep dive qualitative analysis for which neurotic is showing up in the here and now to develop interventions alleviating the hindrances. In either, you can better address regular change resistance and ad hoc responses to unexpected or repressed blockers. That way, you can recalibrate your innovation tolerance and ambition to close the satisfaction gap.

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Connecting Dots 64 ◎⁃◎ Emotional Gearing

2024 Olympic Men’s Marathon

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How Emotional Gearing Influences Innovation Outcomes

I am writing this edition from my office in Vancouver. The morning sun illuminates a blank wall. My mind searches for a single aha moment that frames this introduction to Emotional Gearing.

Instead, what comes to mind is two years of research with over 500 innovation leaders across five continents. Rather than buzzwords, gimmicks or clickbait, what slowly emerged was a simple repeatable mechanism described with plain language.

Emotional Gearing didn't come from my aha moment. Instead, it comes from hundreds of research participants' aha moments.

Allow me to explain why this goes against the status quo of innovation, strategy and management literature.

Leadership Needs More Science

Let’s address an awkward truth: a lot of leadership behaviour theory doesn’t hold up to reality, especially if we look at innovation leadership more scientifically. 

There is no single profile of who makes an innovative leader in all situations. Nor is there a list of tasks or a single leadership mechanism that unlocks success, every time. 

Admittedly, we all love a heroic case study and their seductive hacks and acts. However, the reality is that each leadership situation is just too different. Heraclitus comes to mind: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”

We need better leadership science that more realistically accounts for the tremendous behavioural and technical complexity, variability and uncertainty any professional faces when trying to drive change through a new idea of any size.

The Comparative Method Advantage

This mission for better behavioural science in a specific situation speaks to me. I was part of a similar paradigm shift in high-performance sports. Thirty years ago sport started to move beyond folk theories, gimmicks and gurus.

The goal was to scientifically understand and manage the cognitive pressures and mechanisms of performing under pressure when it matters most. 

Today, we deeply understand and apply evidence-based methods that better enable athletes to perform their best under pressure. These practices and mechanisms have become familiar to informed youth and recreational athletes (and their coaches) as much as Olympians representing your nation.

In my organizational leadership research, I borrowed a fundamental aspect of performance development from sports: the comparative method, where athletes religiously and rigorously study their performances between and within competition, as well as in training. 

Using the Innovation Leadership Map framework executives in my research compared multiple innovation leadership experiences good and bad. 

Comparison enabled individuals to see their response range when operating in emotionally charged environments of innovation. This response range operated at two levels, how they responded and the responses of others in their team and/or the organization. 

The aha moment came when they saw that their feelings, thoughts and actions when leading innovation are dynamic rather than a static good or bad binary.

That statement may seem obvious to you. Yet, these highly accomplished executives I was working with had almost universally not previously compared like-for-like leadership situations such as innovation processes let alone other routine work tasks. 

Sure there was ongoing ad hoc reflection, executive coaching, line manager feedback and annual performance reviews. However, a reliable, candid and experiential analysis method comparing multiple situations to illuminate the range of ways they operate as a leader was almost universally new.

The benefit of this personal performance insight was that while a leader of innovation will never know precisely what will happen as their work progresses, looking at their past through the comparative method insightfully illuminated how they might respond in the present through the inevitable ups and downs of innovation in their future.

The repetition of these individual aha moments led to a broader observation. 

Centred, Surging or Stuck

In 2023 a clear pattern emerged across participants suggesting a strong correlation between an emotionally balanced position and positive outcomes. 

Equally, extremely high or low emotional energy was often strongly correlated with negative professional or personal outcomes for individuals, teams and/or organizations. 

However, at times strong emotional surges were helpful and even necessary to drive progress for individuals, teams or entire organizations.

For example, surges could inject highly energized bursts of enthusiasm, idealization, optimism and motivation to break through setbacks, frustration or resistance.

Or, a surge could subtract energy to bring down to earth an unbounded ambition, misaligned vision or reckless risk-taking to reconnect with reality.

While these surges could be helpful, the more costly and regressive situations occurred when individuals became stuck in extreme highs or lows.

Like climbing 8,000+ meter mountains, one ventures into extreme conditions to accomplish great things. However, even expert mountaineers can’t stay in this “death zone”  for too long as the body can only be deprived of oxygen for so long and still function effectively. 

“Emotional gearing” is a practice for how innovation leaders can intentionally work with behavioural demands and dynamics by actively shifting when needed between centred, surging and stuck positions. It's a mechanism that can proactively interpret and influence the responses of individuals, teams and/or the organization.

What’s Next for Emotional Gearing

I hope to deploy and further test this mechanism with executives, coaches, advisors and L&D professionals like you supporting the innovators in your organization. 

The aim is to reduce the costs of people burning out while increasing the benefits of innovation to their organization, stakeholders and society.

If you have ideas for adopting Emotional Gearing or suggestions on who should hear about it please get in touch. 

Also, thanks to research participants and those who provided feedback to prior editions of this newsletter. Every act deepens our knowledge to reduce pain and increase gain.

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Connecting Dots 63 ◎⁃◎ Innovation Leadership, a Manifesto

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Making Innovation Leadership a Practice

That was then.

The big hard forester was crying small soft tears. We stood silently in remote Idaho surrounded by the thriving success of their innovative forest management techniques. 

I was a young economist studying the cause and effect of environmental policy and public relations. He was overwhelmed by frustration that their findings and methods weren’t adopted by industry, non-profits or government agencies. 

Paradoxically, these same smart, successful and sophisticated people continuously called on him for innovation and new solutions. Yet, the patient wouldn’t take their medicine.

In this Idaho fieldwork, we had expected legalese and technicalities. Instead, we were confronted by frustration and humanity.

It was a lesson that even the best organizations aren’t very good at innovation.

This is Now

Today in 2025, the trap of seeing innovation as a purely rational and emotionless technical exercise persists. Even the most innovative organizations aren’t very good at minimizing waste, burnout and harm. Consequently, great potential for good goes unrealized.

Innovation itself needs innovation to become more human(e). After all, innovation doesn’t come from spontaneous combustion or sophisticated software algorithms, it comes from people with the motivation and capabilities to make something new real by driving change with others.

Therefore, to start the year I give you an evidence-based manifesto to treat innovation leadership as a specific leadership practice. Just as some doctors are effective emergency room specialists through deliberate training, executives and managers can deliberately train to more effectively navigate innovation’s unique behavioural challenges and social processes.

~ Share this manifesto, tell me if you agree/disagree, and let’s innovate how we innovate to be more human(e).

Innovation Leadership, a Manifesto

Accept the Challenges and Opportunities of Innovation Leadership

Innovation leaders face many challenges in the contemporary business environment. They must navigate the emotional and political complexities of change within organizations, secure buy-in from stakeholders, and manage anxiety within their teams while pursuing often disruptive innovations. Yet, these challenges also present a unique opportunity to redefine how innovation is understood and practiced within the unique context of a company’s culture, history and current capabilities.

Recognize the Emotional Reality of Innovation: One of the key challenges is the widespread misconception that innovation is purely a rational, technical process. The evidence consistently highlights the need to acknowledge the emotional realities faced by innovation leaders and the strong emotions triggered by the pursuit of innovation. Innovation leaders need to recognize that their efforts inevitably cause distress and that they must be prepared to deal with anxiety both within themselves and their teams.

Navigate the Boundary of Innovation Tolerance: A related challenge is the lack of a clear definition of what constitutes innovation within an organization. Innovation leaders need to determine the organization's tolerance for change - how much innovation can the organization bear right now before pushing back?  This requires an understanding of the organization's culture and an ability to carefully navigate the often invisible boundaries that define what is acceptable and what is not, in the here and now. Pushing too far, too fast can trigger defensive responses that stifle innovation.

Create a Holding Environment for Innovation: A key task for innovation leaders is to create a holding environment that allows individuals and teams to safely explore new ideas, how to adopt them at scale, and work through the anxiety associated with change. This involves containing regressive responses to change and fostering an environment where individuals feel safe to challenge the status quo. Acknowledging the anxieties within the organization and providing reassurance and direction are crucial to creating such an environment. 

Exhibit Transformational Leadership that Embraces Authenticity:  Evidence reveals the importance of transformational leadership, where leaders inspire followers to move beyond transactional relationships and embrace change. This involves articulating a clear vision, providing intellectual stimulation, and demonstrating genuine care and concern for team members. Combining transformational leadership with authentic leadership, where leaders are self-aware and transparent about their motivations, builds trust, fosters collaboration and concretely empowers real work to progress.

Develop a Practice of Innovation Leadership: One of the most significant opportunities for innovation leaders is to move away from rigid frameworks and processes and towards a more adaptable and human-centred approach. This involves developing a practice of innovation leadership that recognizes the emotional complexities of change. This practice includes tools and techniques for surfacing and managing anxiety, fostering psychological safety, and developing self-awareness. By embracing the emotional reality of innovation and developing a practice that combines technical expertise with emotional intelligence, innovation leaders can unlock the full potential of their teams and organizations. 

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Connecting Dots 62 ◎⁃◎ "Let's See What Happens" - The Innovation Flywheel

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“Let’s See What Happens”

It was Wednesday at 7:30 am. I was in a modern French-themed café preparing for the pilot of a slightly innovative event format that started in 30 minutes.  The last note I wrote down atop the printed agenda was “Let’s see what happens.”

It’s a reminder that I write or type before any planned event, training program, strategy offsite, or one-to-one session. No matter how big or small. The work could affect one person, a million customers or a billion humans. 

In these sessions, even with the best-laid plans, the outcomes are uncertain. While we can be confident we can’t be closed-minded. It’s essential to allow unexpected events and listen closely to what is or isn’t being said in the room. 

This morning, it was simply a friendly and fun first edition of a business book club. However, like any new idea, venture, or proposition, you don’t know if it will or won’t work until you try.  

While I was hopeful it would work out, I needed to be accepting of the fact it might not, be okay with that possibility and if so be appreciative we learned quickly. 

In my experience, most executives can understand this need to learn by doing in theory, however, in practice, most really struggle.

So I thought I’d share an example of how I launched with my co-conspirator Frank a small and innovative(ish) event through a nice framework from the book we discussed.

Firstly, what were we trying to do?

The hypothesis for the book club is that people and professionals love to socialize through ideas. Also, there is a yearning to convene again and rebuild such forums post-COVID and in the techno-anxiety era. 

For the first meeting, I selected a book relevant to any organization and grounded in evidence, not pop-management fluff. No Rules Rules is a research-based investigation of Netflix’s journey, culture, and learning over two decades. 

It was a biased selection as I was trained by Erin Meyer, the academic co-author. Erin deepened my training in cross-cultural communication development methods and is a teaching role model. 

I was also motivated to disseminate key principles of modern software ways of working to other industries as exemplified by the other co-author, Reed Hastings, CEO and co-founder of Netflix. 

If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. Thanks to 20 years of honing and refining, the practices revealed in the book are crisp and robust. Rather than a self-aggrandizing biography, it’s the true cut and thrust of working life in the constant pursuit of innovation, excellence, and results. 

How did we do it?

In hindsight, we followed Reed’s innovation flywheel. Now, this isn’t all unique to Netflix, but it nicely represented how we were working and what we were okay with success or failure. 

Reed’s innovation flywheel:

1. “Farm for dissent” or “socialize” the idea.

2. For a big idea, test it out.

3. As the informed captain, make your bet.

4. If it succeeds, celebrate. If it fails, sunshine it.

While our book club was “just” a book club, it was hosted within an organization where the format and focus were unprecedented. Just as any innovative idea starts as “just” an idea, until you test it out to see what happens, you don’t really know if it will work or if the organization can accept it.

We made our bet.

So, what happened? 

Well, of course, the contents of our discussion are confidential as we operated under Chatham House Rules and the in-person experience was the point. 

However, I can report that it was a super engaging, insightful and fun discussion over a fantastic breakfast. Participants loved socializing through ideas about the organizations in their lives and it was a super easy group to moderate as people listened intently while sharing meaningfully. 

Now, thanks to a super high NPS, over three times the number of attendees wish to participate in person in the future. 

Why did that happen?

Firstly, it was evident how ready people were to learn from and with others. Many alluded to big challenges they faced without forums to think, ideate and get feedback more broadly.

Secondly, one of the challenges to innovation or change through new ideas is that work has become more collaborative, distributed and workshop-based so that there is ever more to do. What can get crowded out is the thinking and learning and people LOVE to think and learn together.

Thirdly, I’m constantly heartened by how a light but clear structure empowers participation with high levels of interpersonal responsibility. We set the context and then watched what happened. 

Shall we try it again?

Yes, but we still need to see what happens the second time. I’m hopeful but we don’t know if interest and momentum will endure.

Let’s see what happens. 

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Learn more about Brett’s leadership development practice for global innovation and change professionals.

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Connecting Dots 61 ◎⁃◎ Turning Innovation Adversaries into Allies

Best Friends Francis and Ruby, Primrose Hill 2018

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Turning Innovation Adversaries into Allies

Recently, the folks at Boldly interviewed me about the coaching aspect of my private leadership development practice. They focused on a particular challenge that many innovation leaders face: how to turn adversaries into allies.

It’s a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of innovation leadership. We’re captivated by ideas, launches, outcomes, and case studies. However, the often-overlooked reality of innovation leadership is that it’s predominantly relational work, with technical work playing a supporting role.

The word “adversaries” carries significant weight, representing conflict. It encompasses conflicting perspectives, experiences, understandings, or goals. If the relational work isn’t done effectively, it’s often due to a lack of sufficient alignment leading to adversarial dynamics when it comes to making commitments.

This isn’t a flaw but a fundamental aspect of human nature. We need to diligently sift through our diverse views, experiences, and needs to reconcile them into a coherent enough understanding of how to move forward together willingly.

A new idea, as any innovation is, logically disturbs the current good enough alignment of how an organization operates. After all, every organization is perfectly optimized for its current results. 

The evidence and research I rely on tells us driving change through innovation may be adversarial but that doesn’t mean it’s hostile, brutal or hurtful. In fact, the most effective leadership approaches take into account the varying needs, responses and emotions of other people. 

Surprisingly, this truth is often neglected in business schools, design colleges, and technical degrees. However, for individuals leading work with uncertainty or risk triggered by new or innovative ideas, it’s an essential skill to transform adversaries into allies.

Regrettably, many innovators fail to recognize that they’ve inadvertently created adversaries until it’s too late. A symptom of this oversight is when they resort to blaming abstract entities like politics, antibodies, permafrost, or dark forces. These leaders have neglected to engage, exchange, and empathize with their peers.

On a positive note, there are ways to create coalitions of the willing and to less painfully leverage expertise in the organization to realize your vision. The goal quite simply is to turn adversaries into allies.

Strategy 1: Fault Lines

Unspoken differences in groups act like fault lines, they are dormant under the surface until activated. These differences are repressed and sit unconsciously yet influence how people respond to events and each other. Common fault lines are education, sex, nationality, race and age. The adversarial effects of fault lines are moderated when made salient through real information, real dialogue, learning and trust/psychological safety. Curiostiy and pro-diversity beliefs are key drivers of this work enabled by Strategy 2.

Strategy 2: Inner and Outer Empathy

Look to generate the capability and techniques to generate inner and outer empathy. Inner empathy involves understanding what drives or detracts you in the present moment, while outer empathy focuses on what drives or detracts those around you in the present moment. The key phrase is “right now” to ensure focus on developing how you think and act in alignment with your role’s goals in the here and now. In practice not in theory. This strategy provides precision in understanding the source, response, and consequence of an emotional response, allowing you to guide its influence rather than having it guide you. Warning, this can be dangerous work so if you aren’t trained call in someone who is. Do so early not when the conflict starts due to Strategy 3.

Strategy 3: Change Tolerance

Most people start with what’s technically possible and not socially tolerable in an organization. Hence tremendous waste where even the best innovators aren’t very good at realising innovation. What if you started with the goal of surfacing how much innovation can be tolerated right now? Not in theory but in practice. This differs from the typical focus on the most technically advanced possibility, which is the trap. By developing a practice of surfacing what’s socially tolerable, leaders significantly increase their influence, effectiveness, resilience and satisfaction. You can also align the approach and enabling actions based on the company’s dominant culture (e.g., process, competition, peer, or exploration-centric) to increase tolerance of change and innovation.

While every situation is different, typically one or more of these strategies help engage potential adversaries so they might become allies.

I’ll wrap up with a final thought. Often, we assume at the beginning of an initiative that everyone is an ally. Please don’t.

It’s good to be optimistic and think the best of people but only mark them down as allies when you’ve seen tangible evidence they are thinking and acting in line with your desired outcomes, right now.

If you don’t know, engage and find out while you can do something to moderate adversarial undercurrents in even your most dependable peers as needs change over time and by situation. Engage early and often. It’s in everyone’s best interest.

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Learn more about Brett’s leadership development practice for global innovation and change professionals.

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