Leadership Agenda

Most leaders cannot predict the future, but they can build organisations that will survive and flourish under just about any possible future. This requires creating Innovation capability, which in-turn requires "ambidexterity",  -it demands that leaders are able to maintain the core business, to exploit what they have, whilst simultaneously  identifying and deploying valid new ideas.

So you know the innovation is important but you are unclear on your priorities?  -This article attempts to summarise some of the high level  leadership actions that should be in your Agenda. Here are 5 of the key leadership objectives/practices that can be observed in successful innovators and maybe helpful to keep in mind when planning your next steps….

1. Make the Innovation Imperative very clear: -It is essential that the leaders not only communicate the need for innovation but also the implications of it. –They should set and communicate both a “vision” and a “tolerance” for innovation. These communications should be more than just a sentence on a document they should be brought to life and embedded in meaningful processes, reward mechanisms and key performance indicators.

2. Sponsor processes that enable your people to spot and embrace opportunity: -Effective innovators are hungry for data and insights, they continually seek customer and other insights in order to identify unmet market or customer needs. This requires both foresight processes (on a global scale) but also people who are able and empowered to connect the dots by bringing together a diversity of thinking form both inside and outside the organisation.

3. Develop a “Leadership Sans Egos” culture: -Sometimes it is riskier to do nothing than to try to do something.  Effective failures (i.e. failures where valuable learning is obtained) should be planned for and accepted. Failing better (i.e. faster, cheaper and with good learning) should be a business aim. Effective innovators develop an environment in which leaders are able to receive effective and well meaning “criticism” and to accept the failure of themselves, or of others, with their egos and careers remaining appropriately intact.

4. Be careful with the "Fads": -Innovation is  “hot”, software, books and ideas are prolific, but no one technique or project is the answer. For example, one very valid but, sometimes, over relied upon technique is “Open Innovation", but  too much focus on Open Innovation is sometimes an indicator that an organisation  has not developed a balanced internal resource. Many techniques are valid but leaders need to get to making the decisions on such solutions based on an strategic analysis of their organisational needs and opportunities, rather than the sales pitch alone. The definition of the “problem”/opportunity really must  precede the solution seeking and adoption of fads.

5. Undertake continuous “Assessment and Refinement”: Standing still is no longer an option, whatever you do today will be out of date tomorrow, so every strategy, process or person of an organisation and its alliances must be subject to continual review, acquisition of new knowledge/learning, innovation and improvement. -Effective innovators are continuously challenging the status quo of the ways in which they operate. -Corporate entrepreneurship does not have to be an oxymoron but regrettably often is!

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