Editorial
Superpowers are worthless if you don't know how to use them. In the previous article we explored how The Five Leadership Superpowers — the present futurist, the experienced leader, the prepared risk taker, the strategic executor and accountable collaborator — serve to ignite innovation. Now, we can discuss how to use these superpowers to create a virtuous cycle of innovation within your organization.
5 Steps to Ignite Innovation in Your Organization
1. Foster a Future-Oriented Mindset
Encourage leaders and employees to 1) watch for and monitor early warning signals of impending disruptions (changes in customer behavior to geopolitics, etc.), 2) stay informed about market and industry trends and 3) watch emerging technologies. Integrate your takeaways into discussions to spur new ideas and innovations.
Amy Webb, NYU Stern Business School, Professor of Strategic Foresight and CEO of Future Today Institute and Columbia Business School professor of management Rita McGrath are two great sources to learn more about developing a future-oriented mindset, particularly McGrath’s book, “Seeing Around Corners: How to Spot Inflection Points in Business Before They Happen.”
2. Promote Continuous Learning and Improve Learning Capabilities
Foster a learning culture across all levels, including senior executives, where people take ownership of their learning and professional development versus waiting to receive training. Encourage and expect curiosity, ask questions and invite people with diverse opinions and ideas to challenge the status quo and engage in constructive debate. Challenging the norms holds the potential to spur new ideas and fuel innovation.
Particularly at times of disruption, you'll hear the refrain "I don't have time to learn." That is only a sign that the company and the individual are not prioritizing it. As leaders, open up discussions explicitly laying out expectations and opportunities to learn. Learning can be as lo-fi as:
- Reading relevant articles or books.
- Attending webinars.
- Asking for stretch assignments, on the job.
Each organization and individual must find a way to learn what is needed to achieve desired outcomes and remain relevant. Those that don’t will be obsolete.
To learn more about building a learning culture, check out “How WD-40 Created a Learning-Obsessed Company Culture,” in the Harvard Business Review, follow Garry Ridge, former CEO of WD-40 and founder of The Learning Moment. Lastly, follow Adam Grant and read his book “Think Again” and article “Building a culture of learning at work.”
Related Article: What Keeps Humanity Relevant in AI's World? Lifelong Learning
3. Cultivate Calculated Risk-Taking
Promote a psychologically safe environment where taking measured and smart risks is celebrated. Encourage prototyping and experimentation. See failure as an opportunity to learn, bringing you closer to success (the “40” in WD-40 stands for the success of the 40th formulation). Remember, if you do not give people permission to fail, you have not given them permission to try.
Calculated risk-taking includes investing in and improving preparedness. For example, identify low-risk, low-cost steps that enhance preparedness for a variety of disruptions, such as setting up a communications team for crises, developing playbooks for common, high-impact disruptions (cyber breaches, fires, storms, etc.), and conducting and practicing test run exercises for “what if” scenarios.
To learn more about calculated risk-taking and preparedness, check out “Your Company Is Too Risk-Averse” in the Harvard Business Review and the articles “How to Predict Disruption When There’s no Such Thing as Normal,” and “The Best Way to Lead in Uncertain Times May Be to Throw Out the Playbook,” by Eric McNulty, associate director of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative.
4. Enhance Strategy Execution Capabilities
Ensure your strategy is clear and communicated in terms that your teams and employees can act on. Align functions and departments with the strategy and then, with each other. Also ensure investments and initiatives feed into the organization’s strategy. Follow progress and adjust as necessary based on internal and external conditions. By performing all of these steps, you will operationalize an idea into an innovation that creates value for customers and other stakeholders.
Strategy execution requires an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach. A wide range of resources touch on this subject, ranging from classic books such as Robert Kaplan and David Norton’s "The Execution Premium" and "The Strategy-Focused Organization" to "The Five Dysfunctions of Teams" by Patrick Lencioni. Read more recent articles/publications such as “10 Principles of Strategy through Execution,” "How to Move from Strategy to Execution" and “Execution is a People Problem, Not a Strategy Problem.”
5. Develop a Culture of Collaboration and Accountability
Finally, remove any obstacles that get in the way of cross-organizational collaboration. These can range from forming cross-functional, fit-for-purpose teams with the right people (regardless of level and function) who can resolve challenges and develop solutions to meet customers’ needs better (met, unmet, known, unknown). At the same time, clearly define desired outcomes that create value for customers and solve their challenges and hold teams accountable for achieving these outcomes. As leader, you must provide teams with the autonomy and the necessary resources to support this without creating artificial barriers.
To learn more, Patrick Lencioni’s classic, "The Five Dysfunctions of Teams," addresses the foundational issues that teams often face that prevent them from effectively collaborating and creating a standard of accountability. More recent articles to read include “Cracking the Code of Sustained Collaboration” and “When Leaders Struggle with Collaboration,” which address ways to overcome obstacles to collaboration.
Related Article: Do We Collaborate Too Much?
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Innovation Is the Only Path Forward
The dynamic future requires we all see, think and do differently to succeed. The Five Leadership Superpowers guide and enable leaders and organizations to do this sustainably. While this isn’t rocket science, it also isn’t easy — otherwise, more organizations would be doing this. It requires commitment from leadership to actively engage with each other and the organization, make decisions, and support others to do the same and act on those decisions.
Start with Steps 1 and 2 today.
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