The Most Important Leadership Quality

Ask chief executives what skills are required to successfully compete, grow and succeed in the 21st century and you’ll receive conflicting answers. The global economy swings from signs of recovery to predictions of collapse and the business sector seems paralyzed and often confused. Though many businesses are cash-rich, they’re risk-averse, strategically incremental and lacking fresh ideas and innovation.

However, ask chief executives how important creativity is to a 21st century leader and the response is unanimous - it’s not important, it’s crucial for sustainable business. Today more than ever, creativity and innovation are core competencies for leaders and managers. It is their role to teach people how to perceive the world in new ways; find hidden patterns, make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, ask important questions and generate solutions.

Finding fresh solutions to problems and the ability to create new products, processes or services for a changing market, are parts of the intellectual capital that gives a company its competitive edge. Creativity is a crucial part of the innovation equation.
But still, in many organizations, there’s no clear pathway for developing personal creativity and a way to nurture, develop and celebrate ideas and this is despite leaders’ recognition that creativity is key. Visit a kindergarten however and you’ll be immersed in a culture of creative thinking. Imagination and learning isn’t stifled but encouraged; color, movement, sound and communication thrive. So what happens between the open and effortless experimentation of childhood and the struggle to think creatively that is experienced by so many in adulthood?

Changing the work culture and selectively forgetting past success formulas, and co-creating future products and services with employees, customers, and external partners are hallmarks of creative leaders in organizations from the US, Europe, and Asia. Firms exhibiting creative leadership out-performed their competition during the recession.
We need to develop creative and courageous leaders and build a culture of innovation where failure is acceptable and successfully implemented ideas are rewarded and celebrated. Successful workplaces of the future will incorporate programs and develop an organizational culture that offers employees a voice and a greater understanding and fulfillment of their potential.

Creative leadership programs will take people outside of their traditional comfort zones and lead to improved employee well being, engagement and self-awareness, to increased leadership and productivity, and to a greater ability to innovate and make a difference. In the face of competitive and economic pressures, many organizations are convinced that creativity and innovation are the keys to success.

Leadership and Innovation Gap

McKinsey research reveals a wide gap between the aspirations of executives to innovate and their ability to execute. Organizational structures and processes are not the solution.

More than 70 percent of the senior executives in the survey say that innovation will be at least one of the top three drivers of growth for their companies in the next three to five years. Other executives see innovation as the most important way for companies to accelerate the pace of change in today’s global business environment. Leading strategic thinkers are moving beyond a focus on traditional product and service categories to pioneer innovations in business processes, distribution, value chains, business models, and even the functions of management.

Like short skirts, innovation has traditionally swung into and out of fashion: popular in good times and tossed back into the closet in downturns. But as globalization tears down the geographic boundaries and market barriers that once kept businesses from achieving their potential, a company’s ability to innovate—to tap the fresh value-creating ideas of its employees and those of its partners, customers, suppliers, and other parties beyond its own boundaries—is anything but faddish. In fact, innovation has become a core driver of growth, performance, and valuation.

Are you experiencing the effects of this leadership and innovation gap and how are you bridging the gap?

Innovation Leadership, a Matter of Behavior

A recent innovation leadership study (http://www.capgemini-consulting.com/ebook/Innovation-Leadership-Study/index.html ) carried out jointly by IESE Business School and Capgemini Consulting suggests there are five key areas that affect a company’s innovation success: the innovation function, innovation strategy and innovation governance (formal mechanisms), innovation leadership and innovation culture (informal mechanisms).

The study notes specific differences in behavior of innovation leaders versus laggards across these key area. The behavior of leaders has an impact in the ability to drive innovation.

Additionally critical to innovation success is the development of a well-articulated innovation strategy. The lack of such a strategy is by far the most important constraint for companies to reach their innovation targets, followed by a lack of understanding of the external environment. There is a need for innovation strategy development in a more bottom-up manner, focused on people as the key source of competitive advantage. One needs to capture all those individual insights from managers and employees to better incorporate an understanding of the external environment in the strategy development process.

Have you developed an innovation strategy and are you achieving success with it?

Can Leaders Harness The Hyper connectivity of Everything?

Think of the Hyper connectivity of Everything as the convergence of multiple "Connections": the Connections of Information (World Wide Web and systems), the Connections of People (social networks), the Connections of Things and the Internet of Places. These Connections can produce much value on their own (e.g., social networks), but it is the convergence of the multiple Connections that produces the greatest value, innovation and potential for competitive advantage.

The "Hyper connectivity of Everything" will pervade business, government and society, creating new business models and transforming existing ones and successful leaders will be able to harness these new business models and continuously innovate.

As the Hyper connectivity of Everything develops, everything will have an IP address. The number of Internet-connected entities and the volume of Internet data will increase.  Connected objects are driving hyperconnected businesses and extended value chains. This interconnectivity of objects, systems, information, people and places is creating many new business opportunities.  Risks and issues of security, privacy, Internet network fragmentation and infrastructure congestion may slow or diminish aspects of the Internet of Everything trend and potentially impact the acceleration of innovation.

Are you building new leadership, business, technology models based on the Hyper connectivity of Everything Trend?

Rapid technology change impacting innovation

It's safe to say that at no point in history has technology changed so rapidly and created so many opportunities and risks. What's particularly unsettling about today's post-PC environment is that the rules and wisdom of the past often don't apply.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in managing the various sales and marketing channels that now exist. Once upon a time, enterprises communicated with customers in person, using the phone and via snail mail. Marketers placed ads in print, TV and radio, and used direct mail to interact with consumers.

Today, mobile technology is changing everything. It's not so much that social media, geolocation information, big data and other tools exist and require their own set of applications and strategies. It's that they create a three-dimensional chess game that's infinitely more complex and unpredictable. Brands and reputations soar or stumble in a matter of minutes in a world where consumers suddenly wield as much power as corporations.

That much you probably know. But what many business and IT leaders don't fully grasp is that channel integration must be approached from the customer's perspective rather than that of the enterprise. In this brave new world, the technology and devices used to access a company or an account are irrelevant for consumers. It's simply a matter of having a ubiquitous view of purchases, loyalty points, coupons and social media ties. Essentially, consumers want their favorite brands to follow them around everywhere, all the time.
In a business and IT world mired in legacy systems and cost controls, making the technology invisible isn't easily done. Success requires more than building out robust channels or tossing out mobile apps. It requires more than achieving goals for metrics. High click rates and hugely successful viral campaigns don't necessarily lead to bottom-line results.

Today, the most innovative leaders crumple silos. They put big data to use in new and inventive ways. They create micro-incubators for innovation and find people who can serve as intrapreneurs. They use big data, crowdsourcing and bottoms-up methods to identify new products and services that customers didn't know they wanted—and the business never thought of providing. They create marketing and sales channels that work so well that they're there, but they're not apparent to the consumer.

To be sure, leading with innovation in mind means a new style of leadership like never before.