3 Practical Ways to Become An Innovative Leader

Innovation doesn't require genius, luck, or magic--but it does require talking to the right people, being able to clearly articulate a vision, and putting the right partnerships in place. Having a practical guide can help anyone develop into an innovative leader. Here are my top three steps:

Step #1. Talk to the Right People
Your most important asset is your mind. Your experience, expertise, and know-how governs your understanding of what is possible, the options you see, the strategy you formulate, and your assessments of the environment around you. To expand your vision, meet with other minds! Make it a habit to identify and visit the people who will provide you with fresh ideas, key learning, new tactics, and strong strategies.

Step #2. Articulate the Way Forward
People rely on their leaders to craft a vision of the future that makes sense and can guide their everyday decisions. Some of the leaders I have met improvise this activity and many do it badly. And yet articulating a rousing vision of the future isn’t difficult. It can be your secret super-power, if you just master three tactics:

• Be explicit about your conclusions and how you came to them. Speak in terms people can understand and relate to. Do more than share judgment--provide insight to your reasoning. 

• Give people the opportunity to ask questions. Encourage diverse points of view and different backgrounds. Let people react, inquire, challenge, and extract the information they need to satisfy their understanding. Then you will be in the best position to move forward together.

• Customize your message to your audience. Include something useful in their day-to-day work--utility helps information stick. 

Step #3. Build Informal Partnerships that Generate Synergy
Leadership today is largely about identifying the partnerships that will lead to broad, powerful impact and growth. I’m talking about supportive and symbiotic relationships here, not contractual business partnerships.

Some many leaders shy away from informal partnerships, fearing the vulnerability that comes with relationships. If you overcome that fear, you get the benefits. Here are tips to help you master the third step of innovation leaders:

• Be clear about what you hope to get out of the partnership. Take the time to articulate the value to both parties that makes it worth pursuing.

• Share the goals of the partnership with others who have a stake in its success. Initiate informal conversations, over the phone, via email, or over coffee, with the clients, vendors, industry experts, investors, and others who can share their perspectives how to get the most out of your partnership. Then share what you learn with your partners.

• Take the lead in coordinating partnership activities. Be the one who identifies and handles important issues as they arise. Take responsibility for planning and facilitating joint events. Foster joint development. Provide regular assessment of the partnership that prove its value. 

1+1+1 = > Sum
These three tasks required of innovative leaders--talking to the right people, articulating the way forward, and building informal partnerships--work together. The interaction of these contributions produces a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual components. Together they ensure your leadership is well informed, a source of unambiguous guidance, and reinforced by powerful allies.

Are you using these steps to become an innovative leader? What steps do you find most successful?

Innovation's Magic Is In The Turn, Not The Prestige

I recently attended a conference where the keynote was entitled "Innovation is Analogous to Magic" and it reminded me of the opening dialogue of Christopher Nolan’s 2006 film, The Prestige:

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called “The Pledge”. The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course…it probably isn’t. The second act is called “The Turn”. The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you’re looking for the secret… but you won’t find it, because of course you’re not really looking. You don’t really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn’t clap yet. Because making something disappear isn’t enough; you have to bring it back. That’s why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call “The Prestige”.

It made me think that innovators take something ordinary, do some extraordinary things to it, and then make it re-appear in grandiose fashion. It’s a great trick. It’s so good, in fact, that I think it’s fair to call it true magic. 21st Century innovation remains focused on The Turn, the process by which they make the ordinary extraordinary.

While it lacks the pomp and circumstance of a Prestige on stage at some big event, this interaction is much more intimate, and as such, much more powerful. You may not perceive it directly, but the care and craft of The Turn percolates through your hands and eyes. Within minutes or even seconds, you just know this is something different. Something far beyond what others are doing with their false magic. You want this. You need this.

As an innovative leader are you focused on The Turn or The Prestige??

HR And Leadership Development

Taking a look at the 2012 Society for Human Resource Management ((SHRM) survey, Challenges Facing HR Over the Next 10 Years, ‘developing leaders’ takes the number two spot of concerns HR must address as identified by  52 percent of respondents.  This is a big jump from the 2010 survey, in which a mere 29 percent of respondents named leadership development a pressing HR challenge. In business, as in the rest of life, leadership skills are critical now more than ever.

The number one spot in the SHRM survey with 60 percent of respondents is ‘retaining and rewarding the best employees’.  This makes sense as a lead-in, since I’d argue the best employees are leaders – people leaders, management leaders, creative leaders, technical leaders or sales leaders. We need to fill the leadership gap, and fast.

Here are the top four challenges to developing leaders and a bit about how to address them.

1) Invest in leadership development. Whether you believe leaders are born or made, companies still need to invest in their best employees to develop and sustain leadership qualities.

2) Create a culture of collaboration. Leaders are at their best when the company culture demands collaboration. Rewarding individual success is necessary but not sufficient.

3) Develop communications skills. We may expect our leaders to be good communicators but too often it’s not the case. Good communicators build teams and trust; poor communicators create and feed uncertainty.

4) Drive and sustain real accountability. Leaders must be accountable. They must own the problems they need to solve and own their failures to be credible when claiming success.

HR and leaders alike have many responsibilities. Maybe among the most important is developing the next generation of leaders and being more innovative as times change rapidly before our eyes. Where would you start?  

Innovative Leadership Workbook

Metcalf & Associates, Inc. announced the publication of the Innovative Leadership Workbook for Emerging Leaders and Managers, written by CEO Maureen Metcalf, Founder and CEO of Metcalf & Associates. This workbook is a companion to the winner of Best Business Reference Book in the 2012 International Book Awards.
“Leadership needs innovation the way innovation demands leadership. By combining them, you improve your capacity to deliver results and your organization’s capacity to affect change,” says Metcalf.

The Innovative Leadership Workbook for Emerging Leaders, designed specifically for busy people, includes field-tested processes and worksheets for innovating how you lead, transforming your organization, and creating sustainability. The workbook takes readers on their own leadership journey through a series of development activities while providing insight into the thought processes of a two different and highly successful emerging leaders whose unique challenges provide invaluable insight into how a leader develops and incorporates innovation both personally and professionally.

Read more: http://www.innovativeleadershipfieldbook.com/book-series/innovative-leadership-workbook-for-emerging-leaders/

Can't Have One Without The Other

There is a huge role for leadership in creating and living a culture that values innovation.  In this culture, innovation becomes everybody’s job, with all brains engaged in the pursuit of what now and what’s next.

So, the question is, what must be present and  valued in an organization in order to create this innovative culture?

Well, probably lots of things but here are four things at the top of my list:

Diversity ~ in every way that one human being is different from another.
While our natural tendency is to gravitate towards those who are like us, innovation lies most often in unexplored places and with people who vary in thought, background, experience, gender, age, ethnicity and skill.  The wider the net is cast, the greater the opportunity for innovation.

Relentless Change ~ as an accepted norm.
Those who embrace innovation, also embrace change.  They expect it.  They create it. They even demand it.  Innovation and change are inextricably linked.  As the song goes, “ you can’t have one without the other”

Open communication ~ at all levels
Innovation requires us to listen deeply, speak candidly, question constantly, challenge openly, and get a little messy in the process.  In other words, an organization that values innovation will be light on bureaucracy and heavy on curiosity and transparency.

Failure ~ as a learning tool
In order to break through the barriers of sameness and routine, we have to experiment and risk failure.  Failure happens. In an innovative environment it is also expected because with each defeat we get closer to learning about what it will take to succeed.

So, what would you add to the list of must have leadership values for an innovative culture to thrive?  How do you encourage innovation in your organization?