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Leading Innovation: A Marketplace of Ideas (Week 14)

March 1, 2024 by Taran Swan

Week 14: A Marketplace of Ideas

Traditional leadership:

Conventional leadership focused on finding only the “best“ idea.

A fresh approach:

To innovate in the new era, your focus needs to be on generating a marketplace of many ideas. For this to happen, groups must first generate lots of ideas and keep massaging them. As Thomas A. Edison reportedly said, “To have a great idea, have a lot of them.”

Bring it to life:

- Create forums (physical and digital) for open, free-flowing exchange of ideas, not simply brainstorming.
- Encourage your teams to generate many good options (not just one) when solving problems.
- Challenge your employees to delay solutions or decisions until new/more ideas surface.
- Push teams to maximize full participation in idea generation including going outside one’s team as well as encouraging input from less vocal people.
- Promote a culture of psychological safety so every member of the community feels free and safe to offer ideas.

Next week: Diversity of Thought

Take your organization to the next level with our Culture and Innovation Assessments and our Innovation Leadership Coaching

Leading Innovation: Instill an Innovation Mindset (week 13)

February 23, 2024 by Taran Swan

To deal with accelerating change, effective leaders are modifying the ways they inspire innovation and transformation. This week we look at instilling an innovation mindset.

Week 13: Instill an Innovation Mindset

Traditional leadership:

Traditional leadership has approached the task of innovation as something restricted to certain individuals, such as innovation experts, creative people, or senior management. Or they have focused on specific areas, such as a special task force or an R&D department.

This approach no longer works.

A fresh approach:

In the new era, innovation is viewed as a part of everyone’s job. The challenge is to help their ideas get heard and applied.

Bring it to life:

- Adopt a broad definition of innovation.
- Recognize and celebrate incremental innovations, not just breakthroughs.
- Dispel the myth that innovation = technology. Instead, adopt the definition that innovation is “anything new + useful.”
- Encourage a climate of curiosity.

Next Week: Generate a marketplace of ideas

Take your organization to the next level with our Culture and Innovation Assessments and our Innovation Leadership Coaching

Leading innovation: Think holistically (week 12)

February 16, 2024 by Taran Swan

To deal with accelerating change, effective leaders are modifying the ways they inspire innovation and transformation. This week we look at innovation and creating a culture that thinks holistically.

Week 12: Think holistically

Traditional leadership:

Traditional leadership traditionally has focused on the individual business unit you lead for framing problems, building a vision, and setting and implementing strategy.

A fresh approach:

In the new era, innovation requires leaders to move thinking from the unit to the “big picture” or enterprise perspective. This means that innovation leadership must ask all members of a group to consider the whole problem rather than focusing on or trying to optimize one part.This requires framing the problem from multiple stakeholder points of view. If you don’t do this, you risk missing possible solutions that at first may seem mutually exclusive. That’s because the best innovation solution is often one that combines disparate approaches which can only be uncovered by framing a problem through a multi-faceted lens.

Bring this approach to life:

Think of the whole. Instill a deep sense of purpose and shared values in the work of the enterprise that cascades throughout all units. This helps develop a sense of responsibility and accountability for the success of the enterprise.
Think cross-functional. Help your teams become enterprise-minded by reassigning employees to a variety of posts spanning boundaries, units, and functions, with stretch assignments that will expand their worldview and know-how into an integrated organizational capability. The earlier in one’s career the better.
- Encourage people across disciplines and areas to work together on solving problems as a way to uncover dependencies and/or to mitigate risk or increase success.
Customer Focus. Recognize that your customers want integrated solutions not just products, so encourage your teams to share resources and collaborate efficiently across functions, geographies, and other boundaries leading to great customer solutions that bolster the enterprise.
Work in Groups. Help build a strong sense of community by developing peer-learning opportunities that take on business challenges as a group and formal leadership training on topics such as influencing without authority and managing global matrices.
Search for Patterns. Look for patterns and connections across organizations, industries, and sectors, and encourage others to do so.
Consider Impacts. Encourage evaluation of how key decisions or practices will reverberate throughout the organization and who will be impacted in what ways.

Next week: Instill an innovation mindset

Take your organization to the next level with our Culture and Innovation Assessments and our Innovation Leadership Coaching

Leading innovation: Be data-Informed – (week 11)

February 9, 2024 by Taran Swan

Using data to inform your choices is key to leading innovation.

This is our 11th installment in the Leading Innovation series. See the rest of the series here.

Traditional leadership:

A conventional approach to problem-solving has been to focus on who is right and to provide data to support the direction they want to take. The conventional view of innovation attaches far too much importance to the initial idea, the flash of insight, as though answers appear fully formed and perfect.

A fresh approach:

In the new era, innovation requires discovery-driven learning, a process of trial and error, which can truly occur only in an environment of respect for results and data. The focus needs to be on what is right and to look to the data for insights to fuel new thinking. Innovation is evidence-based, even if the community doesn’t like what the data is telling them.

Bring it to life:

Expect and ask to see evidence when people advocate for a point of view. Passion and intuition are not substitutes for hard data.
Seek to provide evidence when explaining your own ideas or decisions.
Routinely use data to plan future actions.
Welcome all sources of data, including negative feedback.
Create platforms for collecting and leveraging data.
Use data to take calculated risks.

Next week: Think holistically

Innovation solutions from Paradox Strategies

Our Collective Genius simulation and learning journey is designed to help leaders inspire action, nourish creativity, and build a culture of innovation. We also offer keynotes and our proprietary innovation diagnostic assessments re:Mind™ and re:Route™ as first steps in developing the mindset, culture, and capabilities of innovative organizations. Contact us via the form below if you would like to know how to bring these great tools to your organization.

Leading innovation: Psychological safety (week 9)

December 15, 2023 by Taran Swan

Leading innovation: Psychological safety (week 9)

To lead innovation with psychological safety, nurture an agreed-upon setting that allows everyone to share their ideas without fear of retribution.

Traditional leadership:

The conventional view has been that creating an environment where people feel psychologically safe is conveyed from the top down. Information is formal, corporate in tone, and tightly controlled, Employees are passive consumers of information.

A fresh approach:

In the new era, psychological safety is established through shared purpose, shared values, and agreed upon rules of engagement allowing everyone to share their ideas without fear of retribution. Leaders talk with employees not to them, and the culture fosters back-and-forth interaction. Leaders relinquish a measure of control over content, and employees actively participate in organizational messaging

Bring it to life:

Invite participation by showing you care and want to hear from others.
Respond to challenges, mistakes, or other issues in encouraging ways, such as by asking what is needed and offering to help vs. punishment, which discourages people from being honest or coming forward
Emphasize listening to your employees rather than just speaking to them.
Encourage employees to engage in a bottom-up exchange of ideas and to act as brand ambassadors and thought leaders
Establish a clear agenda to inform all communication and carefully explain the agenda to employees
Admit to mistakes and failures, and seek to learn from them
Show humility, with curiosity, interest and fallibility
Provide context for your team’s work—how complex, what they are trying to do, what’s needed from them, so they understand the journey
Create an environment where people can bring their whole selves to work

Next week: Question Everything.

Innovation solutions from Paradox Strategies

Leading innovation: Mutual trust (week 8)

December 8, 2023 by Taran Swan

Leading innovation: Mutual Trust (week 8)

To lead innovation with mutual trust, focus on your people’s competence and character over seniority and knowledge.

This is our 8th installment in the Leading Innovation series. See the rest of the series here.

Traditional leadership:

The conventional view has been that trustworthiness is based on one’s seniority and knowledge.

A fresh approach:

In the new era, mutual trust is based on competence and character.

Bring it to life:

Actively create a trustworthy environment, which begins when you behave in a trustworthy manner and practice discretion.
Be honest about your intentions, and encourage others to be as well.
Make public statements that are consistent with your private statements and actions; do what you say.
Hire on the basis of character, as well as competence.
Balance confidence with vulnerability and encourage others to do so.
Match your words to your actions.

Next week: Psychological safety

Innovation solutions from Paradox Strategies

Leading innovation: Mutual Influence (week 7)

December 1, 2023 by Taran Swan

Leading innovation: Mutual influence (week 7)

To lead innovation with mutual influence, build mutually respectful and beneficial relationships. Influence is two-way.

Traditional leadership:

The conventional view has been that influence is tied to your seniority, position, or who you know. Influence is one-way.

A fresh approach:

In the new era, influence is mutual and tied to your ability to build mutually respectful and beneficial relationships. Influence is two-way.

Bring it to life:

Try to discover everyone’s opinion and be patient and receptive while they make their case
Expect and seek feedback from all that can be helpful
Encourage people to advocate for their points of view
Evaluate ideas based on their merits, not on who contributed the idea
Take all employees’ ideas seriously, whether they are senior or junior, expert or novice, etc.
Ensure that meetings and conversations are not dominated by a few voices, including your own
Aim to step back in meetings. Avoid derailing/taking over conversations or always having the last word
Ensure all teams are soliciting input

Next Week: Mutual Trust

Foster a culture of mutual trust based on competence and character.

Innovation solutions from Paradox Strategies

Leading innovation: Respect (week 6)

November 25, 2023 by Taran Swan

Leading innovation: Respect (week 6)

To effectively lead innovation with respect, establish rules of engagement that focus on mutual respect for all.

Traditional leadership: Old

The conventional view has been that respect is ascribed by seniority and those perceived to be experts.

A fresh approach: New Era

New-era leaders help establish rules of engagement to foster a creative community. One of these rules is that of mutual respect, where members all consider each other competent even though each brings different abilities and strengths. Every colleague is thought to have something to offer. This belief is critical because it fosters the listening, openness, and transparency necessary for an innovative culture.

Bring it to life:

Establish a clear set of behavioral expectations and rules of engagement for collaboration that everyone can count on.
Foster the belief that everyone has something valuable to contribute
Practice listening and model attentiveness in meetings, no matter who is speaking
Strive to be, and encourage others to be, honest and forthright in conversations
Invite diverse points of view, welcome differences of opinion and respectful creative clashes
Do not allow people to demean others publicly or privately

Next week: Mutual Influence

Build mutually respectful and beneficial relationships.

Innovation solutions from Paradox Strategies

Featured

Week 14: A Marketplace of Ideas

Traditional leadership:

A fresh approach:

Bring it to life:

Next week: Diversity of Thought

Week 13: Instill an Innovation Mindset

Traditional leadership:

A fresh approach:

Bring it to life:

Next Week: Generate a marketplace of ideas

Week 12: Think holistically

Traditional leadership:

A fresh approach:

Bring this approach to life:

Next week: Instill an innovation mindset

Traditional leadership:

A fresh approach:

Bring it to life:

Next week: Think holistically

Traditional leadership:

A fresh approach:

Bring it to life:

Next week: Question Everything.

Leading innovation: Mutual Trust (week 8)

Traditional leadership:

A fresh approach:

Bring it to life:

Next week: Psychological safety

Leading innovation: Mutual influence (week 7)

Traditional leadership:

A fresh approach:

Bring it to life:

Next Week: Mutual Trust

Leading innovation: Respect (week 6)

Traditional leadership: Old

A fresh approach: New Era

Bring it to life:

Next week: Mutual Influence

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