I have been thinking a lot about something and I am not 100 percent sure I have distilled my thoughts at this time; but it is on my mind so I am going to write about it. I hope you read it and help me get to a more concise and clear thought pattern.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting with someone who was wildly accomplished – particularly for the stage of their career that they were at. In talking with them, they focused on the fact that a great deal of their success stemmed from innovation and even pointed to their own non-traditional career path as an example.
They were absolutely correct. They had created some incredible changes in the system they worked in using ideas that I had literally never considered even though I was close to the industry they were working in. I mean, this was seriously impressive stuff. And their career path was absolutely non-traditional. I was 100 percent bought into the idea that I was talking to a true innovative thinker.
Here is the issue, however. As I learned more, it was clear that when push came to shove in their current position there was a dramatic lack of openness to innovation and creativity. In fact, in some regards you could say there was a traditionalistic vibe to the decisions they were making as a leader. Sure, they were making incremental changes and improvements, but the overwhelming majority of their work was siloed and bracketed by conventional thinking. In that moment I came to the realization that this leader had definitely had success, but was not in my mind a true innovator.
This led me to think about the subject personally and in a more global sense. I thought about what being an innovator leader really meant and it forced me to consider whether or not I was an innovative leader or not. It led me to more questions about innovation than answers.
As I pondered this, two particular two questions persisted:
If you are innovative in one capacity or in one area or role and traditional in others are you really an innovator?
If as George Couros’ book title suggests, innovation is really a mindset, then can you only be innovative in silos or is innovation truly a way of thinking?
The list of these and similar questions have been running through my head since I had the conversation with my colleague who considered himself an innovator just two short weeks ago.
I know I am not done thinking on this topic, but currently this is where I have landed. If you have one or two different and great ideas on things, that does not make you an innovator. It just makes you a thoughtful, creative, great thinker. All successful leaders have these moments. But not all successful leaders are innovators.
If much of your career or life is dictated by conventional thinking, particularly as dictated by job and title, then you are simply not an innovator. To be clear, this does not by definition imply that you are less effective than an innovator. It just means that you are not what you think you might be.
At this time I subscribe to the thinking that innovators are the ones that look at problems and look at the best possible solutions without concern for protocol, precedent, or policy. Then, they work to backwards engineer their solution to fit whatever mold necessary to create the best possible results.
Said differently, letting protocol and precedent trump the solution that might bring the best possible outcomes and results is the antithesis of being innovative. If anything, it promotes the status quo.
REFLECTIVE QUESTIONS TO GUIDE SOME THINKING
- Do you seek the best possible solution FIRST or do you attempt to adhere to protocol and process first?
- When have significant gains and improvements happened when using the same system to create new solutions that produced the old results?
- When is the last time you let the status quo win?
- Why do you make the choice to be bold sometimes and play it safe other times?
- When you look at yourself in the mirror, can you say that you are an innovator?
THE BEST THING I READ/WATCHED THIS WEEK
IF by Rudyard Kipling
In leadership circles “Man In The Arena” is often shared, but I will take “If” as the poem that best captures leadership and growth any day of the week.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
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