Innovation is the driving force behind the world’s most valuable and successful companies. No matter what industry you’re in, chances are innovation will change it dramatically.
If success in the 20th century was the result of large organizations’ ability to manage people, machinery, and capital, success in the 21st century likely will be characterized by the ability to innovate.
Despite this, many companies struggle with innovation. In a 2015 Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) survey of our clients, 94 percent of executives recognized that innovation is important, but only 14 percent said their organizations are effective at it.
This “innovation gulf” is not the product of a lack of effort; it’s the product of a company’s failure at innovation.
Several factors distinguish organizations that consistently innovate from those that don’t: culture, strategy, budget, clear direction, and leadership.
Of them, leadership around innovation may be the most challenging.
Managing innovation requires a different approach to leadership than the traditional, operations-focused style many leaders learn as they advance in their careers.
That’s because innovation is different from operations in the following ways:
- Innovation is ambiguous. It’s not just that the outcome of an innovation project is uncertain; the entire context is unclear. Is the organization pursuing the right idea? Is it the right time for this idea?
- Innovation is high profile. Innovation initiatives often are thought of as potentially transformative. Consider how the iPod and iTunes changed Apple’s business. As a result, C-suite leaders, board members, and people across the organization are watching.
- Innovation is risky. Innovation’s transformative potential also comes with a big downside of being unpredictable and prone to failure. Taking risks produces greater emotional stress for all involved.
- Innovation moves people and organizations into uncharted territory. Finally, successful or not, innovation involves moving into new competitive territory without any certainty about what the destination is, how long it will take to get there or what value might be discovered. Innovators are not just mapping unknown territory, they’re building new roads as they go.
These four characteristics make innovation different from operations functions, such as finance or marketing. Innovation can seem riskier, produces greater emotional stress on those involved, and requires more tenacity and risk taking.
Keys to Innovation Leadership
Leading innovation, then, is also different from leading operations. To understand those differences, CCL interviewed people on the front lines of innovation work, many of whom had led or been a part of multiple, successful innovation projects.
From those interviews, we discovered three key behaviors that successful innovation leaders, whether they are C-suite executives whose portfolio includes innovation or managers leading innovation-focused teams, exhibit:
- They demonstrate trust in those they lead.
- They keep the purpose of the initiative front and center.
- They act as equal partners in the initiative.
Each of these behaviors enables leaders to provide meaningful emotional support to managers and teams engaged in the emotionally draining work of innovation, and demonstrate to their managers that they trust and support their actions and decisions.
- Demonstrate trust. To be successful, innovators need the confidence to take risks. For this to happen, the leaders who oversee them must prove their trust.
They can do so by empowering innovation managers, giving them autonomy and reassurance by providing regular feedback and more coaching. Leaders can draw out answers from innovation managers by asking questions designed to guide them through their challenges and help them find the answers they need.
- Keep purpose front and center. Influential management consultant and author Peter Drucker once wrote that “what motivates—and especially what motivates knowledge workers—is what motivates volunteers…they need to know the organization’s mission and to believe in it.”
For innovators, this remains especially true. Beyond simply knowing and believing in their organization’s mission, innovators must believe in the purpose and value of their specific innovation contributions. They must keep their focus on the “why” of their individual work.
Leaders must continually communicate how innovation fits into the big picture and why it’s important. Without that reinforcement, innovators and their managers risk losing focus, motivation, and confidence. And once those are gone, the chances of successful innovation are gone, too.
- Acting as partners. Finally, leaders must learn to act as equal partners with the innovation managers and innovation teams they lead. Operational leadership principles would call for leaders to provide resources, remove obstacles, guide decisions, and coach their followers toward success. But are these traditional leadership behaviors enough?
Because of the ambiguity, risk, and uncharted nature of innovation, leaders also must be willing to sit side-by-side with innovators and contribute their own ideas and energy. In other words, successful innovation management requires a more egalitarian view of supervisor/supervisee relationships.
By acting as partners, leaders show they truly believe in the innovation team and its work. This can help the team push through whatever obstacles and doubts they may face as they create something new.
With these insights in mind, the causes of the innovation gulf—the vast difference between executives who say innovation is important and those who say their organizations do it well—become clearer.
The crux of the challenge is simply that leaders may be taking the same approach to innovation that they take to other existing organizational operations. But what works well in an operational context can cripple or doom an innovation initiative.
Want to be better at innovation? Start with your leadership.
To learn more about innovation leadership, download the whitepaper this article is based on, Three Crucial Behaviors for Successfully Leading Innovation.
Michael T. Mitchell, Ph.D., is a senior faculty member at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), where he advises CCL clients on all aspects of innovation, including innovation leadership. He has 35 years of business experience across more than 25 industries, including senior positions in multiple Fortune 500 companies. He has served in multiple innovation roles, including director of New Products and VP of Global New Products and Strategy.
