Today one of the most common buzzwords in business is “innovation” everyone wants to say they lead an innovative team looking to change how things are done in their industry. But the truth is for many they just want to sound relevant. Most organizations in the world today want their people to do a job, get things right and move “fast” they don’t truly want innovators, what they truly care about is turning a profit. Of course, being profitable is the goal of every company and is critical if you want to survive, however making products or having services people buy and want doesn’t mean you’re innovating, and that is fine. Not all companies have to revolutionize their industries. It’s ok to simply be good at a specific task that is well defined and has been around for a long time. The problem is that most leaders are operating from a fearful mindset, and they fear that if they aren’t out in the public acting as if they were creating the newest AI model or the next greatest thing their customers will move on and find someone else. The interesting thing is that this mindset is exactly what is holding them back from truly being revolutionary from creating amazing things and from finally being able to say they are innovating the way of the future.
Those in senior positions within corporations need to shift their mindset from one of fear to one of learning, experimentation and failing. These three things are the key to breaking out and revolutionizing your industry and potentially the world. Unfortunately, most c-suite executives and their direct reports in companies around the world are stuck being managers and haven’t shifted to become leaders. They focus on ensuring specific tasks are completed in specific way. They provide detailed feedback on why a task must be completed exactly as the procedures were written regardless if there were other ways that would work. “This is the way we have always done it, and it has served us well” is common to hear in most work environment unfortunately. These people are managers at best and not leaders, they have authority over people, but don’t have their trust and many would not follow them if given a true choice.
How do you break out of this cycle and start to create something bigger something that will truly take you to new heights?
First start with being open to learning new things. Yes, you need to open yourself up to being in positions where someone on your team might know something you don’t. Acknowledge that fact and ask to learn from them. If you truly can’t learn something new from some on your team, you have put together the wrong team. Seek out opportunities to learn from other industries, your competitors, and anywhere else you can find things that interest you. Don’t do this in a vacuum or without letting your people in your organization know they need to see you struggling and willing to admit when you don’t know something and when you need to explore and learn from others. This dynamic will start to shift their minds and open them up to the idea of learning. They will slowly or quickly start adopting a similar mindset. As this begins to happen, create opportunities for knowledge sharing within your groups and the greater organization. This will accelerate the rate of learning across the board but also increase the sense of value for those participating.
Second open opportunities for “free style experimentation” these should be times when people get to think of a problem that is bothering them regardless if it is something work related or not at all and allow them time and some resources to work on solving it. Teams might begin to form with people who share the same problem, you will see people begin to share potential solutions. Create frameworks for people to test some of those solutions without the fear of repercussions of the feeling of “wasting time”. As leader’s it is our jobs to openly experiment and participate in this phase with our teams. Actively communicate achievements and most importantly personal setbacks we are experiencing in our experimentation process. Ask for feedback and help from those also in the similar phases.
Third, when you fail take it with pride show it off and talk about your idea, thought process and why it ultimately didn’t work out the way you’d hoped. This is a time to not only refine your thinking process put to show your people that it is ok to fail and that you didn’t actual fail because now you identified a way that doesn’t work. This means you actually gained knowledge which, seen from the perspective, continuous learning is a win. Most adults have been conditioned from a lifetime of being in the education system that failing is bad and it must be avoided at all costs. It is a true leader’s job to help re-educate their people to know that this is not true. That in fact failure is part of success and innovation if you want to do amazing things you must fail more than the average person. If you want to revolutionize the world you need to get comfortable with failing the trick is to do it in a way that doesn’t jeopardize yourself or those in your command.
Becoming an innovative company, team or individual starts with a mindset shift that requires becoming comfortable with being constantly uncomfortable. Putting yourself in positions of not knowing and being ok with needing to learn. Once your mind makes that shift you will start to see some amazing things happening around you in ways that almost seem impossible. Your next steps now are to go and learn something new, anything at all!