Many leaders want their organizations to be more innovative and strategic. (In fact, there are tens of thousands of articles out there on fostering innovation and making teams more strategic.) Often this gets translated into directives, initiatives, or organizational values around these principles. And of course, those directives and initiatives never manifest into action, no matter how many goals and objectives are established to support them. Why?
There are a few reasons. One, innovation is the antithesis of risk. While organizations claim they want innovation, they inherently don’t want to take on risks. Therefore, truly revolutionary ideas are often killed at inception because their outcomes are unpredictable, and that unpredictability is risky. Two, strategy is the antithesis of action. Organizations tend to focus on measurable results, and strategy is the fundamentally abstract thinking and decision-making. In turn, strategy becomes an exercise in either validating the current state or simply superficial theater.
Given these contradictory constructs, it’s no surprise we struggle. However, it really comes down to shifting mindsets, and that can be hard to do in an environment where risk aversion and linear processes exist. When the organization’s collective behavior, including leadership, reinforces these virtues, stepping out of that mold is dangerous at best, and career-ending at worst. Yet, leaders continue to push for more innovation and more strategic thinking, even though it isn’t really wanted – those abstractions are too far afield from the status quo.
Therefore, incremental innovations and glimpses of strategy emerge here and there, from some dark corner of one department, that is already known to periodically “rock the boat”. To truly draw out more strategic thinking and innovation doesn’t require workshops, training, or even new teams, departments, or processes. It requires only two things – illustrating clearly what strategic thinking and innovations look like, and rewarding those whose behaviors push the organization out of its comfort zone.
By illustrating, this means consistently, repeatedly sharing and demonstrating real-world examples, and redirecting those who fall back into old mindsets. This needs to occur each and every day, and in every instance, it occurs. People commit a change to mental muscle memory when the message is multi-modal and frequent. By rewarding, this means not only rewarding the behaviors you want to see but also discouraging the ones you don’t. By pushing the organization out of its comfort zone, means questioning traditional approaches and disrupting sacred cows.
The process won’t be comfortable, and there will be many tough discussions and debates which will happen. Yet through those tough discussions come to change – change that will actually stick if you stay persistent.
If you want to learn more about this, don’t hesitate to pick up a copy of my latest book, “What To Ask: How to Learn What Customers Need but Don’t Tell You”, available at all major booksellers.
About the Author
Andrea Belk Olson is a keynote speaker, author, differentiation strategist, behavioral scientist, and customer-centricity expert. As the CEO of Pragmadik, she helps organizations of all sizes, from small businesses to Fortune 500, and has served as an outside consultant for EY and McKinsey. Andrea is the author of The Customer Mission: Why it’s time to cut the $*&% and get back to the business of understanding customers, No Disruptions: The future for mid-market manufacturing, and her upcoming book, What To Ask, coming in June 2022.
She is a 4-time ADDY® award winner and host of the popular Customer Mission podcast. Her thoughts have been continually featured in news sources such as Chief Executive Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Harvard Business Review, Rotman Magazine, World Economic Forum, and more. Andrea is a sought-after speaker at conferences and corporate events throughout the world. She is a visiting lecturer and startup coach at the University of Iowa, a TEDx presenter, and TEDx speaker coach. She is also an instructor at the University of Iowa Venture School.
More information is also available on www.pragmadik.com and www.andreabelkolson.com.
