Innovation Leadership: A mindset shift required
Transforming from a ‘knower’ into a ‘learner’ leader mindset
Many people mistakenly believe that innovations need to be jaw-dropping, new-to-world epiphanies. You often hear from leaders that they search for disruptive innovation; - either disrupt or be disrupted. They organise ideation sessions and hackathons in the hope that through these events they will discover a genius idea to alter the market. We know that doesn’t happen.
Getting into the innovation world requires more than a few workshops and shock value. At its core, successful and impactful innovation comes down to whether or not you have the right leadership mindset. You can hold as many different sprints catered with the obligatory doughnuts and coffee as you like, but if you aren’t in the mindset of learning and open to uncertainty, then it’s just a wasted day and a lot of extra calories. The title of Marshall Goldsmith's excellent book, "What got you here is not going to get you there", summarises the problem well. The critical questions we need to ask ourselves if we want to be dynamic innovators, are: 1) do I have the right mindset, and 2) if not, how to get there.
After many years of assisting leaders in driving innovation, I came to see that there are two distinct broad groups of leaders:
"Knowers" - close minded who defend their knowledge, and
"Learners" - open minded who create and innovate.
As you have no doubt experienced, within each organisation there are a mix of these two types of leaders. A successful organisational culture of innovation has a higher ratio of the second group. The goal for any organisation that wishes to remain on top is to know how the "learners" within their teams can help the "knowers" shift their mindsets, without them being intimidated and therefore slowing down the path towards growth opportunities. It is always a dilemma knowing how to help leaders make this mindset shift. Through experience, and our Learn By Doing approach, we have identified five light bulb (or aha) moments for leaders on the mindset shift journey.
1) Art of problem framing
The first light bulb moment is when proper problem framing gives leaders a much broader scope for exploration of the potential solutions.
"Knower" leaders operate in a concrete world: "I believe in things I can see, and I have experienced them for many years." They preemptively think about how their ‘known experience’ will deliver the right solution. But they’ve often missed the most important step in developing a strategy for managing change - looking deeply at the problem itself.
Helping ‘knowers’ to re-focus most of their attention on understanding the problem, instead of jumping into solution mode is a significant task. However, when we can move their thinking away from experience-based certainty and into the abstract world of new possibilities, we can help them to develop a broader perspective of their problem. By getting ‘knowers’ to constantly ask, "why will people take this solution?", we can help them navigate into an abstraction mindset as much as imaginable.
As an example, through the work we do with our clients sometimes they ask us to create a strategy around how they can best convince their employees to accept a new policy. Instead we help them to develop a strategy that explores possibilities to equip their people to become critical advocates for the policy. Effective leaders ask the question; "how might our people become ambassadors for a new policy?" This approach helps employees align with other leaders’ goals and creates clarity around an obvious purpose for the new policy.
2) Awareness of personal biases
The second light bulb moment occurs when leaders discover the actual outside impact of the problem on the people directly experiencing it firsthand.
Very often, “learner” leaders find that research specialists gather and present information only to have the "knower" leaders leverage it for confirmation of their personal biases. However, when these same ‘knower’ leaders visit customer homes together with their research specialists, they understand through first-hand experience the power of empathy and emotional drivers in customer decision making.
I witnessed the situation myself. A senior life insurance leader with rich industry experience came to observe an interview with a couple at their family home. When the interviewer asked the couple how they were thinking of protecting their well-being, family, and other valuables, their straight answer was: "Paying off our mortgage". I immediately noticed a look of surprise on the leader’s face. They had expected, had believed they knew, that the answer was going to be "to buy life insurance".
Upon further questions, when the couple explained their reasoning behind this response, it was evident to the leader that there was a problem with the customer’s perception of life insurance products. The leader became a key advocate for looking at problems from the customers’ perspective and generating insights from immersion into customers’ lives. This created organisational inspiration to spend more time searching for ideas from the customer's point of view and assisted to control internal leadership personal biases.
3) Ideation and Concept development
The third light bulb moment is created by understanding the power of brainwriting and brainstorming by diverging and converging ideas across a team.
Often, "knower" leaders dominate in brainstorming sessions that are not supported by insights gathered through customer understanding. They are usually very loud; confident in their wealth of experience. This creates a culture where subordinates don't want to question them. The result is a limited and restricted growth pathway and a wealth of unseen lost opportunities.
“Knower” leaders need to be shown that bringing in their team is not a question of their authority or experience, but a way to push forward into new directions. Every person involved in the problem-solving process must have an opportunity to generate ideas on their own as a first step - brainwriting, and then an open and safe space to share those ideas with others - brainstorming.
Presenting ideas through concept posters and organising reflections in the form of What Works Well, What Doesn’t Work Well together with ideas for improvement creates a significant vibe for the concept to succeed. I have found that after practising concept poster pitches of ideas, some leaders decided to adopt this approach as a starting point for the seed funding approval for their initiatives.
4) Learn about people's experiences with the idea
The fourth light bulb moment occurs when leaders learn how to build prototypes, test, iterate them and move into the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) stage.
It is common practice to put many features from a business case straight into development, which creates a significant risk around customer acceptance. The "knower" leader would say that after 20 years of experience, they know how to build things. It is true, in part, but the "knower" leaders who experienced the first three light bulb moments will immediately say it is not sufficient.
The more effective solution is to start building low fidelity prototypes which do not cost much money and are easily tested and iterated with potential users. With this approach, leaders are able to start their mindset-move from abstract thinking around idea development and into the concrete world of physical solutions. Prototyping is the tool to guide that transition.
This approach opens their minds to small experiments, and they are able to become comfortable with the knowledge that not all of those experiments will be accepted well when tested - and most importantly that doesn’t mean, as leaders, they have failed. More importantly, they begin to understand that they are able to learn from these so-called failures and easily come up with a better solution every time they iterate.
5) Shift to a "learner" mindset
The final light bulb moment is the realisation that they have started thinking about solution development differently.
When a ‘knower’ leader can now understand that there is a detour on the way from a problem to a solution - they have successfully transitioned into a ‘learner leader’ mindset. That detour is understanding customers and going into the abstract environment to search for answers, and before they implement them, that they check how people react to their prototypes/experiments. They no longer jump to the end, to a predictable and safe solution based on their personal bias.
By now, they have a clear understanding that what people think, say and do are three different things. Through talking to people, they understand what people think and say, and with prototype testing they know what people do.
And these newly formed ‘learner leaders’ understand that is what actually matters. Their mindset becomes more open to different opportunities, and they become more curious. This is what is going to help them develop innovative strategies that will have a real and long-term impact on their clients and in return, their organisational growth.
Ready to start shifting your organisations mindset? We have developed a leadership Opportunity Accelerator program that is helping leaders with “knower” and “learner” mindsets experience these light bulb moments first-hand.
This article has been written by Dr Munib Karavdic, CEO of WAVE Design and Conjoint Professor of Intrapreneurship at AGSM/UNSW. Get in touch with Dr. Karavdic here.
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