LONDON GB I want to share an unexpected finding in my research into the emotional experience of innovation leadership. It might tell you something about how deeply personal innovation leadership is.

I’ve found it’s a funny thing asking innovation leaders about their personal experience leading innovation. They can be quite disinclined to do so. They are happy to talk theory and models but less so their lived experience.

I was speaking to someone in London’s Square Mile who I know to be a multi-time innovation leader. She’s delivered large industry-leading machine learning platforms and business units. When I asked her what it’s like leading innovation she replied “terrible, saying you’re leading innovation is a great way to be hated.”  How odd.

Sure the outside world may heap praise upon Innovators. However, in practice, exposing what it’s really like in the moment to be leading innovation efforts is a conflicted experience.

Certainly, there is an aspect of humility and strong soft skills that enable the safety of exploration and experimentation. As well as recognition that corporate innovation is a game of teams, not individual heroes. 

The innovator’s spirit, much like the invisible hand, are terms economists and scholars use to try and capture a phenomenon we don’t fully understand. We can’t slice open a brain and pull out the bit that helps people think innovatively or creatively.

Therefore, we mostly revert to thinking through charts or spreadsheets. Which are helpful ways of coping with the anxiety of not knowing. In other words, making risk feel tangible and contained even if rationally we know they aren’t.

What we should be talking about more is courage. Innovation and creativity are outputs, a primary input to get there is courage.

The good news is social scientists have come close to a consensus on what is courage in the workplace*. The three essential components of courage are:

1. A morally worthy goal

2. Intentional action

3. Perceived risks, threats, or obstacles

Courage, at an individual and group level, is often an unthought known whether it is present or not. It may not be discussed but it is sub-consciously noticed in the air and felt under the skin.

A tangible way to determine whether there is sufficient courage to progress towards innovation is to assess:

1. Is our strategy morally worthy?

2. Are we acting on decisions? 

3. Do we see and learn from risks without shading the truth?

One of my tricks of innovation leadership is making small demonstrations of courage to anchor the group outside 100% certainties. At key moments I’ll share a photo taken that day of a competitor or adjacent industry where someone has innovated their offering in a way relevant to our agenda. 

How the group responds to this external stimulus surfaces their internal and collective level of courage. Depending on the courage temperature level we can turn it up, cool it or hold steady to maintain progress.

The world is full of risks we cannot control, but our courage level is one thing we can control if we want to. 

Movements

As we head into the dog days of summer, I’m deep in data collection and interviews to better understand the thoughts and feelings of leading the animal spirits of innovation. In parallel, I’m studying and tracking developments in how group dynamics are adapting to a remote or distributed workforce world. Both are wonderfully full of mysterious resistance and discomfort. Yet essential for progress.

Over July a few things will be released. My micro-masterclass on digital product innovation for the D&AD New Blood Festival. I contributed to an INSEAD Knowledge research paper on the future of creative agencies, to be published mid-summer. Also, I have a few more articles in development for this newsletter to help exhausted executives revitalize and refocus on business innovation and growth as 2021 planning ramps up.

Feedback always welcome. Please do keep sharing these articles with colleagues and clients, it helps a lot and means a lot. 👏🏻

Stay curious,

- Brett

References

*COURAGE AS IDENTITY WORK: ACCOUNTS OF WORKPLACE COURAGE , MELISSA M. KOERNER Academy of Management Journal 2014, Vol. 57, No. 1, 63–93. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2010.0641

Image Credit: I took the top photo in the Sony Ericson radiation testing facility in Malmo, Sweden. The person is used to test the effect of new chips on our bodies.