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Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots by Brett Macfarlane. A monthly newsletter for innovation leaders. We uncover hidden and hard-to-access innovation performance factors. 

This month we address the last of the six scales of innovation leadership from The Innovation Leadership Map. This scale can be very confronting because it illuminates what we really do. Not what we think we do or want to do.

After exploring actualization I’ll share an update on my experiment with the G20 on human-centred values and digitalization. Along with a new team tool born from the Innovation Leadership Map.

Enjoy ☕️

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Realization Actually

Actualization may sound grandiose but it actually is very simple. Actualization is to make real. To actualize something is to actually make it.

It’s not a hope, ambition or plan. It’s the act of making these statements of intention real. 

Like leadership itself, it’s not a position but an act. It’s the technical and social processes of driving forward the realization of something new with fellow collaborators (the willing, unwilling and indifferent.)

An invention, or the conception of a novel idea, requires the acts of innovation leadership to work with others in the organization to place it in the hands of real-life users. A perilous journey.

In practice, imagine a sensor that goes off when a team has done enough planning and strategy work but can’t move beyond it. They keep doing the planning and strategy as avoidance of doing the hard work of realizing something new or different.

This sensor came to me when I learned that psychoanalysts are trained to know that talking about psychoanalysis can be a defence against doing the work of psychoanalysis.

When we remind ourselves that:

- 94% of executives are dissatisfied with their innovation efforts

- 96% talk about how important innovation is

We may be trapped in the defence of talking about innovation as a way to avoid doing the hard work of actualizing innovation.

Or when we do something it’s so schizophrenic and distant from the reality of what the business does or needs it’s basically irrelevant. Even though it might feel good at the time just doing something.

Why these defensive patterns occur in a specific company is entirely situational. The actualization scale is your sensor to signal if you might be stuck.

What’s it Like to be Actualized?

It helps us see beyond our own good intentions and connect to the reality of what is being realized. Where the other five ILM experience scales illuminate our cognitive performance, this sixth-scale grounds our intentions in the reality of action we do or don’t take up.

Between action with no thought and locked in thought with no action is the productive zone of actualization. In the Humble position leaders, teams and organizations thoughtfully take action.

Actualization Definition - What best describes your acts of leadership to make the ambition real?

Futile - efforts that could be made are trivial, frivolous and unimportant

Humble - act with courtesy and respect for others with quiet belief and confidence

Delusional - proceed with false and even delusional beliefs

It may sound blindingly obvious, yet, the Humble position is a very challenging state to achieve and maintain even for successful repeat innovation leaders. This is why we often operate in an absence of actualization and drown in a glut of opportunity, wasted effort and under-utilised resources.

We don’t yet have representative data of how often a firm is trapped in Futile or Delusional positions. But maybe these characteristics sound familiar:

Futile - one-off hires are made without structural changes, never-ending strategy processes or only addressing “low hanging fruit”

Delusional -  a culture of one-off-sprints emerges, new concepts are continually developed without moving to realization or company-wide mandates to “innovate” and “future proof” without guidance or boundaries

When I see a company operating in a Humble position leaders can often point to sets of guiding principles in some form such as a charter, mission statement or desired outcome as guidance. These transitional guiding objects are not instructions. Rather they create the space for others to take up, internalize and act.

The process is more practice and behaviour-led than governance or policy-led. The balance between thinking and making is an active discussion with a “ship early and ship often” practice progressively developing the work.

What this looks like in practice is wholly specific to each organization. For example, this article does a really nice job showing what this looks like in different big tech companies. Many are surprised to learn these highly innovative firms and large firms lack formal innovation processes.

In fact, in the core business there often isn’t really an innovation process, compared to low innovation intensity firms. Instead, there is the wide and deep capability as demonstrated by lived practices to lead and deliver new products, services, improvements and business models. Innovation is business as usual

Employees are given and take up empowerment through thoughtful acts within the boundaries of their role and the space created by the firm’s mission and desired outcomes. Performing and innovative teams spend most of their time in the Humble state of actualization.

Acting Humbly

Think humble not as a static position or something you store up. It only exists through action, and one acts humbly or they don’t.

Following are some practical practices to develop humble performance states so you can observe yourself through action.

• Follow Eleanor Roosevelt’s advice and “do one thing every day that scares you”.

• Don’t lock yourself away in your office. Take time every day to circulate with colleagues and subordinates. Talk to people, not just about work but also about family life, current affairs, and other topics of mutual interest. Listen to people’s frustrations and ideas. Share good news; emphasize the positive.

• Look at the different sources of stress in your life and determine which are controllable and which are not. Try to change only the stressors under your control and work out a plan to manage the other stressors to the best of your ability.

• Look at the different sources of stress in your company and determine which are controllable and which are not. Try to change only the stressors under your control and work out a plan to manage the other stressors to the best of your ability.

• Keep an open-door policy; let people know you are accessible.

• Constantly prioritize your work to ensure that your output is always aligned with your objectives and that of the firm.

• Learn to set boundaries. Practice saying “no.”

• Know your capabilities and do not try to be Superwoman or Superman.

• For each task, allow yourself more time than you think you need. Don’t clutter up your agenda— delegate.

• Do things you are good at doing.

• Establish mutually supportive links with others.

• Share your problems with people you can really talk to.

• Avoid situations that cause annoyance.

• Try not to waste time on trivial matters.

Integrating the Six ILM Experience Scales

As this is the last of the six ILM experience scales, I want to reinforce the ILM' framework’s link to reality. Starting by being more realistic and truthful about what situations of innovation leadership entail. To acknowledge and work with the effect of innovation’s complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty.

As leaders, we can accept the technical challenges of our roles, it’s time we also address the pressures put on our position, the pressure we put on ourselves and the pressurized reactions of others around us.

This newsletter has been an exploration into how we develop these practices and capabilities amidst the pressure of innovation. In theory and in practice with an evidence based foundation. So that we can more successfully address the overwhelming challenges of our time with new ideas and new solutions made real.

The world and future economy are driven by collaboration. It is getting more, not less, fluid and it’s delusional to think this will reverse. So change makers have a responsibility to develop their capability to not just survive but thrive in this landscape.

As executives, it’s our requirement to take responsibility for supporting and enabling our innovation leaders to do the real work of innovation. Partly due to our obvious commercial and social obligations as firms. Mostly, due to our need to attract, develop, protect and partner with talent who bring the potential we need to unleash.

Fundamentally, it is even more basic than idealizing the mythical concept of innovation. Really, innovation leadership is simply the act of driving change regardless of how novel the change is. Innovation is simply an aftermarket label, but the experience of doing something new, for the first time, is the underlying experience captured by The Innovation Leadership Map.

Next month’s newsletter will look more systemically at how organizations use the Innovation Leadership Map to monitor and develop high-performance leaders in practice and in action. 😁

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Brett’s Diary

Firstly, I have developed the first iterations of what will be ILM self-service tools for individuals and teams. Team Radar in particular is getting amazing feedback. Get in touch if you want to trial in your teams to uncover hidden and hard to access innovation performance factors.

Secondly, on the 15th of October, I briefed participants of the Rome leader’s summit. My recommendation of co-developing “Digital Solidarity Principles” was accepted and we’re exploring how we might progress co-development with next year’s Indonesian presidency. If you’re interested in digitalization, design or policy you can find my briefing paper on page 17 of the official V20 communiqué. Get in touch if you’d like to join us

Lastly, I am venturing out into the world again. I am in Copenhagen this week, Paris the 18th-23rd of November and then Vancouver for December. Let’s meet for ☕️

As always your thoughts and feedback are appreciated. 

Till next time, keep pushing the boundary of possibility,

~Brett

PS Thanks to my friend Dan Moore the software developer and educator extraordinaire for pointing me towards the article on How Big Tech Run Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum.