Connecting Dots is a periodic newsletter about innovation leadership. It is published by innovation educator, advisor and scholar Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe here.

~5 minutes read

I have happy news. Two years of research and a rigorously reviewed paper into the inner world of repeat innovation leaders have been approved for publishing. Thank you for being curious and contributing participants along the journey.

The response has been positively overwhelming. For many leaders, it has provided insight and comfort for what can be an individual existence. That said, I’m still working out how to best share and apply the findings. The formal title is “Innovation’s Under-Explored Use of Emotions: How Innovation Leaders Work with Anxiety, Authority and Frustration.” Though I’ve also been referring to it as “The Call to Innovation” or “The Quest.”

At the heart of my research are the six “Experience of Innovation Scales.” The scales provide a map that visualizes how the feelings, thoughts and behaviours of innovation leaders affect their performance. Each month I will use this newsletter to introduce and expand one of the experience scales.

There is compassion behind the research. Leading innovation is hard and risky. There really are easier ways for one to build a career. Yet, many choose to take up the call for innovation. It is a rewarding call that also comes with great peril. My findings illuminate how it goes right, or wrong, and why in a practical way to make rational the seemingly irrational.

I hope you stay with me and continue to share this work with your peers and colleagues. Let’s get started with a bit of background below before I start expanding on the scales next month. Reactions and questions always welcome.

May you thrive,

~Brett

Why Innovation Needs Help

Despite the strong consensus on the importance of innovation, there is a significant performance gap and capability misunderstanding. While we know innovation-intensive firms outperform rivals by a factor of two we don’t know why innovation rates in the west are declining. Nor why only 6% of executives are happy with innovation in their firm. And why 96% of CEO’s lack sufficient capabilities for digital innovation in particular. These macro indicators from McKinsey tell us something is very wrong. 

My aim was to get into the minds of those who are leading innovation to understand what influences their performance. I’m not interested in reductive theories of what they do technically, superficial trait theories, pop-culture myth or one-dimensional hero-worshipping. I approach innovation leadership in the way sports psychologists do elite athlete performance. I am linking their interpsychic responses to real-world situations of innovation leadership to models of developmental (good) and regressive (bad) performances.

In other words, how are the feelings, thoughts and behaviours experienced and worked with by elite leaders when performing their best? And, what happens when it goes wrong?

Based on my research with high-performing board members, CEOs and managers in well-known firms, the hard data of their lived experience provides us with an innovation leadership experience map across six scales. In the coming months I will introduce and expand on each scale:

1. Outlook

2. Identity

3. Autonomy

4. Exposure

5. Risk

6. Autonomy

In each, we will identify specific positions on the scales and how they enable or inhibit progress. In addition to the primary data I gathered, the grounding of the theoretical model is based on decades of peer-reviewed psychoanalytical theory, leadership scholarship, innovation foundations and increasingly neuroscience.

Disarming the Innovator Caricature 

Today though, I want to share that evident in my research is how we get the popular image of the innovator so wrong. Often labelled mavericks, rebels or other subversive types we have a caricature of a colleague we aren’t keen to work with. Is an angry Jobs, impulsive Musk or brash Branson really the archetype of successful innovation leadership? Based on the evidence, I argue no. They may be great entrepreneurs and surround themselves with great innovation leaders but they don’t embody the psychological or behavioural composition of the repeat innovation leaders I had the privilege of evaluating.

What united the innovation leaders I worked with, often out of their conscious awareness, is an ability to trigger within themselves and others strong emotions. Though crucially they held the ability to contain, not deny or deflect, these emotions to use them for productive purposes. Containment enables the power of ambivalence which means they can hold multiple contradictory perspectives or dimensions in mind and still function. They could see the positives and negatives of a situation, and reconcile the paradox enough to move forward.

Simplistically this is balanced processing and the ability to engage with reality through courage. This means to have a morally worthy goal, take intentional action and progress despite visible risks and obstacles. Easier said than done. Even these repeat innovation leaders at times fell victim to losing containment and thus becoming overwhelmed by strong emotions and regressive behaviours. 

This performance variability of the same leader can be explained by the psychoanalytic discipline, or you may be familiar with DSM patterns for how we think. Without containment, leaders fall into primitive defence mechanisms expressed as blaming, black/white thinking, denial of reality and other patterns. With containment, we deploy sophisticated defence mechanisms such as suppression, something you may have used when needing say to reduce workforce to invest in a new product range that enabled organizational survival. 

Positively Frustrating

These two positions, developmental or regressive, can be best explained by the dominant emotion expressed by most innovation leaders; frustration. Frustration can be expressed in ways that are both positive and negative. Study participants often described their frustration as a source of energy and intentional drive to pursue their aims. Therefore we can frame frustration as having two positions triggered by one’s emotional experience resulting in different behavioural responses.

In the months ahead, as we look at each experience scale we will elaborate on what triggers movement between positions. I hope to continue the therapeutic awareness the scales have proven to provide. As well, to further establish the developmental possibilities of the scales. For the first time, we have a performance perspective on innovation to explain situationally why leaders can drive initiatives forward (or not) through their behaviours, thoughts and feelings.

To apply the research, I have developed a leadership development program for innovation leaders called the Innovation Leadership Map. It is designed for those actively leading or aspiring to acquire the capabilities to lead innovation and thrive as an individual. We explore your motivations, leadership biography, loss valences and ambition through a behavioural performance lens. The outcome is a personal roadmap to create an impact in your work through innovation. Contact me if you are interested for yourself or your team.

As always feedback welcome. I’m always happy to hear what questions you have, experiences you’ve had or people with whom you’d gladly share this.

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TOP IMAGE: Overlooking the Jung Frau from the opposite side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley in August of 2020.