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Hello,

Welcome to the July edition of Connecting Dots, a monthly newsletter by Brett Macfarlane exploring the psychology of innovation leadership.

A special welcome to new subscribers and listeners of leading futurist Nik Badminton’s Exponential Minds podcast.

This edition of Connecting Dots is dedicated to the Innovator’s Outlook, the second of the six scales I am unpacking from the Innovation Leadership Map. If you missed it here’s a link to the previous edition: Identity.

I suggest you clear five minutes, pour a coffee/kombucha and let’s get started...

The Innovator’s Outlook

“It’s really good fun to be able to do things, to make your mark, to improve things.”

This quote captures a pattern I find repeatedly where innovation leaders describe their best innovation experiences. They may be doing serious work dealing with serious problems with serious people, and yet when they are in the performance zone it’s fun. This is of course a bit funny given fun is a bit of a taboo word in business. It sounds frivolous, yet fun doesn’t mean silly, easy or wasteful. Paradoxically, despite the hard work and frustration surrounding innovation, when progress is made, there is often a warm optimism or confidence that bubbles through as fun. 

You can often tell how an innovation team is performing just by how it sounds. Regardless of what is being said or by whom, there is lightness, playfulness and purposefulness about the discussion no matter how serious or confounding the subject matter. There is anxious energy and jeopardy in the air, yet the workgroup contains the energy through a hopeful outlook for what can be done. Very much a contrast to times when a depressive cynicism dominates or frivolous fantastical energy consumes the leader and their team.

Outlook Represents Mindset

The opening quote was a lovely expression of a hopeful outlook. In the innovation leadership zone, I find a hopeful outlook to be strongly associated with progress and success.

• Your outlook is a reflection of your underlying mindset.

• Your mindset is a set of beliefs about yourself and what one thinks about how the world works (or doesn’t).

• Your behaviours and actions are strongly influenced by your mindset and your mindset can shift over time.

• Your mindset is typically outside one’s conscious awareness, even more so underlying assumptions.

If your “outlook” is the label on what time of mindset you have, how can we better understand the underlying beliefs? Unpacking where they come from allows us a deeper understanding of the unconscious factors that invisibly influence our visible behaviours.

At any given moment our mindset is a mix of innate and acquired beliefs. About 30% is currently believed to be hardcoded genetically while 70% is generated through our accumulated lived past experiences up to this moment in time. All this experience makes up our beliefs about how the world works. These beliefs are activated in the here and now based on the situations we find ourselves. There are three primary mechanisms that activate our beliefs in real-time:

Valences - Our intrinsic perceived attractiveness of something

Biases - Our subconscious reactions to something

Thoughts - Our conscious rationalization about something

To explain why decisions and actions can be messy, these processes operate in parallel. When cognitive energy levels are running really high or low, is when one or more of these processes run amok causing primitive coping mechanisms to take over. You may remember this as “Delusional Frustration” from Connecting Dots 22. As a leader driving the change of innovation, it is imperative we keep aware of how these activations are influencing our decisions and behaviours.

Don’t worry if you aren’t 100% following along. It takes deep work to decode our individual response patterns. As well as to connect them to the extremely high levels of complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and chaos innovation presents to leaders. My hope is you have an understanding of why extreme outlooks trigger regressive leadership behaviours and decisions - so that we can better understand the developmental hopeful outlook.

Innovation Leadership Map - Outlook

As with all the Innovation Leadership Scales, the performance zone is in the middle. In my private practice, outlook often is the most dynamic of all the scales. It can change a lot for people. For some, it changes by the minute let alone the hour, day, week, month or year. This dynamism is because not only is our outlook strongly influenced by outside events it is not constrained by formal structures like resources, governance or time. For many, it is a leadership aspect that can provide great insight to explain their decisions and behaviours. As well as how others react to how they show up and their actions.

Hopeful

When a leader’s outlook is hopeful they are in the leadership zone. In this position they see what could be better, done or fixed. They believe they have the capabilities and resources to address it. They won’t know for certain until it is done that it can be done. As well they are aware there may be some risks or surprises along the way that they will have to deal with. In other words, they have strong contact with reality.

This hopeful outlook signals highly developed thinking and coping mechanisms are activated. It’s what we labelled Positive Frustration in Connecting Dots 22. A hopeful leader has an ambivalent ability to tolerate the positive and negative tensions of a situation, reconcile them and move forward towards innovation goals. A hopeful leader works along the boundaries of technical possibility and organizational tolerance. Hopeful is a bounded reality where boundaries may be fuzzy but their existence is accepted. It’s ambitious, realistic and resilient.

Euphoric

When hope gets activated beyond reality euphoria kicks in. An unbounded state that gets stuck in an “anything is possible” fantasy where “nothing becomes real”. This overly high energy state can be a signal that a leader isn’t running towards something but away from something. Typically it’s an uncomfortable past or current reality.

In practice, this looks like leaders who repress difficult realities and create innovation vehicles as a saviour. Abstract thinking and unrealistic timelines are common symptoms. Excitement for an outcome without attention to what might get them there. Of course, one can dream, and must, but one also needs to be prepared for when morning comes and you work out what parts of the dream can inform a better new reality.

Cynical

When we become constricted by perceived limits of the situation we risk slipping into holding a cynical outlook. “We tried that before” or “it’ll never happen here” assertions carry heavy weight. Cynical is a position where possibilities and constructive energy devolves to persecution and pessimism. Unlike critical thinking, that is central to the hopeful position, the cynic holds a one-dimensional perspective with an us-versus-them mindset drowned by blame.

Often this outlook is a subconscious conspiracy to save one’s own self-image or avoid a perceived loss rather than addressing the emotional material present in the work. Doubts and concerns are natural to have in any innovation process. In fact, they are central to robust strategic planning and sensing the weak signals of threats or opportunities. But doubt like any nutrient can become toxic in excessive quantities. To critique and question, with the intent of exploring and learning, is necessary for a hopeful team with high psychological safety. In the cynical mindset, doubt becomes nuclear as one’s anxieties melt down to obliterate resilence.

Emotional Boundaries in Practice

I use these positions with individual leaders to better understand their leadership performance zone based on past lived experience. It’s also helpful to illuminate that it is natural for new leadership to activate a cynical or euphoric position in their team. Often unintentionally (“the new boss will save us “ or “the new boss is as incompetent as the last”) and savvy leaders sense the vital motivated energy it can stir. These energy extremes when identified can be metabolized to bring the team into the hopeful outlook back on the productive boundary of possibility.

The Leadership Zone

With identity in the last newsletter and outlook in this one, we are starting to illuminate the performance zone innovation leadership. It is to be expected when leading at the edge of possibility in an organization for a leader their experience may shift outside the leadership zone along one of the scales. By being aware of the scales one can name their experience and better diagnose where to self-correct. This is the practice of innovation leadership. Whatever happens, you have a practice for how to contain your response and lead through the situation.

If you are sensing your outlook is moving towards cynical or euphoric here are a few practical ideas of how to re-connect with reality and move back to a hopeful mindset. 

1. Do not make snap decisions but build some reflective space in which to consider what you are about to decide. Become a “reflective practitioner”.

2. Practice active listening – learn how to paraphrase what people say and seek regular validation that what you heard is what they meant (even if not what they said).

3. Learn to recognize the different manifestations of how you respond to resistance to change, from passive resistance to active hostility, and adapt your mindset accordingly.

4. In key interactions or when facing key decisions try to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.

5. Sketch the paradoxes (i.e. competing commitments) that are present in your task so you can find a path to reconciliation (not compromise).

Hopefully, this helps you have fun with a hopeful outlook. 😊

Next month I’ll explore the Autonomy scale and the positions of being empowered, disempowered or overpowered.

Brett’s Movements

As mentioned in the opening, futurist Nik Badminton hosted me on his Exponential Minds podcast. It was a fun whirlwind through the hidden dynamics of innovation. His next season will be coming out soon and I encourage you to subscribe to the podcast or his CEO Futures briefing.

In my private practice for innovation leadership development, there has been a surge of interest in the Innovation Leadership Mirror program. It’s too early to declare any trends but I’ve noticed a growing ambition and energy with high-performing leaders to drive innovative change.

To sense this change it helps that over the past two weeks, I stepped back from day-to-day work for a reset. A period of reflection and prioritization. Starting with a ceremonial iPhone erase and restart. I’m energized to build on my private practice for innovation leadership. As well as completing an outline for Innovation Leadership the book to be written in 2022. I am also kicking off some additional research for the book with ex-professional athletes who are now innovation leaders. Referrals and introductions to ex-athletes most appreciated.

Next month I may be able to share the draft G20 Rome communiqué on Unity Principles for Digital Solidarity. Thank you to all the contributors.

‘Til then, stay curious and courageous,

~ Brett

P.S. Please share this newsletter with a colleague who you think would appreciate the topic of innovation leadership.