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 Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, the monthly Innovation Leadership newsletter by Brett Macfarlane. 

June's edition, Panic or Prosper, generated record feedback and enthusiasm. 

This month, let’s address a secret question executives have about innovation. "What do I do?"

Best,

Brett

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Empowering Innovation - Executive Guidance

What do we do?

I used to be surprised by this question from board members and senior executives. These are people passionately committed to innovation and often have a track record of leading highly innovative teams and organizations. 

There is a lot of great evidence and support for innovation teams themselves, but not so much at the organizational level for those who sponsor or govern innovation. What do we expect of people overseeing multiple innovation teams, programs and departments that likely each have varied processes, sub-cultures and capabilities? 

As an innovation team leader, it can be hard to understand or empathize with your sponsoring and governing executives. Even harder for you to say what it is you want them to do other than to say yes or give you resources. 

At the most senior level, the question of what to do is often very fear-based. As in how do I not unintentionally derail innovation. Or how do I protect teams from going down a path of failure? How can I derisk embarrassment or harm to the interests of our firm and our shareholders? What if my expertise isn’t relevant?

There are some nice research and theories about the idea of leaders creating a “climate” of innovation. Though I still find it fuzzy and theoretical. It’s like driving forward by looking in a review mirror. After reading it, I still have the question of “what do I do?” as a senior leader,

I see this stuckness even with leaders who strongly believe in psychological safety, empowerment, autonomy and contemporary theories of servant, authentic or transformational leadership. Yet, for all the theories the question remains “what do I do?”.

Procedural Fairness is What You Do.

Procedural justice is a field I’m deep in work at the moment. It comes from the legal profession and is the premise that if the process is deemed fair, people are more trusting and are more satisfied with the outcome. Even if the outcome is not to their benefit or what they wished for. In other words, it feels fair. This is especially important for complex, emergent and emotional topics such as innovation. 

The evidence tells us that innovation teams are highly sensitive to perceived fairness. Within the same company, the initiatives with procedural fairness deliver better outcomes than those without. Fairness matters.

Therefore, as a senior executive, to empower teams to take risks, make new things and launch value-creating changes to the status quo you can enact procedural fairness in management decision-making. The journey determines the outcome.

In practice, there are six practices of procedural fairness that I’ve paraphrased from research by Harry Korine.

1. Consult team members in the management decision-making process.

2. Create forums where team members can refute management opinions.

3. Familiarize yourself with team concerns.

4. Maintain consistent procedures over time.

5. Provide a full explanation for decisions.

6. Respect the team’s autonomy.

I regularly see that these six practices empower innovation team leaders and sole contributors to take up their roles and operate in the ILM Leadership Performance Zone. These leaders know innovation is not just the team or the wider organization in isolation. Innovation comes from teams and the system working together.

Empowering how they work or don’t, is what board members and senior executives do.

Procedural fairness allows senior executives to be “hands-on, fingers out.” Meaning they are close enough to make informed decisions While avoiding the traps of micromanagement or disengagement.

Procedural fairness dear executive is what you do.

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