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 Hello,

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

This month, I’m a contrarian optimist. I’m going to address how, in a stormy business climate, some innovators prosper when others panic. 

Grab your economic raincoat and let's get to work.

Best,

Brett

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Panic or Prosper

Panic or Prosper

Sonia was developing the official e-currency of her nation, a world first, when parliament was frozen by currency devaluation and 300-year-old legislation. Yet she prospered. 

Jim was launching the first-ever watch app that could control a car when partner Apple wouldn’t provide access to the yet-to-be public Apple Watch 1. Yet he prospered. 

Sam was developing a progressive financial literacy service when the banking sector was hit with criminal investigations and a threatened regulated breakup consuming executive attention. Yet she prospered. 

In each of these stories, the innovator faced peril yet held their nerve. They kept their eye on the light at the end of the tunnel while others panicked. 

I was thinking about each of them lately as dark storms cloud the economic outlook. I know their stories because I was there with them—in the middle of their storms.

It’s during these stormy times when a dangerous sense of panic can enter the air of a company threatening innovation projects. It’s easy to lose one’s nerve, individually and collectively.

One of the unrecognized challenges of tech innovation in these periods is its intangibility. It’s not like a grand bridge, train line or wind turbine that gives confidence through its physicality. A protected asset on the balance sheet.

The hard material of tech innovation is not its software code but its results - revenue, NPS, adoption, patents and other KPIs. Yet those come later. Until then the prototypes, experiments and business cases are an intangible future potential. An easy-to-cut variable cost on the P&L.

It’s time to hold your nerve. 

Especially if you are in a firm that has yet to experience a stormy economic climate. We’re all jittery the first time we go through any experience. 

Whatever your situation, now is not time to panic, you can continue to prosper.

In my work with innovation leaders, I most enjoy supporting those putting on their rain tyres for the unknown events ahead. 

We can say there is uncertainty and that we can’t predict the future. But that was true before today’s storm. And the next one.

It’s just that at the moment, the climate has changed and rain spooks some people. It’s a moment to seize with smart risk-taking and continued self-regulation. 

It’s natural to be anxious. It’s healthy. Provided we channel the energy and activity towards constructive efforts. 

A big part of the innovator’s task is to contain the anxieties of others. 

Prosperous innovators stay shrewdly ambivalent in the face of uncertainty. They see risk and opportunity, yet hold them in both hands to work out what is of true relevance and value. 

So when the rain is blowing horizontally and thunder booms in the distance it’s extra important to tune into how you are relating to others—your team, your peers and your board. 

Sniff out and snuff out the panic before it consumes people. It’s your duty of care to do so—with compassion and humility. You are used to extreme risk, uncertainty and unpredictability. 

You are the reassurance they need and want, no matter how challenging their questions.

As the innovation leader, it’s your role to continually adjust and maintain the climate of possibility for your team and organization. To maintain progress while others do too much or too little. 

Holding your nerve is contagious. It builds confidence in others amidst uncertainty. The military call it command presence. In the private sector, I call it the innovator’s aura. 

The aura isn’t for you, it’s in service of others—for their confidence and self-motivation to hold their nerve. It activates their autonomy to press on piercing through the clouds of doom.

It’s true in all companies—whether their culture is renowned for innovation or stigmatized as where innovation goes to die. In both, innovation happens only as a result of innovators leading through clouds of uncertainty that appear even when the skies are blue.

Every one of the projects I listed at the beginning was a leader I worked closely with. They held their nerve and were able to support their team and organization to hold theirs.

Each of them, overtook the metaphorical 15 cars ahead to deliver while others crashed out or sought false comfort by sitting on their hands in pit lane. 

These three leaders prospered in the rain, benefitting their users, their company and their career. 

All it took was holding their nerve and seizing the moment to prosper. 

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Learn about the Innovator.Coach program to train, coach and empower tech innovators at www.innovator-coach.com

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