Whistler Mountain, January, 2023
◎⁃◎
Hello,
Welcome to Connecting Dots the innovation newsletter read by over 15,000 innovators.
This month I’m unpacking innovation as the action sport of business. I hope that everyone in business will see that they too can be innovative.
Onwards,
BM
◎⁃◎
Heading Off Piste
We need more innovators and after you read this month’s newsletter I hope you’ll convert someone you work with.
Unlike popular perception, innovation is not only the exclusive realm of a special breed of professionals. Every professional can choose to be an innovator. I’ve come to realize this belief comes from my personal and professional experiences in action sports.
In my first professional job, I managed sports sponsorships for General Motors. We sponsored all the big professional leagues and Olympic teams. Sports where rule books are detailed and tradition weighs heavily over everything one does. Where the boundaries are tightly defined.
My addition to the General Motors strategy was to venture into action sports. In 2003 we became the title sponsor of the freeskiing world tour and the sport's first Fortune 500 sponsor. We literally and figuratively went off-piste by sponsoring a sport where creating your routes in an unbounded mountain was the point of the freeski world tour.
Freeskiing, like other action sports, defined itself as being less rule-bound and restrictive than traditional sports. It was a world apart from the mathematically precise race courses and strict rules for every piece of equipment that is at the heart of alpine ski racing and nordic cross country competitions.
“Free-ride” competitions are minimalist. A start, a finish and infinite routes and possibilities in between. Everyone creates “their” line that is judged based on the degree of difficulty and quality of execution. It’s risky and rewarding.
Often great freeskiing champions cross over from different disciplines like racing or gymnastics. They weren’t “just” freeskiers. They were experts in another domain that applied their capabilities in the open boundaries of free skiing. They chose to go off-piste and be free skiers while holding onto their prior identity.
But for me, the key relevance to innovation to free skiing is that it’s not just for the elite highly trained athlete who loves double black diamond runs.
Any skier, or snowboarder, can veer off the smooth corduroy of a groomed run and become a free skier themselves. At any level of difficulty. You just need to find a bit of terrain that aligns with their skill level. An adventure that might be one run each season or every single day.
In the world of business, innovation is very similar to freeskiing. Its focus is going beyond the bounded rules and traditions of business as usual. Unlike a well-established business, product or process the boundaries and rules of innovation are blurry and looser.
You get to create the path by drawing your boundaries based on the terrain before you. It’s exhilarating and for some addictive. It can also be intimidating and scare people away, deterring them from the professional and personal rewards of helping drive change through new ideas.
Given most companies list innovation as a top three priority, surely you want most of your professional staff to think they are or can be innovators. After all, being an innovator is like being a free skier, you just need to go off-piste and call yourself one. Whatever your skill level, attempting it means you are one. Like a language, you get good at it by doing it, uncomfortably at first.
The bad news is that we don’t have enough innovators. I’ve reviewed the latest statistics and all measures of innovation continue to decline in the West. Patents, business formation, new ventures and productivity continue to show less and fewer innovation activities and outcomes despite consistent investment levels.
A curious trend I’ve noticed is people don’t like to see themselves or be called an innovator. This may be due to external pressure or the mythology of the heroic lone innovator. But it actually might be something even more fundamental: confidence. 65% of executives admit to lacking confidence when it comes to innovation. A stat with a high probability of under-reporting.
So how do professionals get more confident at leading innovation and progressively more capable?
It’s easy, you tell them they can do it. It’s a practice I learned before my first professional career when I was coaching an international alpine ski racing team. The best way to build an athlete’s confidence is to tell them they can do it—that they can win or achieve their goals.
They often resist this support at first, a normal defence mechanism, but with the right encouragement, it’s easy to get them moving in the right direction. The key is to not just tell them you genuinely believe in their ability to win but to then break down the tangible steps to reach the goal. Which they then practice.
In my work, some of my favourite workshops or programs are with professionals in HR, Finance and IT functions who regularly claim they aren’t at all innovative. I consistently disagree with them and they consistently prove me right.
All I do is tell them that they are innovative, giving them some know-how and step aside to watch them quickly prove it to themselves. In a day they turn their wish to improve something in their company into solutions worked out with colleagues to become something tangible they can go and test. They became innovators as a result of their actions.
They may never need to be double black diamond innovators or commit their careers to the calling of innovation. But there’s lots of room, impact and fun in the green circle and blue square innovation needs of every company. I encourage every employee to go off-piste at least once a year, more if they enjoy living on the edge of risk and reward.
The point of this article is that anyone can innovate. In your work, tell a colleague that they can be innovative too. If you read this newsletter you likely already see yourself as an innovator, now go and help three other people see themselves as one too. We all thank you.
◎⁃◎
Leadership Gym
You already have an activity above. Something that can help you self-motivate someone to innovate is by tapping into their current capabilities and interests. Depending on their job role and function, professionals naturally will gravitate to and excel in certain types of innovation. Here’s an introduction to eight schools of innovation. For any individual, one may be a helpful and safe boundary to frame their path off-piste and do some tangible and real innovation work.
◎⁃◎
Learn more about courageous innovation leadership with Brett Macfarlane.
◎⁃◎