Many innovation leaders see themselves as a superhero. Someone unafraid to take on dangerous challenges with a worthy goal—a saviour whose full powers are hidden and typically come with inconvenient side effects. It’s a role and archetype that attracts idealization and demonization in equal measures when their superpowers become known.

Yet, unlike fighting crime and evil mutants as a heroic loner; innovation is a team task. Therefore, the singular superhero image is limited in its real-world applications.

A better self-image is as a member of a mountain climbing expedition—a team comprised of multiple archetypes. To tackle highly risky, technically difficult and emotionally demanding tasks you need a team made up of mutually supportive and diverse capabilities, behaviours and motivations. As well as different forms of authority, resources and responsibilities. These differences are united by a common goal and a willingness to venture out into the unknown.

My ideal expedition team features five innovation leadership archetypes:

The Optimist

A dreamer who is driven by novelty and disinterested in formal rules or regulations. They see opportunities others don’t and tell great stories. A cultural catalyst, they inspire you and activate your curiosity to explore. They build enthusiasm to get started but tend to lose interest in organizing and thinking through consequences.

The Realist

A natural organizer who brings people together towards a common goal. They take someone’s vision and can break down how to make it real. Always thinking two steps ahead, they continually evaluate options and map out the best route as conditions change. You gain reassurance from their presence. While they are excellent at orchestrating, they rely on specialists to progress through demanding terrain.

The Survivalist

A generalist who works well in ambiguity and maintains superhuman resilience in extreme conditions. They’ve seen the best and worst of what’s possible. One might say they’re grizzled or hardened, but they never lose their spark for adventure. Resourceful, unflappable and excellent at reading situations quickly. They are a bit stuck in the past but help you from repeating avoidable mistakes.

The Specialist

A helicopter expert who flies in for specialized operations and then flies out as you carry on your way. Highly skilled with specific technologies they are here for you in the here and now. They don’t get emotionally attached, it’s the work that motivates them. Always have their number at hand but only call when it’s really necessary as their time and attention are sought after and given to those who need it most.

The Strategist

Your eyes and ears calling in from basecamp. They can’t see what you see but they give you a wider perspective. So you can see what you can’t. They love thinking two steps ahead and devising new options for you, especially as conditions change. They can be abstract or overly intellectualized, and get touchy if their recommendations aren’t taken up, however, at their best they help those in the field make great decisions by combining strategy and reality.

Leadership Gym

In practice, you may neatly fit into one archetype or see yourself as a blend. You’ll notice each archetype has clear strengths and also some traits that might derail them if they are not self-aware or supported by people whose strengths are your weaknesses.

Archetypes are a form of self-image and a way to see how others in a team might respond to your role and contributions. It’s a helpful way to emphasize one’s strengths and visualize development areas. As well as a way to see you and your colleagues as a team of superheroes on a shared innovation mission.

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Brett Macfarlane

March 23, 2023

innovation, management, strategy, business, leadership

Connecting Dots 45 ◎⁃◎ LDR-GPT

Brett Macfarlane

March 23, 2023

innovation, management, strategy, business, leadership

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Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots the newsletter that helps you lead innovation more successfully.

This month I share a live example of how leaders work with fear activated by technology.

Onwards,

BM

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LDR-GPT

Two weeks ago I participated in a Listening Post day with over 100 organizational psychology peers at INSEAD the global business school in Fontainebleau France. The goal of a Listening Post is to share, hear and reflect upon what is in the collective mind. It starts with the simple question of what is confusing people or giving them enthusiasm in life.

As this event was at a business school it was of course about leadership and the interwoven experience of work and life. Participants came from a wide range of countries, industries and personal situations.

The goal of a Listening Post is to see what collective themes emerge intellectually and what reactions they trigger experientially. It starts by asking what is on people’s minds about work, life, society and beyond to identify themes.

As the day went on I was not surprised that next-generation artificial intelligence was on the minds of many people. Both from long-term practitioners working with artificial intelligence and those new to the topic with the popularization of ChatGPT or GPT4.

However, I was surprised by the intensity of the reactions. There was profound anxiety and distress evident in how people were thinking about, perceiving and experiencing these innovative technologies. The best word to summarize the reaction was annihilation.

An intense emotion, annihilation is the total destruction of something caused by an external force. The negative projections on the technology shook me. It was not the tech itself but the idealization and demonization of what it means and the fantasies of what it might cause at deeply personal levels:

Annihilation of job
Annihilation of competence
Annihilation of identity
Annihilation of control
Annihilation of safety
Annihilation of family
Annihilation of community

What struck me is that these people are the ones in charge. Many are advanced technical experts with deep applied experiences working with the technology. Yet the techno-anxiety was profound. Being responsible for the benefits and costs of new technology and its innovative applications was overwhelming.

I share this vignette as an illustration of the reactions activated by innovation. It’s what leaders need to negotiate and navigate within themselves and with others in their teams, their organizations and society at large.

Individually and collectively innovation activates fear. Often people blame fear as the reason for innovation underachievement. But that overlooks the reality that fear is a normal reaction to any potential perceived loss. This is a logical reaction given innovation’s creative destruction must destroy something for someone.

The sophisticated leader engages with fear, and the unsophisticated ignore fear or have delusional dreams of eliminating fear. Yet there is a big difference between being aware of fear to work with it and being consumed by fear to be disconnected from reality by it.

The goal isn’t to eliminate but separate hot emotions from cold reactions. A lot of innovation arguably moves too fast or is too pushy. It doesn’t allow people to see possibilities, process implications, integrate into programs and work through to make something new a reality.

Neurotic impatience is a defence against taking responsibility for the work and working through the emotional responses of others. Let’s look at someone exceptional at delivering innovative change in the face of fear—Raymond Loewy.

Loewy was one of America’s most innovative business leaders between the first and second world Wars. He coined the phrase MAYA—Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.

In that phrase, he accepted technical progress outstrips our capacity to make sense of it and that we need to respect it. The task of leadership is stress testing to discover what’s possible and what is the most advanced possibility society, an organization or a team can accept.

It is the innovation protagonist’s job to observe and sense what are the most advanced yet acceptable ideas you can progress. Also, to be very sensitive and respectful to how confronting technical progress can be, even for highly innovative and enthusiastic professionals.

During the day of the listening post, because there wasn’t a compression of time, as participants worked through their fears related to technology the benefits and creative mitigation of risk emerged. It became generative, optimistic and inspiring.

It was like a smouldering fireplace filling the air with smoke in the morning. By expelling the smoky fears we didn’t run from the room but rather opened windows to let them dissipate. As fresh air entered the space it vitalized the group and enabled the leaders to move from anxious fear to constructive optimism.

The point is, as a leader to expect and work with the fears that emerged from new possibilities brought about by innovation. The fear isn’t “bad” but part of the normal process of people working through what it means, what they can do and how they can drive constructive change.

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Leadership Gym

As a leader, receiving and working with other people's projections is challenging. Especially when they are negative and amplified by fear. To work with these hot reactions start by working with your own responses.

The feel-think-act triangle is a helpful tool to do so. If you just feel and act, you are just as consumed by fear as others. If you interject think between feel and act you can better process for yourself so you can act rather than react. It can happen in fractions of a second so you can deduce if what you feel and what you think are reconciled or if one is overwhelming the other.

Intellectually the feel-think-act triangle concept is easy to grasp. In practice, you “sharpen the blade” by applying the triangle in highly emotional situations where you sense and help the team work out what is Most Advanced Yet Acceptable.

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Brett Macfarlane

February 3, 2023

innovation, management, strategy, business, leadership

Connecting Dots 44 ◎⁃◎ Go Off Piste and Innovate

Brett Macfarlane

February 3, 2023

innovation, management, strategy, business, leadership

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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

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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.

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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.

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Brett Macfarlane

January 14, 2023

innovation, management, strategy, business, leadership

Connecting Dots 43 ◎⁃◎ Innovation—the Adrenaline Sport of Business

Brett Macfarlane

January 14, 2023

innovation, management, strategy, business, leadership

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Hello,

Welcome to the first edition of Connecting Dots in 2023.

I’m starting the year with a story—how I’ve come to see innovation as the adrenaline sport of business.

Onwards,

Brett

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Innovation—the Adrenaline Sport of Business

Last January, I wrote the outline and first chapter of a book on innovation leadership. The goal was to decode and demystify the behavioural dynamics of leading innovation.

Months of work, years of experience and decades of research condensed into an 18-page draft. A group of ten impressive innovation leaders enthusiastically agreed to feedback.

It was a disaster.

It is extreme to say they hated it but they certainly did not love it.

They appreciated being the subject of the book and feeling seen, recognized and understood.

However, I felt deep resistance to the central premise of the book—that the emotional dynamics of innovation are overlooked and often unmanaged, resulting in more distress than success.

What my expert panel didn't do was disagree with the technical points. They took issue with themselves as the audience.

That response was unexpected and paradoxical.

It was a response that directly attacked my hope to inspire and empower more successful innovation leadership. The patient had rejected the medicine I was convinced they needed.

That truth was unpleasant and eventually helpful.

In my disappointed state, I gathered and set aside all the feedback and my reflections. It sat in a folder to the top right corner of my MacBook’s desktop titled “Feedback”.

I knew something valuable was in there but I needed to give it time—like a surfer keen to hit the water but who must be patient until clean waves break.

It would have been easy to discard the project and move on to something else. Instead, the feedback folder stayed on my desktop, periodically catching my eye.

Gradually, the disappointment faded revealing a question. What if my wish is right but my audience is wrong?

By now it was September and I cleared a day to revisit the project. I started by taking a walk. It was a hike actually, I ventured out before dawn up into the high alpine of Canada’s Coast Mountains.

Before setting out I reread all the feedback in one go and let it wash over me. As I hiked and processed the feedback I started to notice a buried theme.

A theme represented by this comment:

“Maybe you could change the title so that it appeals to people who don't think of themselves as an innovator, but who still want to affect change….”

Like any helpful insight, it seems obvious once know. This comment wasn't about the title but about the observation that there are people who yearn to drive change but don't see themselves as innovators. Their full potential is unrealized.

Whereas those who do think of themselves as innovators are already familiar with the challenges and rewards of trying to do new things. They don’t need help. They are already bringing new things to fruition.

I was energized by this audience shift, and yet it felt a bit dull. All of my material was far too rigorous and wonkish for this audience. They don’t think of themselves as innovators, nor do they need to do what’s a better way to engage and empower them

There was only one thing to do— I headed back to the mountains.

A few weeks ago, I hiked to the top of Blackcomb Mountain and around a rarely explored back ridge. It was a new ski season and I was testing new gear, creating visions of possibilities.

Atop that remote untracked couloir, I felt the same excitement as the kick-off of an innovation project where we looked ahead enthusiastically to the progression and exhilaration to come. With a sense of nervousness and risk in the air.

Then the dots connected.

The anticipation of creating a new path down an untracked piste on skis or in a professional challenge triggers the same feeling.

I pulled out my phone and wrote:

“Innovation is the adrenaline sport of business.”

This is because innovation is a high-risk, high reward and high-emotion endeavour.

Like an adrenaline sport, everyone can do it. Some do it full-time their entire life. While most do it periodically, some are happy to give it a pass yet enjoy supporting from the sidelines. Everyone plays a role.

Now, a year later I have the same goal to demystify the experience and capabilities of leading innovation so that we can increase success rates.

Only this time, it’s for a bigger audience that hopefully appreciates it more and can learn more through the adrenaline sports association.

So far the response has been very enthusiastic. Especially from professionals driving change in new ways who don’t think of themselves as innovators. How exciting.

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Leadership Gym

It’s time for an emotional checkup. After a holiday break, many professionals are eager to restart their ongoing innovation processes or kick off a new one. The intention is good but taking action is better.

So start your year with a quick check of your leadership fundamentals. How are you thinking, acting and feeling right now?

Run yourself through my short leadership x-ray to test yourself across the six fundamentals of innovation leadership.

It’s like a blood pressure test at the doctor's. It validates everything is good or can serve as an early warning signal to investigate.

CLICK HERE TO ASSESS YOUR LEADERSHIP

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