Innovation is Hard (and you might be the problem)

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Sometimes we can interfere with our own well-laid plans. When all the dust settles at the end of the new initiative for innovation, or even process improvement, we look around and think, how did I get here? Shout out to Talking Heads.

As leaders we have a desire to get involved in difficult projects by rolling up our sleeves, or kicking off our heels, and jumping in. By and large that desire will hinder rather than help a team trying to develop an innovative product or to seek ways for process improvement.

I know that you have good ideas and, like your mom, I think you're a wonderful person who's special in every way. However, your role as a leader, at least partly, is to provide a desired end state, or goal for the project rather than literally leading the project.

Typically, we have project managers for that, just saying.

Once you have given a team your vision for their project to either develop innovative solutions or to improve a business process, you should recuse yourself from further involvement with the team, particularly if you are senior to most members of the project. The results can be similar to the observer paradox in quantum. Your presence affects the outcome and usually not positively.

Consider this, after you give your team all the motivation they can handle, you offer a "suggestion," or maybe just a "here's a thought." Unless the team is very senior, or very technical, they are not as likely to develop solutions that are totally independent from your ideas.

Your team now has the ultimate Get Out Of Jail Free card. The project will be over sooner, they won't have to sell you on the idea (because it was yours) and any challenges during implementation can be blamed on you.

If this pattern continues, you are likely to feel more motivated, not less, to get involved in future projects. Congratulations, you are now the Innovator-In-Chief.

Maybe your mom wouldn't tell you if you were the smelly kid in your second-grade class but, seriously, pee-yew. Your program to innovate stinks.

Let's be honest, if you knew what to do to fix a problem you would have done it already. The team you've assembled should remove problems from your list by developing potential solutions, not add to your workload.

Not only will you get potential solutions that are unhindered by office politics, or organizational sacred cows, you are empowering your employees to take ownership of their organization and how it accomplishes work.

In addition to supporting the goals of the business and making responsible and measured decisions about the use of finite resources, you have a solemn responsibility to grow the talents of everyone around you. If you want to assist the innovation process tell them it's ok to be wrong, tell them that there are sometimes many failures before they can overcome all the challenges.

Innovation is hard and requires the correct conditions to be met. It can't be forced or directed but rather must be guided and nurtured. As a former Green Beret, I like to use this analogy. You want to start an insurgency in your company.

As a grassroots movement, you want to develop a culture that challenges existing methods. You don't want supporters; you want true believers. The sole focus of your insurgency is the future state of the company. You want them to find what isn't there, but could be, and then find ways to make it work.