INNOVATION | LEADERSHIP

Leadership Skills That Deliver Radical Innovation

A discussion about the type of leadership thinking needed to shift from incremental to radical innovation

Seeking to expand or optimize an existing business is called incremental innovation. Looking to create a new product, service, or new business extension on a deeper level is called radical innovation. Lastly, there’s revolutionary, which crosses market boundaries or creates an entirely new market altogether.

Innovation is transformation.

Many consider radical innovation as riskier, but organizations that work well with radical innovation adopt multiple leadership styles concurrently in order to adjust rapidly under changing circumstances.

This article is about the shift from incremental to radical innovation.

Find Discomfort

Most organizations place attention on incremental, the small changes that can easily be tied back to return-on-investment (ROI). Leaping from an incremental mindset to a radical one is easier said than done.

From a human point of view, if teams have excelled for years at exceeding ROI performance metrics, they need the right support to adapt to a new approach, where failure is par for the course.

Radical innovation has the potential to redefine everything. To realize its potential the process must be well managed to overcome the human instinct to resist change.

Transformation is uncomfortable for both the organization and its people.

Successful radical innovators set out clear decision-making frameworks to work with complex problems more effectively. Such frameworks support a challenging, yet rewarding experience.

But frameworks alone are not enough. Leadership skills form the bedrock of any innovative culture. This is the foundation that allows a business to execute innovation strategies that succeed.

Promising business leaders can stumble when they’re stuck in certain behavioral patterns and ways of reacting. This is understandable. It’s predictable, as the conditioned brain wants to move in a linear path. The path of least resistance. A path towards a goal that side-steps discomfort and pain. In this mode, leading an innovative culture becomes very challenging.

That said, we know that human beings are adaptable. Below are two such leadership adaptations that support transformation:

Transformative Mindset

Goal-setting has a place but can constrain radical innovation because it presumes to know the end result. Transformative thinking helps us to avoid these trappings' of comfort.

Our brains love the feeling of attainable goals. It triggers a reward. It’s so powerful that leaders and followers tend to ignore distractions that pull them away from the most linear path to realize such goals. But distractions can hold important information that can lead to a better outcome, just non-linear.

Non-linear distractions are the lifeblood of innovation.

Leading radical innovation requires an iterative approach. One that aims to better refine questions rather than rushing to find answers. Questions and possible solutions are then tested through experimentation, the results are assessed to gain new knowledge, new insights.

Break rules

Humans feel pressure to rush to find an efficient solution. This often leaves the core problem untouched. The reason for this is that many organizations lack the ability to think otherwise.

We’re timebound and goal-focused.

So until we fully understand the scope of the challenge, we risk solving the wrong problems in the wrong way.

Leaders who create a culture that encourages questions, listening to all sources, and observes the whole on a deeper level, are likely to be more successful leaders of innovation. Their team becomes open and more confident on unknown paths. From there, initiatives to achieve radical transformation are much more likely to deliver successful results.

A transformative mindset is a remedy to the limitations of goal-fixation.

Imagine what an innovative team could achieve working in a transformational mode?

Using Stress

Some leaders don’t have a great rapport with stress. They lack the basic understanding of what stress actually is and how to use it to benefit the mind and body. As a result, they believe its normal to hold chronic levels of stress within them every day. That’s a nighttime scenario.

Poorly managed stress can negatively impact a team or organization. It also brings a host of obstacles for effective innovation leadership.

Stress is not the enemy, it’s a resource.

Stress biology coupled with practical exercises forces us to pay attention. We learn to listen to the true language of stress.

One solution is to label stress as “presence.” In doing so we work directly with our stress in a more productive way as opposed to letting our minds race, sending our bodies into a tailspin, a “highly alerted” state.

Harness energy

Harnessing this source leaders and team members at all levels in the organization can understand the insights that stress is telling them. This valuable perspective comes from being skilled in presence of mind, body, and presence in the environment.

Imagine what could be accomplished if we harnessed our collective stress as a source of energy?

Stress can be fuel greater insights and purposeful action.

Final Thoughts

Better knowledge and skills to develop transformative thinking, while harnessing stress, equips leaders to navigate the creative friction caused by the shift from incremental towards radical innovation.

Momentum grows as an organization adopts an innovative movement where the collective team can reach its aspirations. As innovative teams become more aligned, they foster a sustainable culture of innovation, a place where everyone evolves and fine-tunes their capabilities.

The outcome can capture the incredible benefits of incremental and radical innovation in parallel.