The leader makes the difference

The leader makes the difference

Topics covered in this blog post:

• How you as a leader can make the difference

• Manager vs Leader

• The 6 steps to build your leadership manifesto towards innovation culture

This blog post is a part of a series, here the other posts:

1/5 Innovation culture the heart of generating sustainable business

The leader makes the difference

You as a leader are one of the most important building blocks in letting an innovation culture thrive. And it doesn't really matter on which level you are in a company. Let's start with my definition of leader and manager.

Manager vs Leader

Manager:

I define a manager who is in a position of a company with people reporting to him/her. They have the formal power and obligation to set direction and manage progress of the team.

Leader:

A leader in my view is someone who is appointed from the team as a leader. That can be formal or informal. It is basically a person who others are willing to follow because they trust this person.

What I like about leadership, it is an informal position which is based on the person’s ability to inspire and convince people rather than just telling people what they have to do. Managers can be leaders but are not necessarily one. Sometimes people are just following a manager because of their power, not because of the leadership skills and inspiration.

To make it tangible I will explain the leadership towards innovation culture from an executive management members position. That means you have to imagine you are a COO, CIO, CFO or whatever executive positions you can come up with. So you are a manager who has the authority to move topics in the organisation through the status and people will follow you due to that.

You are the executive CXX and took the ownership of innovation in your executive team to build an innovation culture in your company. How will you lead?

As mentioned in my blog post on innovation culture (LINK) I believe companies are going to be more successful in implementing innovation culture where the leader empowers the people to make decisions and listens to them. There are of course different ways you can consider to lead. In my experience from different large companies the coaching leadership style has proven to be one of the most successful ones especially for the long run.

The 6 Steps to build your innovation culture leadership manifesto

Step 1- What to ask yourself

Step 2- What are your priorities

Step 3- What is the future state

Step 4- Worst case 

Step 5- Behaviours

Step 6- Stay on course

In the following part I will explain in all details how you can build your own leadership manifesto towards an innovation culture. This will help you to find answers on how you want to lead and how you can keep yourself on track.

Step 1:

Let’s start with a list of questions you should ask yourself. And please feel free to add more questions for yourself.

Questions to ask yourself:

• Where do I get my energy from?

• What do I want to be known for?

• How important is my personal success vs the company success?

• How shall people in my organisation think about me?

• What are the driving forces in my life?

• What do I believe is the “right” innovation culture?

• Why did I accept the ownership to build an innovation culture?

• What does innovation culture mean for me?

• How do I want to measure my success as a leader in this?

Don’t just rush over it and answer the questions in your mind. Take some time and write the answers down. Sleep over it for one night and look at them again.

Step 2:

Now sort the questions with the most important answer for you on top of the list. Your second most important answer, the third most important answer and so on. This could look like 

My priorities:

1. How shall people in my organisation think about me?

2. Why did I accept the ownership to build an innovation culture?

3. Where do I get my energy from?

4. What are the driving forces in my life?

5. What do I want to be known for?

6. How important is my personal success vs the company success?

7. What do I believe is the “right” innovation culture?

8. What does innovation culture mean for me?

9. How do I want to measure my success as a leader in this?

If you have sorted your list and you are comfortable with the order you can go to your next step. 

Step 3:

Start with the first question and look at your answer. Separate the answer and formulate it into a future state statement. Here an example of the question: How shall people in my organisation think about me?

People will look at me as the innovation enabler of the company. The Mastermind and wizard behind it all. They respect me for how I am and love to listen to my opinion but know that they don’t have to take it as the only answer.

Step 4:

After you are happy with your future statement write down what is the worst case that can happen. Here an example:

People will not connect me to innovation in this company. They don’t like me, don’t respect me and are not interested in what I have to say. I get fired because Innovation is not moving forward.

Feels ugly? Good it should! If you are unhappy enough with the worst case example let's write down how you could behave that this will not happen. Here an example again:

Step 5:

I will inspire people and be patient with their response. I will focus on listening to people and try to coach them to find the right answer. I will enable other leaders to reflect my behaviour and will always be a good example. If I make a mistake I will let other people know and share my learnings from it.

Step 6:

Now comes the hardest thing for most people, how do you keep yourself in check, measure progress and course correct?

Here a couple of things that have worked well for me over the last decade:

• Create close followers who you involve to measure your progress

• Organise someone who can coach you going forward

• Talk with family members and friends about it so they will ask you how it goes

• Put a reminder into your calendar latest every 4 weeks to review the list and reflect on how it is going

• Create a dashboard with the key metrics to measure

Good luck establishing your leadership style towards an innovation culture in your company.

Happy to hear how it goes, please let me know via pm on social

Next up in our series:

The future state of your innovation company culture 

• What behavior do you want to see?

• How does it feel?

• How do people talk about it?