Leading Successful Innovation, 4i talks with Innovation Architect, Nils Vesk

This content is an extract from an extensive interview with Nils Vesk, responding to questions which I put to him at the end of 2016. For the full interview, refer to the ‘long form interview’ post, link at the end of this article. As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to your commentary…

Cheers, Tim

How important is leadership for innovation?

The research is pretty clear on this, people leave organisations because of the people they work for and with ie. the leaders. Therefore if a leader isn’t sharing a narrative (story) about why innovation is important and looking at ways to facilitate, foster and encourage it, then innovation is going to have a tough time surfacing.

Can you give me an example of exceptional innovation leadership?

I had the good fortune of working with Creel (Andrew) Price for some time. Creel’s one of those who built and exited a great organisation for a ‘lotto sum price’ type of guys. His attitude to innovation was that everyone should be allowed to innovate.

For example, even the receptionist had permission to innovate on all the tasks that she was involved in. From meeting and greeting, dispatching couriers, admin communications and the sort. A common mistake is that innovation is only for the privileged, he successfully thought proved thought otherwise.

To what degree would you say innovation is recognised as a leadership opportunity?

This varies depending on organisations and their KPIs both as an organisation and for individuals. What organisations don’t do well is have clear concise metrics around innovation as an output, nor do they have a clear list of innovation behaviours so that they can measure them against an individuals performance. If an organisation has a list of observable measurable behaviours and then go out and observe and measure that in their leaders innovation is much easier to measure and link to profitability.

How can leaders best encourage innovation?

Create the want to, how to, and chance to. The want to means having a continuing narrative (stories) around why innovation is important using emotional stories throughout the year. The how to means having innovation training, let’s face it how many people have learnt how to innovate? Finally the chance to means giving people permission, time and space to innovate. Another successful way is to have recognition (this becomes part of the want to innovate story). Create a “most improved innovator award”& and catch people innovating. Share innovation stories from outside of the industry, go on field trips, and allow people to explore new solutions.

How can leadership benefit innovation?

Sharing a compelling narrative and facilitating innovation as well as creating rituals that cement innovation into the culture.

How can leadership best foster an innovative culture?

A culture is based on:

The rituals we act out (eg. how we run a meeting every week is a ritual)
The values we demonstrate (not the ones stuck on the wall)
The leaders we follow
Projects worth doing (projects that go beyond the everyday approach)
The stories (narrative) we tell about ourselves
Leaders therefore could consider ways of introducing innovative rituals – for example: going on a field trip to visit a different organisation every quarter. Leaders could share a list of innovative behaviours and ask their teams to start acting that way, whilst looking for examples of these behaviours in action and recognising it. Leaders could step up by thinking across three levels of leadership – a) being able to paint a vision and author messages that inspire b) be able to show people how to innovate and what it is c) be able to facilitate others to innovate by asking questions and facilitating innovation activities. Leaders might consider introducing some emotional projects that go beyond the everyday tasks to help inspire their people. Finally leaders can continue to share stories about why innovation is important and look to find examples of these happening in their organisations.

Should leaders be innovators, or leaders of innovators?

I believe they could be either or they could be both. However if they are to be leaders of innovators they need to be able to facilitate and understand innovation and that in turn means they are innovators.

How can organisations develop leadership development programs that will benefit innovation?

Be strategic by ensuring that leaders know how to develop a culture supportive of innovation(anthropologists call this culturing) and that they know how to facilitate innovation by giving them training, as innovation is not an inherent skill. This may entail learning what innovative behaviours are and how to find them, observe them and share stories with others so as to replicate them. There are many more…

To review content from the full interview with Nils; go to http://4igroup.com.au/blogs/long-form-interview-innovation-architect-nils-vesk/