Mike Bell's Leadership Wisdom

Leaders Stumped by Innovation

A survey published Accenture shows that the biggest challenges facing businesses who need to innovate is not just releasing creativity, it is taking the ideas generated by the creative spirit and nurturing them until it can be successfully implemented.

This is not surprising when you think that the left-brain logic that dominates most leaders thinking in today's organisations has difficulty comprehending creativity and nurturing which required more right brain understanding.

We need to develop balanced leaders to meet todays challenges.

Serial Management Innovation

A recent HBR article, Gary Hamel suggests that to stay successful it is not enough for companies just to keep thinking up new ideas that competitors quickly copy, they need serial management innovation.

"The keys to serial management innovation? Tackle a big problem--as General Motors did by inventing the divisional structure to bring order to its sprawling family of companies. Search for radical management principles--as Visa's founders did when they envisioned self-organization--and created the first non-stock, for-profit membership enterprise. Challenge conventional management beliefs, which Toyota did by deciding that frontline employees--not top executives--make the best process innovators."

Conversations and Innovation

"Conversations outside the organization are the chief mechanism for making change and renewal an ongoing part of the company culture. One of the many paradoxes of the Knowledge Economy is that conversation -- traditionally regarded as a waste of time -- is in fact the key resource for competing on time. Companies that practice the art of external conversation are far better equipped to shape the new knowledge environment to which slower competitors must then respond."

- Alan Stewart, The Conversing Company

If we accept that conversations are a key element in creating new knowledge that leads to change and innovation, shouldn't we be asking ourselves what more we can do to stimulate these conversations - and the more the merrier!

Innovation Means Relying on Everyone's Creativity

"Innovation has always been a primary challenge of leadership. Today we live in an era of such rapid change and evolution that leaders must work constantly to develop the capacity for continuous change and frequent adaptation, while ensuring that identity and values remain constant. They must recognize people's innate capacity to adapt and create -- to innovate."

Read the full article by Margaret Wheatley Innovation Means Relying on Everyone's Creativity