I recently read Verganti’s book on Design-Driven Innovation,
which was focused on a significant point that many writers about innovation
seem to miss: there is an enormous difference between being personally
innovative and creating an environment in which innovation can flourish – and
neglecting this difference is the very reason that many managers kill
innovation when they mean to nurture it.
The innovative individual is a creative thinker whose ideas
are highly unusual (they would not be very innovative if their ideas were
mundane), who requires an environment in which they are able to explore these
thoughts, to gain support to develop them, and to have just enough direction to
keep them from going too far afield so that their ideas can be
implemented. If they are controlled
rather than directed, their creative faculties shut down and they become
order-takers, doing as they are instructed rather than thinking outside the
box. This is the very nature of
creativity.
The problem is that when an innovative person (or one who
merely fancies himself to be innovative) rises to a position of authority, they
continue to try to be personally innovative and treat their staff as helpers
rather than independent thinkers. The
innovative manager is the idea-man, and his staff are merely drones that do his
bidding and do not have the freedom to pursue their own idea – which, in
effect, is to stop them from being innovative and become order-takers.
The result of this behavior is not innovative management,
but traditional management – in which there is one mind and many hands to carry
out its work. So rather than having a
staff of ten or twenty creative minds all contributing innovative ideas, the
firm has one creative mind (the boss) and ten or twenty people who are not
permitted to think, and who in time become disgruntled and drift away, or
remain as warm bodies collecting a paycheck and not putting their minds to good
use. Obviously, this is not what is
intended by a firm that sets up an innovation lab – but it is very often the
end result.
To be effective as an innovative manner means putting one’s
own creativity aside (or pursuing them individually while refraining from using
the authority of their office from dragooning others into supporting roles) and
recognize that being an effective manager of knowledge-workers requires
facilitating the work of others rather than relegating others to handle the
mundane tasks and subordinating them to authority.
Few creative people are able to successfully lead other
creatives for this very reason – they wish to continue pursuing their own ideas
and treat their staff as resources to do so, rather than remembering what it is
like to be a subordinate to a traditional leader who kills innovation. They may pay lip-service to the notion, and
constantly criticize their staff for not contributing ideas while behaving in a
way that discourages or prevents their staff from doing so. With hire-and-fire
authority, a word of discouragement is a significant threat that intimidates
and silences those who do not fall in line, so even an occasional
discouragement trumps their inspirational speeches, even in rare instances when
they are earnest.
Whether traditional leaders are trained in creativity or
creative individuals are trained in leadership, this point seems to be lost: that
the way to manage innovation is to give creative people the support, resources,
and latitude to pursue their own ideas with only gentle direction to keep them
aware of the constraints – and it is especially important to make creative
people aware that the transition to a leadership role requires them to make a
shift in their approach, to be a champion of workers who deliver innovative
ideas rather than attempting to remain personally innovative to the detriment
of others whose task it is to innovate.
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