Connecting Dots 24 ◎⁃◎ Innovation Leader, a Vexing Identity

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Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, a monthly newsletter that explores the inter-relations between innovation leaders and organizations. If new you can subscribe here.

This is the first newsletter unpacking a single experience scale of the Innovation Leadership Map to better understand the “inner-world” of innovation leaders. Today, I am trying a new format to explain the concept and how to incorporate it into your work. Feedback on the structure welcome.

I’d also love to hear any reflections or personal stories of how you felt identity helped or hindered your work. After the article, I’ve added a short update on what I’ve been up to this month.

Okay, grab a coffee, settle in and on with innovation leader as identity...

The Innovation Leader Identity

“You’ll be hated.”

This strong statement came from an impressive professional when I asked if being known as an innovation leader is helpful. She was currently leading the digital transformation of an industry-leading firm after having built from scratch the most progressive cybersecurity department of any top-tier European bank.

While she was a practical and humble leader, she found that as others labelled her an innovator due to accomplishments brutal reactions to the identity emerged. It was confusing as she was doing what the firm wanted but was perceived as subverting others. She learned that to succeed at leading innovation she needed to actively disassociate herself from the identity of being an innovation leader to engender collaboration and cooperation from peers. This story reminds us that behind the objectification and lionization of innovation leaders in media the lived reality is very different.

A Leader’s Identity

All leaders have an identity. Comprised of how they see themselves, how others see them as a person and how others see the role they inhabit regardless of the person. The identity of an innovation leader is especially fraught. Like all leaders, they are trying to drive change rather than stabilize the status quo. However, the type of change they are driving is more uncertain, unpredictable and chaotic than routine change. It’s the terrifying experience of breaking new ground without the new state yet clear as you’re busy making it real.

As seen in the opening vignette, innovation leaders trigger strong emotions from others. High or low-energy emotional responses are not related to what the innovation itself is, it’s to what people think it means. In general people love change, it makes life interesting. What they hate is loss. Sometimes what people think change means is linked to some kind of perceived intangible loss. It could be something like status, sense of relative competence or self-perception of being innovative themselves. Additionally, it could be a loss of their idea for what the company was or their vision of what it will become. 

The experience of how others respond to the identity of an innovation leader is represented by three positions.

Idealized
These responses to the innovation leader's identity can be cloaked in something that seems good. When someone is anointed an innovation leader, whether formally or informally titled, great expectations are placed on them. In the idealized state, there is a delusion that this person will bring magical solutions or can reduce the pain of doing something new for the first time. Many leaders fall into this trap of delusional idealization fueled by the hope expressed around them. Only to find hope becomes disappointment over time.

Despised

The real work of innovation leadership is gaining the engagement and support of others outside your boundary of authority. In positions where those with the identity of being an innovator are actively seen as a threat, they find themselves in a very depressive low energy state of being despised. It may not be overtly hostile, though one leader found a pattern of being told to “get the f*** out” of meetings, but the real violence is a lack of collaboration. Often, this has little to do with who is in the role, it is merely the person carrying the innovator identity.

Tolerated

The optimal identity for an innovation leader is to be tolerated. This acknowledges the tension that while they may still pose a threat, others are willing to collaborate and form a working alliance. In this position, the leaders are sensitive to the responses of others and empathetic to the human needs in parallel to the technical needs of the project or program. It may seem a low bar to aspire merely to be tolerated but this is the identity position leaders report drives progress. Sliding to the idealized or despised positions was strongly associated with unrealized potential and often traumatic outcomes.

The Identity Experience Scale maps out these positions. Most leaders learned the tolerated position through trial and error. They also frequently link achieving this productive state through practicing humility. Humility is harder to unpack than the unproductive positions full of practices like arrogance, condescension, stubbornness, heartlessness, etc.

I understand humility as practicing vulnerability. Practicing vulnerability means to be capable of being wounded; liable to injury or criticism; subject to being affected injuriously or attacked. In other words be willing to learn you might be wrong but still try. After all, an innovation leader believes something might or should be possible yet only when they do it will it be known for certain. There is an acceptance and ownership of risk that the leader tames.

As the old saying goes “only a fool marches in blindly without hesitation.” Risk doesn’t require recklessness. Successful innovation leaders are very thoughtful about how they will work with others. Both their needs as a person and the needs of the business. Too often leaders only develop the technical capabilities and not their interpersonal capabilities.

Tooling

To be effective, and resilient, as an innovation leader, it is helpful to assess the building blocks of your identity. A way to do so is to draw four circles on a page. In each circle answer one of the following questions in this order:

• How do I see myself as a leader?

• How do others see me as a person?

• How do others see my role regardless of the person?

• How do I wish to be seen as a leader?

Typically, you will find some distance or dissonance between each perspective. This will be evident in your wish. The intent of this question is to practically identify how you might engender the identity of being tolerated. This question will link to the type of innovation and culture you are working with.

Based upon this wish your final task is to note what practices or behaviours will help you develop this position or avoid the despised and idealized states. Revisit this exercise as you go through key stages of an innovation development journey. Identity changes as there are shifts in aspects such as team size, budget, geography or exposure. Identity is not static. It is dynamic based on what you do, how you behave and what others wish for from you. Self-awareness is your greatest asset to maintain a productive identity amongst peers.

Next month I’ll explore the Outlook scale and the positions of being cynical, hopeful or euphoric.

Brett’s Movements

Since we last met I’ve run another fantastic three-day innovation capability development workshop for a global consultancy in partnership with the D&AD. Also with the D&AD, I contributed a module on empathy to a course they created with Future Learn. How to Enhance Your Creative Empathy is a great course and an interesting example of online learning increasing access and providing practical training backed by deep rigour (I’ve done all the reading so others don’t have to 😃).

On the personal R&D front, I’ve started testing the methodology of the individual Innovation Leadership Mirror development model. As well, amazingly, I’ve started to contribute to a G20 communiqué for the Rome 2021 summit on digital solidarity principles. Policy is out of my comfort zone, but hopefully, we can help reinsert human-centric outcomes to global digitization discussions.

Stay curious and courageous,

~ Brett

P.S. Please share this newsletter with a colleague who you think would appreciate the topic of innovation leadership.

Can Design Principles Influence Global Digital Policy?

Can design principles influence global policy? Join me and let’s find out.

For the G20 meeting in Rome, I have been asked to contribute a chapter to the communiqué for the engagement group V20 (Values20). The purpose of V20 is to elevate the role of human values in multi-lateral discussions.

“Our vision is to add depth to the understanding of values in public policy with the goal of providing the G20 with evidence-based, human-centered policy solutions that contribute to overcoming global challenges.” -

It is a volunteer initiative where I’m providing guidance on principles of solidarity for digitization-related multi-lateral policy discussions.

I’m not a policy person but do know how human-centric design principles influence large-scale, complex and distributed digital platforms, services and products.

We have seen the tremendous value of design principles at a national level with GDS (UK), USDS (USA) and CDS (Canada) amongst others. Let’s see if the concept of Solidarity Principles can contribute to the G20 just as design principles have at a national level.

This month I’m working to:

1. Define what are solidarity principles and how might nations use them to express preferred human-centric outcomes aligned with their national values in a way that still contributes to collective human values.

2. Draft the first set of solidarity principles for consideration of adoption in multi-lateral digitization discussions.

I am using a co-development process and am looking for folks who would be interested in participating. It’s low key and I’m simply looking for folks with experience in digitization, principles-led organisations and policy. This will be one or two workshops of ~90 mins. With a chance to review the draft communiqué.

I am also keen to find evidence in research or case study formats about the value and role of design principles in practice.

If interested please contact me here by mail or on LinkedIn. Let me know why you’re interested and what you’d like to contribute. Just a couple of sentences, please.

I hope you’ll join the experiment.

Connecting Dots 23 ◎⁃◎ The Innovator’s Inner World

The Innovator’s Inner World

Understanding the mindset of innovation leaders.

Hello,

Welcome to Connecting Dots, a monthly newsletter that explores the space between innovation and leadership. If new you can subscribe here.

In this second article in a series unpacking my research that mapped the experience of innovation leadership, I will outline what innovation leadership looks like through the eyes of our protagonist; the innovation leader. Then I’ll introduce you to the first of the Innovation Leadership Map (ILM) experience scales; Identity. 

Stay curious and courageous friends,

~ Brett

PS. I will shortly announce April dates for webinar previews of a new talk called The Quest, An Innovation Leader’s Mindset. Stay tuned for the email or just reply to this one with “Yes please.”

The Innovator’s Inner World

Innovation stirs strong emotions. Not just when doing the work but especially when getting started. Maybe you’ve felt how deeply emotive innovation can be. This truth quickly became evident to me when interviewing seasoned innovation leaders. It was a relief to learn I wasn’t alone.

Unfortunately, we overlook the individual experiences of the millions of leaders who take up the call to lead innovation in their organizations. The experience of leading innovation is simply not understood. It is a desert of knowledge. It turns out this blindspot of lived experiences and practices afflicts all leadership scholarship. By scholarship, I mean the documented evidence, theory and practices of leadership in general. While the literature agrees that leadership is the act of driving change in a group towards a goal, there is little documentation of the lived experience and practices.

What are we afraid of? We can’t develop innovation leadership performance if we don’t know what the experience is in the first place. Why do we stop at all the excellent yet sterile analysis of innovation as though we’re merely moving resources like Lego blocks? Where’s the real work and world of innovation? The peer-to-peer discussions, the risk-taking, activating of ambition, accepting real-world events, creative collaboration, resilience, courage and problem-solving. 

When you get into it, leading innovation looks less like a process and more like a phenomenon. That is because it is a phenomenon. One that can be hard to define. In fact, it was only in 2019 that the OECD was able to convene and facilitate 175 global innovation experts to agree on a singular definition. 

“An innovation is a new or improved product or process (or combination thereof) that differs significantly from the unit’s previous products or processes and that has been made available to potential users (product) or bought into use by the unit (process). (OECD, 2019, p. 20) 

A bit wordy. Though clear. I prefer to just define innovation as “applied invention.” Regardless, it’s wonderful that after 30+ years of concerted efforts they finally landed on a common definition for this beautiful human phenomenon. 

That said, I’m not interested in definitions. I am interested in how repeat innovation leaders perform when leading a group to do something new for the first time. This is what the Innovation Leadership Map shows us. It is a synthesis of the emotional, cognitive and behavioural experiences of a leader. Someone who is on the ground leading innovation in the here and now. 

Unlike an inventor who is focused on a technical task, innovation leadership is a multi-part task. The leader’s primary role is to negotiate complexity, uncertainty and paradoxical choices to drive a group of people to do something new for the first time. No one person can deliver innovation alone, yet every party can frustrate its progress. It is emergent and can be derailed by small unpredictable events. Each event triggers strong emotional responses in people that the leader must work with. 

Digging down we can see the layers of complexity an innovation leader faces:

• Strategic complexity

• Informational complexity

• Procedural complexity

• Social/emotional complexity

Navigating this complexity is the real role of the innovation leader. There is much outside the leader’s authority, control and influence regardless of the process or domain of innovation. Because leadership is driving change, each layer of complexity activates disequilibrium as change occurs. In practice, this looks like anxieties, defensive positions and emotional outbursts. All influenced but not controlled by the innovation leader.

The inner context (aka the inner world) is the one thing that an innovation leader can control, or at least learn to control. Tragically, in my research, many innovation leaders didn’t see the personal toll of working through the disequilibrium.  Operating with blinders on is a great risk because it’s a fine line between activating, containing and working with these emotional surges productively or becoming consumed by them.

Here is a visualization of what the innovation leadership situation looks like.

A Leader’s Inner World, Brett Macfarlane (2021)

The internal context is what the ILM illuminates. As an example, one of the six experience scales is identity. The identity of an innovation leader is how others see you and how you see yourself at a given moment. Both the identity of you the person in the role and the identity of the role itself. Often the informal role of an innovation leader is a container for all sorts of hope and disappointment regardless of whom currently is carrying the role. “You’ll be hated” was the way one leader described the identity of an innovation leader and why she actively avoids identifying as an innovation leader or innovator. 

The experience of leading innovation can be understood through energy states. An absence of energy and progress is insufficient to drive the change innovation requires. Too much energy and the system moves into fantastical or delusion states. Innovation leaders succeed when they can trigger or activate sufficient energy for change and progress yet contain its surges to the extreme ends. 

You may have quickly connected the dots that the leader’s performance starts with their ability to contain the energy within their inner world. Only through their self-management can they lead the wider group over time.

What can now serve as an early warning system is if innovation leaders are feeling and seeing evidence of being idealized or despised. Idealization brings about fantastical expectations and a dependency on you for having magical solutions. A position that often follows grand launches, unrealistic timelines or hyperbolic press releases. Alternatively, leaders can find themselves despised and rejected like an unwanted organ transplant. They hole up in a physically or perceptively distant operation. 

In between these two low and high energy extremes is the balanced tolerated position. Here there is sufficient energy to drive change (and therefore disequilibrium.) People will tolerate their presence and engage with them. Thus if the identity of being an innovation leader is tolerated in an organization those who may consider you a threat feel it is a manageable or tolerable threat. It is in their interests to work with you and they feel sufficient control and safety to stay engaged.

In other words, the leader is able to contain the emotional experience and maintain a developmental state of cognitive processing as explored in Connecting Dots 22. If they all into the desired or idealized positions they risk losing containment and regress into delusional pessimism. What this introduction to the ILM experience scales establishes is that there is a golden space where effective performance occurs. Next month I’ll explore the identity scale in greater depth, along with how it links more deeply to cognitive processing.

~If this newsletter triggers any of your own experiences, observations or thoughts please do reply. Feedback welcome.

~Also, it’s very appreciated when you forward these newsletters to your colleagues. There is a lot we can learn from each other.

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TOP IMAGE: Looking up to the Aguille du Midi high above Chamonix, France January 2010.

Connecting Dots 22 ◎⁃◎ Research Introduction & Publication

The Innovation Leadership Map

How repeat innovation leaders work with

anxiety, authority and frustration.

Connecting Dots is a periodic newsletter about innovation leadership. It is published by innovation educator, advisor and scholar Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe here.

~5 minutes read

I have happy news. Two years of research and a rigorously reviewed paper into the inner world of repeat innovation leaders have been approved for publishing. Thank you for being curious and contributing participants along the journey.

The response has been positively overwhelming. For many leaders, it has provided insight and comfort for what can be an individual existence. That said, I’m still working out how to best share and apply the findings. The formal title is “Innovation’s Under-Explored Use of Emotions: How Innovation Leaders Work with Anxiety, Authority and Frustration.” Though I’ve also been referring to it as “The Call to Innovation” or “The Quest.”

At the heart of my research are the six “Experience of Innovation Scales.” The scales provide a map that visualizes how the feelings, thoughts and behaviours of innovation leaders affect their performance. Each month I will use this newsletter to introduce and expand one of the experience scales.

There is compassion behind the research. Leading innovation is hard and risky. There really are easier ways for one to build a career. Yet, many choose to take up the call for innovation. It is a rewarding call that also comes with great peril. My findings illuminate how it goes right, or wrong, and why in a practical way to make rational the seemingly irrational.

I hope you stay with me and continue to share this work with your peers and colleagues. Let’s get started with a bit of background below before I start expanding on the scales next month. Reactions and questions always welcome.

May you thrive,

~Brett

Why Innovation Needs Help

Despite the strong consensus on the importance of innovation, there is a significant performance gap and capability misunderstanding. While we know innovation-intensive firms outperform rivals by a factor of two we don’t know why innovation rates in the west are declining. Nor why only 6% of executives are happy with innovation in their firm. And why 96% of CEO’s lack sufficient capabilities for digital innovation in particular. These macro indicators from McKinsey tell us something is very wrong. 

My aim was to get into the minds of those who are leading innovation to understand what influences their performance. I’m not interested in reductive theories of what they do technically, superficial trait theories, pop-culture myth or one-dimensional hero-worshipping. I approach innovation leadership in the way sports psychologists do elite athlete performance. I am linking their interpsychic responses to real-world situations of innovation leadership to models of developmental (good) and regressive (bad) performances.

In other words, how are the feelings, thoughts and behaviours experienced and worked with by elite leaders when performing their best? And, what happens when it goes wrong?

Based on my research with high-performing board members, CEOs and managers in well-known firms, the hard data of their lived experience provides us with an innovation leadership experience map across six scales. In the coming months I will introduce and expand on each scale:

1. Outlook

2. Identity

3. Autonomy

4. Exposure

5. Risk

6. Autonomy

In each, we will identify specific positions on the scales and how they enable or inhibit progress. In addition to the primary data I gathered, the grounding of the theoretical model is based on decades of peer-reviewed psychoanalytical theory, leadership scholarship, innovation foundations and increasingly neuroscience.

Disarming the Innovator Caricature 

Today though, I want to share that evident in my research is how we get the popular image of the innovator so wrong. Often labelled mavericks, rebels or other subversive types we have a caricature of a colleague we aren’t keen to work with. Is an angry Jobs, impulsive Musk or brash Branson really the archetype of successful innovation leadership? Based on the evidence, I argue no. They may be great entrepreneurs and surround themselves with great innovation leaders but they don’t embody the psychological or behavioural composition of the repeat innovation leaders I had the privilege of evaluating.

What united the innovation leaders I worked with, often out of their conscious awareness, is an ability to trigger within themselves and others strong emotions. Though crucially they held the ability to contain, not deny or deflect, these emotions to use them for productive purposes. Containment enables the power of ambivalence which means they can hold multiple contradictory perspectives or dimensions in mind and still function. They could see the positives and negatives of a situation, and reconcile the paradox enough to move forward.

Simplistically this is balanced processing and the ability to engage with reality through courage. This means to have a morally worthy goal, take intentional action and progress despite visible risks and obstacles. Easier said than done. Even these repeat innovation leaders at times fell victim to losing containment and thus becoming overwhelmed by strong emotions and regressive behaviours. 

This performance variability of the same leader can be explained by the psychoanalytic discipline, or you may be familiar with DSM patterns for how we think. Without containment, leaders fall into primitive defence mechanisms expressed as blaming, black/white thinking, denial of reality and other patterns. With containment, we deploy sophisticated defence mechanisms such as suppression, something you may have used when needing say to reduce workforce to invest in a new product range that enabled organizational survival. 

Positively Frustrating

These two positions, developmental or regressive, can be best explained by the dominant emotion expressed by most innovation leaders; frustration. Frustration can be expressed in ways that are both positive and negative. Study participants often described their frustration as a source of energy and intentional drive to pursue their aims. Therefore we can frame frustration as having two positions triggered by one’s emotional experience resulting in different behavioural responses.

In the months ahead, as we look at each experience scale we will elaborate on what triggers movement between positions. I hope to continue the therapeutic awareness the scales have proven to provide. As well, to further establish the developmental possibilities of the scales. For the first time, we have a performance perspective on innovation to explain situationally why leaders can drive initiatives forward (or not) through their behaviours, thoughts and feelings.

To apply the research, I have developed a leadership development program for innovation leaders called the Innovation Leadership Map. It is designed for those actively leading or aspiring to acquire the capabilities to lead innovation and thrive as an individual. We explore your motivations, leadership biography, loss valences and ambition through a behavioural performance lens. The outcome is a personal roadmap to create an impact in your work through innovation. Contact me if you are interested for yourself or your team.

As always feedback welcome. I’m always happy to hear what questions you have, experiences you’ve had or people with whom you’d gladly share this.

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TOP IMAGE: Overlooking the Jung Frau from the opposite side of the Lauterbrunnen Valley in August of 2020.

Connecting Dots 21 ◎⁃◎ The Under- Explored Emotions of Innovation

The Under-Explored Emotions of Innovation

Research that bridges the unconscious practices, motivations and cognitions to the behaviours of repeat innovation leaders.

Connecting Dots is a monthly newsletter published by innovation educator, advisor and scholar Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe here.

Hello,

It has been a while since I’ve written. Mostly because I’ve been invested in completing my innovation leadership research and submitting it to the good folks of INSEAD. This edition of Connecting Dots will be a short update and preview of the research along with what’s to come in the year ahead.

Firstly though, I’d like to thank all of you for being part of this newsletter over the past two years. Your comments and support have meant a lot to me. Thank you.

Secondly, I’m pleased to share that later this year (or maybe 2022 🤷‍♂️) INSEAD will publish:

“Innovation’s Under-Explored Use of Emotions: How Innovation Leaders Work with Anxiety, Authority, and Frustration”

It is a product of 18 months, a distillation of 400+ academic papers, 26 in-depth innovation leader interviews, a peer review panel and countless conversations. I thank you all for being part of the journey.

Over this year I will share findings, frameworks, automated tools and further research initiatives. There is a lot to unpack and translate into practical applications. Some highlights include the six experience scales of innovation, innovation’s two positions of frustration and identifying an organization’s boundary of innovation tolerance.

Overall the research creates a much more vivid picture of what’s going on within a leader enabling them to successfully work with the strong emotions triggered by innovation. As well, insight into what happens behaviourally when it all goes wrong, as innovation and change so often do. It is an integrative look at leadership, innovation and systems psychodynamics that aims to illuminate what’s really occurring beyond the conscious awareness of leaders, groups and organizations.

With this research, my goal is to develop more innovation capable leaders and better support the success and well-being of those already leading on the front lines. Possibly also dispelling the myth of innovation leaders as dangerous mavericks and rebels.

So stay tuned and please continue to share this newsletter with fellow innovation curious leaders. I’ll also be offering some subscriber-exclusive webinars and partner events that I hope you can join.

I wish you a good start to 2021. We are all full of unrealized potential and I hope to help expand and grasp your boundaries of possibility.

Best,

Brett

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PS. Feedback and questions welcome, in particular on what are your topics of interest. Also, please do share this newsletter with others so we can grow the team and our collective knowledge. 

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TOP IMAGE: San Francisco in late October of 2019 on a short jaunt out of the Rapha clubhouse.

Connecting Dots 20 ◎⁃◎ Positively Frustrating

Connecting Dots explores the psychology of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

Fontainebleau, FR I’m in a COVID bubble on the INSEAD campus in Fontainebleau. I am here to frame and interrogate the findings of my research into the emotional experience and behaviours of repeat innovation leaders. It was a curious realization last week that while leaders experience many different things they all experience frustration. Very strongly so. Universally so. Though while we might instinctively think frustration is a negative emotion it may actually be a positive precondition. Let me share why.

The Leader’s Chore

There is a simple difference between management and leadership. Management is about stability. Leadership is about change. Innovation by definition is about change and therefore requires leadership.

The problem with innovation leadership is too many think about it through the mindset of management. While tools, processes, resources and policy are important, the real task of innovation leadership is to find out how much change an organization can tolerate. The more change it can tolerate the more innovative it can be. (Note see Connecting Dots 18 ◎⁃◎ Tolerance for Change.)

Innovation is exceptionally frustrating for all involved. Instinctively frustration is a bad or unpleasant thing. Yet when trying to do something new for the first time it is necessary and inevitable. While innovation leaders often are frustrated with feeling frustrated my findings indicate it is in fact a signal and source of energy and vitality that enables progress.

Working With Frustration Positively

The amazing innovation leaders I’ve been researching, often unbeknownst to themselves, are masters at surfacing and containing frustration in ways that progress their team and organization. The frustration they generate is born from an intent. An intent to address something that could be better or an opportunity that hasn’t been harnessed - powerfully positive, visionary and value-creating.

The frustration comes from the leadership task of reconciling the paradoxes of the organization. How do we change yet retain our identity? How do we renew yet run our business? How do we invest yet return to shareholders? How do we experiment yet not fail? How do we learn without losing confidence in our expertise? Questions that appear absurd and irrational when presented simultaneously yet is the reality of what leaders face.

Repeat innovation leaders are able to hold onto the intent on one hand and tune it to reconcile the paradoxes on the other hand. True failure happens when the intent is uncompromised and stubbornly held like a rock. Or, the intent is compromised by appeasing all ends of the paradoxes dissipating to nothing like a splash of water. 

Humility, adaptability, restlessness and a compulsion to do the right thing are the traits I regularly identify in true innovation leaders. It is a thankless job with a propensity to hit walls or burn out. This I know from personal experience. For all its motivating benefits, frustration certainly has a powerful dark side.

To help, an instrument being developed looks at innovation leadership through three positions of frustration. The purpose of this instrument is illustrative to provide understanding for innovation leaders themselves or executives selecting leaders. As well, it can serve as a real-time diagnostic for how on-task and developmental a group is or isn’t when driving innovation programs.

Innovation Leadership Frustration as Positions:

Ref: Brett Macfarlnae

There are many great innovation leaders out there, you’re likely one. If we can raise comprehension of the true role and tasks of innovation leadership we may be able to improve the problematic state of Western organizational innovation. Hopefully, we can increase the success rate and improve the well-being of innovation leaders. 

Like great athletes, innovation leaders seek and thrive under the pressure and spotlight, but unlike elite athletes, the true cognitive capabilities are not well understood or practiced. If you have any reflections on your practice and your relationship with frustration please do share. The research continues.

“Without action, the world is still an idea.”

— Georges Doriot, founder of INSEAD and inventor of venture capital

Brett’s Movements

As noted, my research is in the sense-making stage and a first draft manuscript is in progress. I very much appreciate my EMC INSEAD peers for interrogating and validating the integrity of findings. A few final research interviews are lined up and I’ll be validating data synthesis with interviewees in November. Very rewarding to see it come together. There has been a lot of interest already and I’ve been fortunate to do a couple of company presentations of early findings. Helpful to gain further data and validate the findings are useful to leaders and their organizations.

My research was always intended to help real-world practice. I’m looking forward to next month to starting design an innovation capability development program for a global consultancy. As well there are initiatives starting on how we can increase board capability to support innovation and updating the governance model - because the current set up simply isn’t working.

I hope you are safe and finding purpose in your work as October unfolds. Your feedback on these newsletters is always appreciated. As well, please share it with peers or your social networks. It makes a big difference and I really appreciate your contributions.

Keep pushing boundaries. 

-Brett

Hits and Misses

Some new things that caught my eye this past month.

On Running- HIT 🤩

While subscriptions are growing in popularity, only if you go into the value chain is it meaningful innovation. The stylishly engineered Swiss brand On has developed as close to a closed-loop running shoe as possible. Cyclon is a shoe you’ll never own, made of beans, that is fully recyclable and replaced whenever you need. I really hope this succeeds. Also, that eco-warrior brands of choice are madly trying to copy. Looking at you Converse, Doc Martin and Veja. Nike, if you can look at subscription as more than removing some purchase friction to take full accountability and ownership of your product’s lifecycle then you might regain my loyalty. Till then I love my On’s. No, I’m not compensated in any way but open to offers :-)

Image Credit: The top image is from a lockdown discovery. Fortitude bakery in London. Previously a commercial bakery but with revenue disappearing overnight the entrepreneurial founder turned their Bloomsbury mews location into a virus-safe open-air cafe. A small taste of sanity.

Connecting Dots 19 ◎⁃◎ The Innovator's Fire

Connecting Dots explores the psychology of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

This month, let’s take a look at where innovation comes from at an individual level. It’s something that has been a rich and charged topic in my ongoing innovation leadership research at INSEAD. ~BM

Where does innovation come from?

Innovation itself isn’t so much a thing as it is a phenomenon. It’s something that humans do and a label that captures the experience of doing or creating something new for the first time.

Innovation as a phenomenon is only something we can label in hindsight after it’s happened. Once something has been made real and is put out into the world.

Innovation isn’t really a thing itself because it isn’t a law of nature. We don’t actually have to do it. Yet many are compelled to do it. For moral reasons, selfish reasons, existential reasons or seemingly just reasons of unexplained compulsion.

This deeper drive is a source of a lot of emotional energy when people talk about, or try to do, innovation in large companies. While strategy advisors, textbooks and HBR like to treat innovation as clean and logically engineered processes in reality it is deeply emotional and messy.

People who lead innovation will universally agree it’s hard. Intellectually, politically, socially and economically it’s hard for an organization to do something new for the first time. As individuals, as teams and as an organization it’s not just hard but a bit of a mystery why they would put themselves in harm’s way to do it in the first place.

So why bother leading innovation?

I’ve found that innovation leaders often aren’t aware of what drives them. Why, compared to easier alternatives to career and life advancement, do they feel compelled to generate new ways of doing things.

We know from emotional quotient (EQ) profiling and documentation that there is a metaphorical fire within that compels some people to take risks, strive for a vision, thrive in ambiguity or seek outcomes greater than themselves. Though I’ve found that few innovation leaders have looked within to speculate what is the source of their drive that fuels their EQ factors.

Within an innovation leader’s team, this lack of self-awareness is rarely an issue as they are skilled team builders. They also attract or choose to fit into teams that mirror their own world view.

The difficulty, or conflict, for the innovation leader emerges at the executive authority layer. For here the motivation to do new, seems to often deviate from the innovation leader. Whatever the reason, the climate for innovation is different at the authorizing, or executive altitude, than at the innovation leader and their team’s.

What Motivates Innovation Leaders?

In my research, I have been using three motivating anxieties to help leaders identify what moves them:

• Death Anxiety: We want to make a difference

• Validation Anxiety - We want to know we’re good

• Control Anxiety - We want to create a safe environment

For each leader, one motivating anxiety is dominant, based on their unique individual life experience. The motivating anxiety can also change over life stages and levels of seniority.

By better understanding, their own motivations the innovation leader is better able to understand the motivations of others. This helps them see motivation differences when interacting with executives with different motivating anxieties. 

A company with an innovation objective may be rationally aligned but emotionally misaligned. The former is visible and the latter hidden under the surface. When things don’t work many blame “the politics” or “risk aversion” as a way to explain phenomena they can’t see or grasp.

Understanding one’s own motivation is the foundation for seeing or sensing where motivation conflicts can emerge. The motivations themselves aren’t what create conflict but are the source of tension that emerges from misaligned or misunderstood motivates at a personal level.

I encourage you to reflect on what moves you. If you are driven to innovate, why?  For many, seeing the answer to this question helps them understand the motivation of what they are trying to achieve for which innovation is a beneficial byproduct. 🔥

“One person’s innovation can cause another person to feel incompetent, betrayed, or irrelevant.”

— Adaptive Leadership

Brett’s R&D Update

I’m fresh back from a jaunt high up in the Swiss Alps and feeling refreshed, revived and reinvigorated. I’m now diving into the data synthesis phase of my INSEAD research. While progressing with the third cohort of research interviews featuring CEO’s and board members.

I returned to London to learn the lock-down experimental digital product innovation micro-masterclass I did for the D&AD quietly went live. Over 500 folks have completed it and 2,000 more are in progress in just the first weeks, we haven’t even promoted it yet. This is 100x the number of participants we could have hosted at the live event planned last May at the D&AD Festival. It was just a rough experiment but what a fascinating early result.

I hope you’re doing well as the weather changes and we enter the 2021 strategic planning cycle. Your feedback on these newsletters is always appreciated. As well, please share it with peers or your social networks. You are a very smart and impressive group of readers, thanks for being part of Connecting Dots.

Stay safe out there and keep pushing boundaries. 

-Brett

Hits and Misses

Some new things that caught my eye this past month.

Government of Canada Track & Trace - HIT 🤩

Many countries have released track and trace applications. Canada’s does the best job I’ve seen of understanding and alleviating data privacy concerns during the onboarding experience while anchoring the social and societal benefit of doing your part for the greater good.

Britain’s AI Grading - MISS  🤔

Whatever the technical or political issues of this fiasco the failure is setting a precedent of distrust for software automation. Hopefully, it’s a lesson to increase digital literacy in government and education.

SBB - HIT 🤩

For years travel companies and infrastructure operators have aspired to real-time multi-modal end-to-end travel booking platforms (a mouthful and a tough task.) They often get one part right like checkouts, UX, maps or partners but rarely synch them up well. Trust the Swiss to do just that. 

Vipps & Visa - HIT 🤩

A decade ago I was one of many people trying to hep Visa develop new payments products and infrastructure.  Finally, they are getting their long pursued mobile wallet thanks to Vipps. The Hit goes to DNB, Norway’s largest financial services group that demonstrated a bundle of inspired large scale innovation from technology to the business model to marketing when launching Vipps

Image Credit: The top image is from our alpine hut last month in a remote Swiss alpine farming village where wood is the primary energy source for heating and cooking. The experience brought back many fond memories growing up of time at our cabin in the woods of British Columbia, Canada.

Connecting Dots 18 ◎⁃◎ Tolerance for Change

Connecting Dots explores the psychology of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

LONDON GB Last week I was delighted to connect with Paul Polman the ex-CEO of Unilever. In 2010/11 I helped run the Lipton Ice Tea brand globally. At the time Unilever attracted me because there was genuine work to improve sustainability and health outcomes in the RTD (ready to drink) sector. It was part of Unilever’s wider commercially-driven sustainability vision under Paul. 

He’s a fan of my research but I’m more a fan of his effort to improve corporate governance. His organization Imagine aims to develop a capability and capacity for more long term builders. His analysis argues that the current bias to cost-cutter profiles on boards and c-suites delivers relatively poor commercial returns and resilience. 

We long term builders accept the future is a moving target where changes and innovation are inherently part of the work. Long term builders don’t have to have an innovation focus, but it certainly accelerates performance and builds resilience. The ability to deliver innovation to the market is an indicator of an organization’s tolerance for change of any sort. 

Can companies even change?

While there is a compelling rational argument for long term building, most shareholders and board members aren’t of this mindset. We know that any change requires sufficient motivation to change. If change is merely “essential” but not truly seen as “vital” there isn’t sufficient motivation to change let alone innovate. 

So what motivates the drive to want to innovate in the first place? One research thread I’m digging into is the function of a morally worthy goal to generate sufficient courage to take intentional action in the face of risk. The emerging data suggest that innovation leaders are driven by a purpose greater than themselves, goals that benefit many people not just an individual’s needs. So what goals might generate growth, innovation and purpose that drives the next generation of firms?

What motivates change?

Paul’s passion for addressing climate, plastics and human rights issues through regenerative business models is inspiring. There is growing evidence and belief that doing good and doing well are mutually inclusive. We can create supply chains that regenerate to create products that are better, with greater social and environmental sustainability and commercial returns. 

Most talk of sustainability smells too much like CSR or virtue signalling. It serves a purpose but isn’t reformulating the mindset to drive the next generation of leaders. Let alone develop new and better ways to meet the world’s needs, which is where innovation has a role. 

But it’s hard. Just to think about it takes a lot of cognitive energy, even for seasoned repeat innovators. To focus energy productively it is essential to create some boundaries. As well as to avoid the traps of euphoric abstract generalization or depressive technical skepticism. This is why I like the idea of regenerative business models, as a goal they are something tangible to invent and build. 

How far can a company change?

I am regularly finding successful innovators, who have the job of pushing boundaries are exceptional at finding an organization’s invisible boundary of possibility. 

The boundary of possibility is an ever-moving boundary that sits in the air more than at hand. It helps define how much tolerance for change an organization can bear while building and progressing. Everything beyond the boundary is a distraction that sucks energy from the hard work of doing innovation. 

This is why Paul’s work is important. It’s obvious that boards (and shareholders) set the tone and grant authority for how much innovation is possible.  Even if they are many degrees removed from the front lines of innovation. 

This is why we need to reflect on why only one in ten executives are satisfied with their innovation efforts. Executives for whom innovation is a top-three priority. They want to but aren’t truly motivated to. It is not a rational problem, it is an emotional problem. It is the difference between Kodak who died and Fuji who thrived in response to the same market changes. 

What does changes look like?

Kodak’s boundary of possibility was its current reality. Whereas Fuji’s executive and board expanded the boundary of possibility. They granted authority for managers to look at their technology and find different uses and customers. For example, it turned out some consumer film developing technologies could massively improve medical screening. 

One of my working hypotheses is that innovation leaders scare board members, which causes emotionally rather than rationally driven reductions of the innovation tolerance boundary. There are multiple ways they might scare them and how they respond unbeknownst to themselves. A misdirection of energy taking teams off task or even anti task. 

This is an unexpected path of my research, but it’s proving quite provocative. Discomfort is necessary for real change, so maybe I’m onto something.

“Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.”

— Douglas Bader

Hits and Misses

Grieg Seafood - HIT 🤩

A former client, four years after we reframed their social contract it’s great to see them take a new approach to financing. Tying a $105m capital raise to pressure supply chain improvements to reduce deforestation is a great new application of the green bond model.

Monzo Plus - MISS  🤔

After the hype and great app UX, the challenger banks sure look like traditional banks. Monzo can call Monzo Plus a subscription or SAAS all they want but it’s just a monthly fee.

Netflix auto cancellation - HIT 🤩

Principles are what you do when nobody’s looking. Netflix will auto cancel paying subscribers who haven’t used the service in two years. Sure it avoids future liabilities and bad PR, but mostly it builds trust and keeps the customer base active so they can continue developing quality content. 

Movements

My second wave of innovation leader research interviews is wrapping up. I am beginning the third wave which focuses on the experiences of executives and board members setting the “air” for innovation. It’s an exercise in mapping the array of experiences not a hunt for a single truth. If you can propose someone you know, or even yourself, nominations are most appreciated. 

Beyond the research, I’m starting to explore advisory roles and consider projects to help design leadership development programs for change and innovation. Also, there is a podcast in development (working title: Failcast) and a book on Leading in Transition. 

If you’re keen to chat or share feedback/thoughts let’s do a virtual coffee. ☕️

Stay safe out there and keep pushing boundaries. 

• Brett

Image Credit: The above is from a series I took on the Aguille du Midi towering above Chamonix FR on a day ski touring the Vallée Blanche.

Connecting Dots 17 ◎⁃◎ Innovation Courage

Connecting Dots explores the psychology of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

LONDON GB I want to share an unexpected finding in my research into the emotional experience of innovation leadership. It might tell you something about how deeply personal innovation leadership is.

I’ve found it’s a funny thing asking innovation leaders about their personal experience leading innovation. They can be quite disinclined to do so. They are happy to talk theory and models but less so their lived experience.

I was speaking to someone in London’s Square Mile who I know to be a multi-time innovation leader. She’s delivered large industry-leading machine learning platforms and business units. When I asked her what it’s like leading innovation she replied “terrible, saying you’re leading innovation is a great way to be hated.”  How odd.

Sure the outside world may heap praise upon Innovators. However, in practice, exposing what it’s really like in the moment to be leading innovation efforts is a conflicted experience.

Certainly, there is an aspect of humility and strong soft skills that enable the safety of exploration and experimentation. As well as recognition that corporate innovation is a game of teams, not individual heroes. 

The innovator’s spirit, much like the invisible hand, are terms economists and scholars use to try and capture a phenomenon we don’t fully understand. We can’t slice open a brain and pull out the bit that helps people think innovatively or creatively.

Therefore, we mostly revert to thinking through charts or spreadsheets. Which are helpful ways of coping with the anxiety of not knowing. In other words, making risk feel tangible and contained even if rationally we know they aren’t.

What we should be talking about more is courage. Innovation and creativity are outputs, a primary input to get there is courage.

The good news is social scientists have come close to a consensus on what is courage in the workplace*. The three essential components of courage are:

1. A morally worthy goal

2. Intentional action

3. Perceived risks, threats, or obstacles

Courage, at an individual and group level, is often an unthought known whether it is present or not. It may not be discussed but it is sub-consciously noticed in the air and felt under the skin.

A tangible way to determine whether there is sufficient courage to progress towards innovation is to assess:

1. Is our strategy morally worthy?

2. Are we acting on decisions? 

3. Do we see and learn from risks without shading the truth?

One of my tricks of innovation leadership is making small demonstrations of courage to anchor the group outside 100% certainties. At key moments I’ll share a photo taken that day of a competitor or adjacent industry where someone has innovated their offering in a way relevant to our agenda. 

How the group responds to this external stimulus surfaces their internal and collective level of courage. Depending on the courage temperature level we can turn it up, cool it or hold steady to maintain progress.

The world is full of risks we cannot control, but our courage level is one thing we can control if we want to. 

“It is sometimes easier to make the world a better place than to prove you have made the world a better place”

— Amos Tversky, co-founder of behavioural economics

Movements

As we head into the dog days of summer, I’m deep in data collection and interviews to better understand the thoughts and feelings of leading the animal spirits of innovation. In parallel, I’m studying and tracking developments in how group dynamics are adapting to a remote or distributed workforce world. Both are wonderfully full of mysterious resistance and discomfort. Yet essential for progress.

Over July a few things will be released. My micro-masterclass on digital product innovation for the D&AD New Blood Festival. I contributed to an INSEAD Knowledge research paper on the future of creative agencies, to be published mid-summer. Also, I have a few more articles in development for this newsletter to help exhausted executives revitalize and refocus on business innovation and growth as 2021 planning ramps up.

Feedback always welcome. Please do keep sharing these articles with colleagues and clients, it helps a lot and means a lot. 👏🏻

Stay curious,

- Brett

References

*COURAGE AS IDENTITY WORK: ACCOUNTS OF WORKPLACE COURAGE , MELISSA M. KOERNER Academy of Management Journal 2014, Vol. 57, No. 1, 63–93. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amj.2010.0641

Image Credit: I took the top photo in the Sony Ericson radiation testing facility in Malmo, Sweden. The person is used to test the effect of new chips on our bodies.

Connecting Dots 16 ◎⁃◎ INSEAD Research Topic

Welcome to Connecting Dots where we explore the psychodynamics of digital innovation leadership. Published by digital innovation leader, educator and investor Brett Macfarlane. Subscribe.

I’m sore, sunburnt and stupendously happy after a long cycle into Surrey. It was one last half-time Friday before the data collection phase of my research begins on the 1st of June. Doing my own primary research was a key attraction to the EMC at INSEAD. It’s an opportunity to dive deep into a part of my practice and work to better understand some of the mysteries of business and human nature. The campus on the edge of the Fôret de Fontainebleau is the best place I can imagine to create space and focus for research and development..

Some of you know my area of interest but let me frame it a bit wider for everyone. At INSEAD we are pushing into the growing field of systems psychodynamics. As the top global business school, INSEAD teaches strategy and organizational theory (the systems bit) better than anyone. In fact, they birthed many of the leading models of value creation used in businesses as well the very concept of tailored executive education. They are also aware of the limits of traditional business school theory and acknowledge as even best practice fails more than it succeeds.

Why there is so much unrealized potential in business is where the psychodynamics part comes in. Building on the psychoanalytical field pioneered by Freud we live at a time of growing neuroscience and behavioural economics that better understands concretely the often overlooked role of psychology in leadership and change in the workplace. I specifically am interested in the systems psychodynamics of digital innovation. 

Innovation however is in a sad state. Innovation is a top priority for 75% of companies. Yet a meagre 6% of executives are happy with their innovation efforts. That’s a tremendous amount of frustration and unrealized potential. 

We see innovation celebrated in strategy departments, grand speeches and in heroic films yet for all the process charts in the world there is relatively little genuine understanding of how to lead it. Which is why we need some new hypotheses on how to think about it. Actually, we especially need new hypotheses for how to think when doing it. Or at least be more aware of how we are thinking, and feeling, and behaving, when doing it. After all, those are the drivers of our judgements and decisions. 

Over the past six months, I’ve been speaking to innovation leaders at a host of companies including Diageo, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, Dyson, Phillips, McKinsey, Bain, Standard & Charter and other leaders in startups, academia and investment. A common experience to all was seeing irrational responses or judgments within innovation journeys that the theory and case studies don’t explain. There was a common pain caused by the distance between aspiration and execution. Thus, to explore this space, my research proposal is:

The animal spirit of innovation is always present though rarely addressed. Today’s reliance on process, resource models and leadership trait theory doesn’t explain the innovation gap where as little as 6% (McKinsey, 2019) of executives are happy with their firm’s innovation efforts. Corporate innovation is generally treated as a process or resource problem to control. Whereas the intangible risks to identity, reputation and self-actualization are only partially addressed, if at all, though strongly present through behaviours and felt emotions. In general, the emotions, feelings and behaviours of leaders that produce success for an organization are uncharted territories in the loci of leadership theory. Within the situational context of innovation journeys, how do the animal spirits of a leader’s internal emotions influence progress?

In-depth interviews with repeat innovators in multiple geographic regions and industries will analyze through a psychodynamic lens their thoughts, emotions, feelings, motivations and behaviours in both successful and unsuccessful innovation journeys. The grounded theory qualitative research method provides the rigour and interpretive framework to accept multiple perspectives, to collect and analyze a wide set of data on the felt emotions, acted behaviours and underlying motivations to identify how they may influence innovation efforts towards reaching their full potential.

So that’s the next 6 months of my life. I have some provocations and hypotheses in mind but I need to let the data emerge and interpret it objectively. I would love to hear what reactions you have when reading the abstract. What makes you happy, sad, mad or glad about it. Indifferent is helpful to hear too. Just reply to this mail (don’t worry it won’t cc anyone). 

Also - I’d appreciate your nomination for interview subjects - maybe it’s you even or someone you know.

I’ll continue to drop progress updates along the way. The full research will be published in 2021/22 but the findings will be valuable from early on. Let me know if they can be of help in your work. 

“I can accept failure, but I can’t accept not trying.”

— Michael Jordan

Movements

It’s been a week of progress. Gillian and I ran our first Leaders Remote Roundtable which surfaced some excellent reflections and insight for how leaders are coping and adapting through the pandemic. My Digital Product Innovation Micro-Masterclass is being edited by the D&AD folks for a release next month with the festival. A first experiment for me towards possibly creating a library of remote learning experiences around leading and running innovation.

Otherwise, I’m clearing the deck to start my first batch of data collection over June. 

Stay curious,

- Brett

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