Tip of the Spear Ventures

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Leading the Innovation Charge: Strategies to Ignite Your Organization’s Creative Spark

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The Point: Innovation is the driving force behind the growth and evolution of successful organizations. To embark on a journey of continuous innovation, you must foster an environment that encourages and supports creative thinking. This article explores four essential strategies for spurring innovation within your organization. We will delve into the importance of hiring the right people, building a culture that promotes innovation, eliminating obstacles that hinder progress, and creating a plan for evaluating and implementing innovative ideas. By following these strategies, you can tap into the hidden reservoir of innovative potential within your company and lead it to greater heights…Enjoy!

Key Takeaways from ‘Leading the Innovation Charge’

  • Innovation begins with hiring the right people who possess curiosity, persistence, and a collaborative mindset.
  • Building an innovative culture involves encouraging risk-taking, sharing responsibility, allocating resources, and celebrating successes.
  • Removing obstacles to innovation includes establishing a submission process, providing feedback, and simplifying procedures.
  • An implementation plan should define success metrics, engage stakeholders, and ensure timely execution of innovative ideas.

Leading the Innovation Charge – Four Key Strategies!

#1 – The Power of Hiring the Right People

Caring and Engagement

Innovation thrives when individuals are motivated to create something better. Look for candidates who show a genuine interest in making improvements, whether for personal fulfillment or external rewards.

Persistence and Resilience

Innovation often faces resistance and challenges. Seek employees who can persevere, break down barriers, and withstand pushback when pursuing innovative ideas.

Curiosity and Process Orientation

Those who ask “why” are more likely to discover better ways of doing things. Encourage curiosity and a systematic approach to problem-solving.

Collaboration

Innovation rarely originates from a single individual. It flourishes when diverse perspectives come together with a shared mission. Foster a culture of collaboration to drive innovation.

#2 – Building an Innovative Culture

Creating an atmosphere that supports and nurtures innovation is the responsibility of leadership. Here’s how you can build an innovative culture within your organization:

Defining Innovation

Understand that innovation often starts as a partial idea that evolves through collaboration. Recognize that innovation can stem from diverse viewpoints shaping a concept into a valuable initiative.

Encouraging Risk-Taking

Promote a supportive environment where employees feel safe to experiment and take calculated risks. Encourage the exploration of new ideas without fear of punishment for failure.

Shared Responsibility

Make it clear that innovation is a collective responsibility. Ensure that everyone in the organization understands the importance of prioritizing innovative thinking.

Allocating Time and Resources

Follow the examples of companies like Google and 3M by dedicating time during the workday for employees to explore unconventional solutions. Innovation requires resources, and leaders must be willing to invest in it.

Celebrating Successes

Recognize and reward individuals or teams whose innovative thinking leads to improvements, no matter how small. This reinforces the importance of innovation within the company.

Eliminating Burnout

Promote a healthy work-life balance and create a positive work environment. Reducing stress and burnout can boost creativity and innovation among employees.

#3 – Removing Obstacles to Innovation

Even if an employee has a groundbreaking idea, it may never see the light of day without the right mechanisms in place. Leaders must identify and eliminate obstacles to innovation. Here’s how:

Establishing a Submission Process

Publicize a formal method for employees to submit their innovative ideas. Whether through an innovation team, an intranet portal, or a suggestion box, ensure there’s a clear path for idea sharing.

Providing Feedback

Implement a feedback process to show employees that their ideas are valued and considered. This encourages continuous engagement in the innovation process.

Simplifying Procedures

Streamline the idea-sharing process. Eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape that can deter employees from sharing their ideas.m from diverse viewpoints shaping a concept into a valuable initiative.

#4 – Creating an Implementation Plan

To fully harness innovation, it’s crucial to have a plan for evaluating and implementing innovative ideas. Consider the following factors:

Defining Success Metrics

Clearly outline what success looks like and establish the right metrics for measuring progress. Ensure that the data collected is relevant to evaluating the impact of the innovative idea.

Stakeholder Engagement

Gather feedback from stakeholders, both internally and externally, to gauge the idea’s effectiveness. An innovation is only successful if it gains acceptance and application from end users.

Timely Implementation

Avoid prolonged delays between idea generation and implementation. Timeliness is key to maintaining momentum and employee engagement in the innovation process.

SUMMARY

Innovation is not a mysterious force; it’s a latent potential within your organization waiting to be uncovered. By hiring individuals with the right qualities, fostering an innovative culture, removing obstacles, and implementing a structured approach to evaluation and implementation, you can tap into this potential. Much like Michelangelo believed that the sculpture was already within the marble, the Innovative Idea is already within your organization. Your role as a leader is to facilitate its emergence and sculpt it into something remarkable.

Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director @ Tip of the Spear Ventures

Leading the Innovation Charge: Strategies to Ignite Your Organization's Creative Spark

Sources:

  • Harvard Business Review – “Fostering Innovation in Your Organization”
  • MIT Sloan Management Journal – “The Role of Leadership in Nurturing an Innovative Culture”
  • Stanford’s Business School Research – “Building an Innovative Workforce: Strategies for Success”

The Leadership Challenge: Ownership Mentality

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The Point: At Tip of the Spear Ventures, we believe in leading from the front… Not the middle, and certainly not from the rear. This leading from the front-mentality is one that we encourage our Business Advisory Service clients (M&A | Sales/BizDev | Turnaround) to take as well. However, working with leaders that have a leading form the front focus is only part of the business-battle, and a minority one at that. You see, we’ve determined that the majority business-battle is to get stakeholders engaged with the Tip of the Spear Ventures’ leading from the front-mentality as well. At the heart of this conversation is the leadership challenge of ownership mentality. So in this post, we’ll explore what it takes to not only create and develop such ownership mentality, but ensure that it is sustained as well… Enjoy!

 The Leadership Challenge Ownership Mentality

The Sales Strategic Plan

I just met with another client working within our Business Advisory Services’ Sales/BizDev consultation offering at Tip of the Spear Ventures. After flushing out the Sales Strategic Plan and assessing a baseline measurement of right here/right now as well as where they’d like to go (Goals?), we started to build the Action Plan. Our Sales Strategic Plan action planning process consists of not only breaking down goals for implementation, but also taking into consideration contingency planning and the like (Time/Accountability commitments are most definitely established!)

Central focus of this Sales Strategic Planning process is a communication plan. We’ve typically seen the best-developed sales strategic plans lose tremendous momentum, and some even jumping the rails, when communication gaps are present (meaning communicating the vision of the plan is omitted/forgotten). I’m not certain about you/your company, but from my experience and the leaders I work with, mindreading is still a skill that is severely lacking in today’s workforce. If only there was a way to achieve clairvoyance on the way to achieving the Sales Strategic Plan… If only there was a way!

Ownership Mentality

One of the organizations we worked with had a great plan (No bragging on my part here, while we provide “curbs” to the Sales Strategic Plan “road” we in no way/shape/form create the plan without organizational leadership input). With Sales Strategic Plan finalized, timelines established, accountability accounted for, contingency plans planned, and communication channels outlined it looked like the organization would easily breeze through the plan execution and sustainment initiative. And then reality smacked us all down!

If You Build It, Will They Really Come?

One of the critical Sales Strategic Planning steps that went overlooked was will the employees (Stakeholders) actually buy in to the new goals and ensuing process changes required in order to accomplish said goals? While the stakeholders were more than up to the task from a skill-level qualification (Some would argue over-qualified), they were severely under-qualified when it came to their mentality (or attitude). You see, the stakeholders traditionally were given a parent-leadership model, whereby they were expected to execute the directives of leadership not with understanding/agreement, but because leadership told them to do so. The Sales Strategic Plan was in dire straights if this ownership mentality could not be created!

Gordon Ramsay Just Gave You 24 Hours… Uh Oh!

I just watched an episode of Gordon Ramsay’s “24 Hours to Hell & Back” series. I’m a huge fan of Gordon’s restaurants (he has several by Tip of the Spear Ventures HQ in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada USA). I’m an even bigger fan of his straight to the point leadership style (I would argue that he operates at the Tip of the Spear!) I mention the show because it dawned on me while writing this post that this show is not only challenging leaders to lead at the Tip of the Spear, but also employees/stakeholders.

In a crucial scene in each of the episodes, Gordon pulls the entire restaurant full of employees and customers over to his “Hell on Wheels” truck where they watch hidden camera footage of what exactly is wrong with each restaurant. After this review (and they’re often shocking!), Gordon declares to the restaurant staff that they should grab their phones, call their loved ones, and tell them that they are not coming home tonight because they have 24-hours to save the restaurant (In other words, he’s requiring them to pull an all-nighter like you used to do when cramming for an exam in school!) And then it hit me…

Why Would Your Employees Act Like an Owner?

While the pomp/circumstance of having Gordon Ramsay work with you/your business for what essentially boils down to a 24-hour window to accomplish the beginnings of a turnaround, why on Earth would an employee (stakeholder) take on such an owner mentality? There’s a good reason for the owners of a business to pull all-nighters in order to save their business… Because it’s their business! Employees (stakeholders) are just that… They are employees (stakeholders), and NOT owners. As such, what’s in it for them?

– Better employment terms? Doubtful

– More money? Uh, no

– A job that they can come to tomorrow? They can probably find a job somewhere else

– The chance to get yelled at by Gordon Ramsay himself? Most definitely!

SUMMARY

In summary, in this post we’ve explored the leadership challenge of ownership mentality. While it’s critical to have all leaders and employees (stakeholders) on the same page in order to accomplish strategic plan goals, it’s even more important to identify just how leaders are going to foster an ownership mentality for all.

 

Sam Palazzolo

The Leadership Challenge: Swearing – 1 Tip!

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The Point: We’ve all had those heated moments of leadership where using swear words seems like an appropriate choice. Call it lazy, call it a limited vocabulary, call it an attempt to add “humor” or levity to a situation, hey you can even call it getting your “street cred” in certain situations! But are any of these situations appropriate to swear? Should you breach the line of “in-good-taste” and swear in the workplace? In this post we’ll explore the leadership challenge of swearing and provide 1 tip (Yes, just one)… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge Swearing 1 Tip

I Swear, Therefore I am!

Apple’s release of the swearing emoji appears to capstone the era of bad taste. What was once a business climate of professionally dressed stakeholders in an organization, slid to business casual and landed in casual/inappropriate attire (as an organizational leader, does it blow your mind that focus is given to dress code instead of driving revenue generation or shareholder value? It should!)

Following this trend in dress code is the vocabulary that organizational leaders and their stakeholders use. I did some consulting work with an organization recently where all (leaders and stakeholders alike) seemed to employ the continuous use of the F-word expletive. As one leader of the organization shared with me when I inquired as to the F-words prevalence “That’s just our culture here… Think of it as fuel for our engine!”

Swearing… It’s What’s for Breakfast (Lunch and Dinner!)

The essence of swearing is derived from civilization’s back alleys, back countries, and backyard sporting events. If the goal of business is to push forward their initiatives/agendas, then why do so many leaders revert to this backward vocabulary choice?

Now I’m no angel! There have been plenty of times (more than I care to admit) where in a round of golf a mishit ball has caused me to exclaim a few choice words (Yes, Mom… Even the aforementioned F-word!) I’ve even worked for a leader right out of graduate school that used the F-word in his vocabulary as nonchalantly as Cousin Frankie requesting to pass the potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner. But does it have to be this way?

1 Tip for The Leadership Challenge of Swearing

I would contend that leaders, and stakeholders alike, would achieve much more success and create harmony in the workplace if swearing was done away with. If as a leader you are looking to advance agenda items, and as stakeholders execute said items, then why would you succumb to swearing?

So here is my 1 tip for the leadership challenge of swearing:

“If you feel as though you must swear… Just don’t do it!”

If the laws of persuasion and influence are alive and well (Thank you Dr. Robert Cialdini!), your vocabulary can help elevate your consistency, likeability, authority, social proof, scarcity, and reciprocity moments. If you’ve spent your entire career building your professionalism, why would you undo it all in a split second with a poor word choice? Know this much… It will take effort and energy NOT to swear.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve explored the leadership challenge of swearing and provided 1 tip. You can learn a lot about a person by the vocabulary they select. Perhaps there is room for swearing in the locker room, but the boardroom?

 

Sam Palazzolo

PS – I’m proud to say at Tip of the Spear and our platform companies that we’ve had in place for over five years now a “No F-Word” policy. This policy prohibits stakeholders from directing the f-word at each other. It’s written into our code of conduct, and can be used to release one of their duties. I understand that vocabulary is a choice, and am a proud proponent of one’s first amendment “freedom of speech” rights. However, there are plenty of places where one can work if their choice is to employ vocabulary unbecoming.

PPSS – Here’s a nice use of the f-word: “The ‘F-word’ you must use every day in your career” by Danny Rubin