Learn and Grow: Leading innovation and positive change

Yale University expects its employees to strive for excellence in all aspects of their work. Excellence in leadership performance can be measured in terms of specific competencies. Managers who attend the Extraordinary Leader Program (see Leadership Development | It’s Your Yale) learn that there are 19 leadership competencies, including “Innovates” and “Champions Change.” Drawing upon current research, this article describes ways managers can improve their skills and strategies in leading innovation and positive change.

How agile is your thinking?
According to a white paper by prominent learning and leadership development firm Hemsley Fraser Group, “An ‘agile mindset’ is a desire to learn and a willingness to change. It involves being curious about, and open to, new opportunities and new ways to improve. Agile thinking is a personal quality, which helps individuals at every level to accept change, embrace opportunities, and adapt better to new circumstances and situations.

Once acquired, agile thinking creates a behavioral change that stimulates innovation and learning. Then, “…because ‘managing change’ becomes part of (the leaders) everyday practice, their agility helps organizations to implement strategic projects successfully, such as… cultural change initiatives, outsourcing, restructuring, quality/service improvements, and new hardware/software installations.”

Do you communicate powerfully and prolifically?
The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) surveyed 275 senior executives on their unsuccessful and successful change efforts. The data revealed that communication is one of three skills (along with collaboration and commitment) that provides the necessary connection between the process part of change and the people part of change.

As reported by the authors:

“…Unsuccessful leaders tended to focus on the “what” behind the change. Successful leaders communicated the “what” and the “why.” Leaders who explained the purpose of the change and connected it to the organization’s values or explained the benefits of the change created stronger buy-in and urgency for the change.”

Make sure you are clearly and completely communicating the “why” of change initiatives.

Which critical skills would help you lead positive change in your workplace?
Research by the Zenger Folkman organization (Forbes, January 6, 2020) investigated what makes leaders effective at leading change by collecting data over a decade on 103,374 leaders across the globe:
“We isolated those who were rated as most effective at leading change, seeking to understand what made them so effective at piloting change. Five critical skills or ‘companion behaviors’ emerged. Any leader needing or wanting to lead change can benefit from understanding what these five critical skills are and develop a moderate skill level in each. The five skills appear to function together, rather than being five unique or alternative approaches. The importance of each one is highlighted by this fact: you need all five to make the biggest difference. If you break it down, being above average at four only gets a leader’s overall change leadership effectiveness to the 64th percentile, but then adding one more capability vaults a leader 17 percentile points higher, moving them into the top 20% of all those who lead change.

The five skills (companion behaviors):

1. Foster Innovation. Innovation is one secret ingredient that makes a difficult, painstaking change move from impossible to easy. Too often, leaders bulldoze forward without looking for more innovative and creative options. The leader need not personally be highly innovative. There is a big difference between being innovative and supporting innovation by others. Often someone in your organization or network has a brilliant idea that will make change much easier, faster, and less painful. This individual needs your backing and sponsorship.
2. Act Quickly. We found in our research that leaders who were able to act quickly were two times as effective at making change happen. We have all had the experience of ripping off a bandage slowly and know that doing it quickly is much less painful. But it requires courage to grab one end and rip it off. Most of us can identify a change process that plodded and dithered. The latter increased the difficulty, resistance and pain. Leaders who increase the speed of a change process where possible will usually be more effective in the long run.
3. Maintain Strategic Perspective. What is the goal? What does the organization aspire to be? Will the change we’re contemplating bring us closer or take us further from that goal? Making a change without a clear strategy is like being lost in the woods and deciding to walk faster, despite the lack of a clear path to your destination. Too often, organizations get caught up in a change process, forgetting to tie that change back to the organizational strategy.
4. Develop External Perspective. What is the big picture? What are the trends? What is happening in your market or industry? One naturally occurring outcome of an organization change is that people tend to focus in on what is happening within their organization and may forget to look out at what’s going on outside the organization. People get so caught up in internal challenges, including politics and conflicts; that they fail to notice that the world is changing around them. Keeping an eye on the outside, especially customers, helps everyone understand why the change is necessary and the value that change can create.
5. Inspire and Motivate. Many leaders’ first impulse is to initiate the change process with a big push. Pushing behaviors are those that focus on deadlines, timelines, accountability, direction, deliverables and orders. Pushing is helpful because it forces everyone to move forward, lacking no other alternative. Most change efforts naturally begin with a big push. But, pushing makes change a hardship with no alternatives. When leaders combine push (driving for results) and pull (inspire and motivate) the outcome is much better.

The researchers concluded:
“…We are confident that leaders who can perform these five skills at an above-average level will be significantly more effective at leading change, which in turn produces a higher level of confidence within their direct reports, making the organization more successful.”

Resources
Agile Thinking
10 Traits of Innovative Leaders
Do you communicate powerfully and prolifically?
Developmental areas that help lead positive change
Effective strategies to champion change
Also see book: Influencer: The power to change anything. Patterson, K., Grenny, J. Maxfield, D., McMillan, R., Switzler, A. (2008). McGraw-Hill.