Innovation vs. Bureaucracy: Suzanne Knight Of mBolden On Strategies for Fostering Innovation Inside Big Business
An Interview With Vanessa Ogle
Position innovation as anything between micro and disruptive. Do not wait for big bang disruptive change and lose out on smaller changes that can create meaningful improvements.
In the business world, innovation is the key to staying relevant and competitive. However, in many larger organizations, bureaucratic structures and processes can stifle creativity and slow down progress. This series aims to explore how leaders navigate and overcome the challenges posed by big business environments to bring fresh, transformative ideas to life. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Suzanne Knight.
Suzanne Knight, MBA, MA is an award-winning expert on transformational change and the future of work. CEO and founder of mBolden human capital consulting firm, Suzanne works with organizations around the world helping them anticipate and adapt to change so they can thrive, rather than just survive. Through her own firm and nearly a decade at Deloitte, Suzanne has worked with over 40 clients in 12 countries.
Beyond her consulting work, Suzanne is an angel investor with The Firehood, start-up advisor, and co-founder a tech company. She previously spent 5 years as an executive with Walmart Canada and Philip Morris International, leading organization transformation and change. In 2023, she was recognized on The Peak’s Emerging (under age 40) Leaders List and DMZ’s Women of the Year.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion about Innovation inside Big Business, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?
I went to school for a master’s degree in industrial/organizational psychology, starting my career with a boutique consultancy focused on organization effectiveness. I was fascinated by the idea of organizations as systems — living organisms — with each part working together. I would visualize the connections between structures, functions, processes, and culture, searching for barriers to effectiveness — problems to be solved.
I graduated with my master’s degree and left consulting to work for one of my clients, the Ontario government. While I was working in HR Policy and then Economic Development, I completed my MBA in Finance and Strategy. I loved working for the government because of the size, scope, and complexity of work, as well as the extensive stakeholder engagement.
While I enjoyed public service, I wanted a global career. I joined Deloitte’s Human Capital Consulting practice and focused on Transformational Change, moving my way up to Deputy Head of the national 150-person practice. I was recruited to executive roles at Philip Morris International and then Walmart Canada; in both companies, I led organization transformation and complementary functions like change management and organization design.
I now lead my own firm, working with clients around the world to help them transform or strengthen their core. My highest-demand projects are related to strategic planning, leadership development and alignment, and managing change. The change could relate to business agility, digital transformation, culture, implementation of new tools, embedding innovation, or launching a new service line. I also speak about these topics in corporate keynotes, podcasts, and at conferences.
My career has focused on making organizations as effective as possible. That has often required leaders to align on a vision for change and work “as one” to achieve it. There are many levers they can pull to accomplish their objectives, and one is investing in innovation.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I spent eight months in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia leading talent strategy to support building the nuclear and renewable energy industry for the Kingdom. Every weekend, I would hike in a different desert with hundreds of ex-pats from around the world. Some landscapes were rocky, some sandy, and in some, camels’ footprints were imprinted in stone from centuries of migration along the same path. Walking through the red sand desert with the sun shining after a week in the air-conditioned office was incredible. The conversations, happening concurrently in different languages, from people working across all industries, with different life and professional experiences, was a joy to experience.
I’m excited to celebrate your success with you today. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success?
The character traits that have been most instrumental to my success are determination, resilience, and ability to quickly onboard and build trust.
The first, determination, has been important because leading change is hard. I spend my days trying to structure and calm chaos. People often do not want to change or do not know how to change. Leaders can worry about losing their spans of control. People say no a lot, and often behind the scenes, at the water cooler or in meetings after the meeting. I’ve learned to go “over, under, or through” to find a way to create change. I put people at the centre, using empathy to understand their level of willingness and ability and reasons for both, making sure that people are best prepared to adopt new ways of thinking and working.
In one transformation I was leading, members of the C-suite were competing for the open CEO role. No one wanted to take a risk by buying into change when they were thinking about their own careers. Without a CEO, there was no tiebreaker to give the final say on direction and move things forward. I heard from a peer that working in this slow, bureaucratic organization felt like “working with his hands in the freezer” — that doing his job was more painful at every step than it had to be. Hearing him say this activated my empathy and added to my determination to make work faster, smarter, and easier despite the political climate.
The second, resilience, reflects the personal weight of leading transformation. It is hard being the positive, strong, supportive member of the team. It is hard in times of uncertainty reassuring everyone else that the challenges associated with change are normal and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The hours can be long, and work is, by nature, complex. I am particularly good at letting things go, not internalizing the stress, and honestly and authentically seeing the positives. I think this is because I’ve been through the hard parts of transformation so many times that it now takes a lot to faze me.
I’ve worked on close to 50 client engagements around the world — I think I’m up to 12 or 13 countries now. I’ve also led transformation as an executive at Fortune 100 companies. This has meant that I’ve had to get good at jumping into new situations, cultures, and work with new groups of people. I’ve learned to quickly scan the environment, understand the politics, and figure out what I can and cannot change.
I’ve needed to build trust quickly, often because change requires a sense of urgency. I’ve had to move quickly to show my value and deliver impact. Building trust requires authenticity, and that is where I’m strong. I say what I think, and for better or worse, I have no poker face. What you see is what you get with me, but whatever you tell me in confidence stays in the vault.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. What specific approaches have you employed to encourage innovative thinking within big business?
Innovation, agility, and empowerment go hand in hand. In big business, where often all three of those traits, or at least the first two, are lacking, I’ve started creating change at the top. Strategic planning, working with leaders to align on how much capacity and associated resources should be dedicated to in-year value, midterm impact, and longer-term investments, can lead to dedicated investment in innovation.
It is hard to go beyond micro-innovation or stepwise change in the short term, but continuous improvement is possible. I’m not saying it is impossible to quickly land on a disruptive innovation, dedicating limited time or effort, but it would be rare. Transformational change or disruptive innovation would be more likely in the mid- or longer-term time periods. Dedicating time and resources for innovation and giving people permission not to focus exclusively on short-term value will increase the likelihood of innovative thinking and tangible outcomes.
I’ve also created a safe space for failure. Not every risk is going to pay off. If people are scared about getting in trouble for things not going as planned, they won’t try to do things differently or make things better. They’ll stick with the status quo. Building confidence and empowering people to think creatively, try new things, and consider the art of the possible, rather than fixate on the consequences of failure, will help cultivate a resilient and bold workforce.
A tactic to take in creating a safe space is to share your own failures and what you learned. This creates psychological safety for your team to do the same — to try, and when they fail, to know it is going to be ok. There can also be scheduled sessions specifically designed to share failures, the resulting learning, and how others can benefit from the experience without having to live it themselves.
Finally, empowering employees to make decisions and take ownership of their work can motivate them to strive for innovative solutions. I’ve coached leaders, individually and as a team, on giving more autonomy and creating clarity at all levels of the organization on decision-making authority. I’ve done the same with employees across functions. This clarity enables people to make decisions faster and without fear. Understanding guardrails prevents situations where inconsistent expectations end in conflict.
Can you share a success story where an innovative idea was implemented successfully despite organizational bureaucracy?
In one organization I worked, a piece of equipment was poorly designed with a hard edge that hit front-line employees’ ankles when they pulled it. It would not injure them, but it made work unpleasant. The people affected by the issue, without any design or engineering trained, proposed a solution for how the equipment could be improved to avoid this issue. Management adopted the change nationwide. This was a micro-innovation, but a brilliant change that meaningfully improved the wellbeing of thousands of people at work.
Another example was in a professional services firm that was looking for new ways to grow. The CEO created a contest where cross-functional teams could propose a new service line that they believed would reach $3M in revenue by the end of the third year. The winners were given the opportunity to build this new service line and were compensated for their effort. Some of the most exciting new offerings from the firm came from this program.
How do you maintain a balance between necessary organizational processes and the freedom needed for innovation?
I start by thinking about desired outcomes, realistically evaluating the current state and determining what we can and cannot change. I would never compromise legal requirements, privacy, safety, or wellbeing to support innovation. They are table stakes. I would look for impediments to creativity, speaking with people at various levels of the organization to understand their real-life experience and what makes their work harder than it has to be. I would ask what enables or prevents their willingness and ability to innovate today, and then would chip away at the impediments, leaning in and solving for their root causes.
What role do leadership and management play in fostering an environment conducive to innovation in a traditionally structured setting?
Leaders and management create or destroy psychological safety and confidence to try new things. It would be unlikely to achieve meaningful benefit the first time someone tries something new. Even if the experiment works, the results could probably be better. If leaders want to foster an environment conducive to innovation, they should champion creative thinking and speak regularly about the value of innovation. They can also share their own failures and resulting lessons learned, reassuring people that it is beneficial to try and fail because eventually, those learnings better position the next attempt for success.
What is the role for outside companies such as a vendor or a customer to bring innovation to big business without causing resentment from those who feel comfortable and safe wrapped up in all the red tape?
Find change champions. In every company, regardless of how bureaucratic or structured, there are people excited by innovation, agility, thinking outside the box, and trying new things. Let them be your early adopters and make it worth their effort by feeding their hunger for learning and challenge.
Separately, in many bureaucratic organizations, customers are top priority. If a customer has an idea, there will be someone in corporate responsible for customer experience whose job it is to listen. Keep your fingers crossed that this person will be bold and motivated enough to take the customer’s ideas to the right people in the organization for assessment and implementation.
Based on your experience and research, can you please share “5 Strategies for Fostering Innovation inside the Bureaucracy of Big Business?”
1 . Align on the investment in innovation — determine who, when, and which resources will be leveraged for business-as-usual work vs. business transformation vs. innovation. Innovating on a shoe-string budget, or on top of day jobs and all other corporate priorities, is only a burden to the innovator and not the recipe for success.
2 . Empower people to be creative at all levels. Innovation does not have to be centralized and restricted to a special few. It is also not something that only leaders can do. People who are closest to customers often identify the most relevant opportunities for innovation because they best understand customers’ priorities and what is broken or could be improved today.
3 . Position innovation as anything between micro and disruptive. Do not wait for big bang disruptive change and lose out on smaller changes that can create meaningful improvements.
4 . Allow employees to take calculated risks without fear of negative consequences if they fail. Understand and communicate broadly that failure is often part of the creative process.
5 . Acknowledge and reward both the process of innovation and successful outcomes. This could be through awards, bonuses, public acknowledgment, or promotions. Celebrate all forms of innovation, big or small, to show that every contribution is valued.
How do you measure the success of innovative initiatives inside big business, and what challenges have you faced in this evaluation process?
Measuring the success of innovative initiatives within big businesses can align with classic corporate objectives and key results (OKRs) and/or bring in specific metrics for innovation. Corporate OKRs may include financial metrics like revenue growth and cost savings, so taking a lens on innovation could tailor them to specifically recognize revenue brought in or cost saved from an innovative initiative. Return on Investment could calculate the financial return of the innovative initiative compared to the costs incurred to develop it.
Metrics could focus on market impact, for example whether new offerings, products, or services lead to expansion of market share or penetration into new markets. I’d also look at whether they lead to new customers, customer segments, or better customer satisfaction. Maybe innovative offerings or ways of working improve brand perception and reputation.
Innovations can improve business operations, like how long it takes to build a product or service and get it to market. It can make companies more efficient and employees more engaged. It can improve retention. All these things can be measured.
Finally, there can be metrics specific to innovation, like number of new patents or intellectual property generated. Adoption rate of the innovations can assess how quickly they are embraced, whether by employees or customers. Finally, there can be a count of innovations generated at each stage of development and then the quality or likelihood of success of each innovation can be assessed.
In terms of challenges with evaluating the success of innovative initiatives, I’d suggest that companies are generally not great at evaluating the success of any initiatives. I’ve worked for and with companies that are disciplined with measurement, but most are not. Most are overwhelmed with day-to-day work and do not have the analytical or program management expertise to measure progress. They have more of a “set it and forget it” approach of deciding where to place their bets and then they move on, hoping the bets are successful, but not reviewing whether they actually are.
To take it one level deeper on the complexity of measuring innovative initiatives, these projects typically take a long time to show tangible results. While less complicated initiatives can have in-quarter or in-year benefit, innovations could take years to produce value. Companies may not know how to track or measure a multi-year program that does not show results in the meantime. It is also hard to attribute results to a specific person, team, or circumstance when the success is years in the making.
Overcoming these challenges requires strategic planning with a lens on transparency, accountability, and value creation. Continuous monitoring, feedback loops, and a willingness to adapt and iterate on measurement approaches are crucial for effectively evaluating success in these more complex circumstances.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
I am already working to create pay equity and gender equality, one woman at a time, through Be Uninterrupted, an inclusive support system for professional women. We connect women with information and resources to prevent, or help them get through, over 100 life events and potential career interruptions.
These life events include being laid off, looking for a job, pregnant and preparing for maternity leave, and taking care of young kids or aging parents. Not every moment is bad — many of them are wonderful — like being pregnant or taking care of your family, but they do have the potential to interrupt career momentum.
We use AI to connect women with vetted partners like lawyers, financial planners, and executive coaches, as well as tested information that is useful in-the-moment. We supplement that with mentorship, events, peer sounding boards, awards, and a scholarship program.
We are opening spots for new members this fall. Join the waitlist on our website to stay updated.
How can our readers further follow you online?
Connect with me on:
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/skknight
- Instagram: @suzannekknight
- mBolden: www.mbolden.co
- Be Uninterrupted: www.beuninterrupted.com
Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!
About The Interviewer: Vanessa Ogle is a mom, entrepreneur, inventor, writer, and singer/songwriter. Vanessa’s talent in building world-class leadership teams focused on diversity, a culture of service, and innovation through inclusion allowed her to be one of the most acclaimed Latina CEO’s in the last 30 years. She collaborated with the world’s leading technology and content companies such as Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Broadcom to bring innovative solutions to travelers and hotels around the world. Vanessa is the lead inventor on 120+ U.S. Patents. Accolades include: FAST 100, Entrepreneur 360 Best Companies, Inc. 500 and then another six times on the Inc. 5000. Vanessa was personally honored with Inc. 100 Female Founder’s Award, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and Enterprising Women of the Year among others. Vanessa now spends her time sharing stories to inspire and give hope through articles, speaking engagements and music. In her spare time she writes and plays music in the Amazon best selling new band HigherHill, teaches surfing clinics, trains dogs, and cheers on her children.
Please connect with Vanessa here on linkedin and subscribe to her newsletter Unplugged as well as follow her on Substack, Instagram, Facebook, and X and of course on her website VanessaOgle.
