Leadership takeaways from Jeanne Liedtka
In my summary post on lessons from residential leadership training, my insights from Jeanne became too long. Seriously, hear her speak and buy her books — she is human-centred and seriously research-informed. But here are my takeaways in one consolidated but barely structured post.
Innovation and change
The number one predictor of successful innovation is not genius or company culture. It is whether ‘my boss supported me through my innovation.’ And it happens despite processes and systems, not because of.
Organisational change only works when…
…and note its multiplication. Any zeros in the trifecta will create failure.
The most successful leaders are those that focus on their own teams more than peers or bosses. Focus on where you can make change, not in trying to make theirs change.
Asking for new behaviours in a system that rewards the old behaviours will fail spectacularly — people actually double down on the unwanted behaviours.
Rushing to solutions will always yield an answer based only on our own expertise — which are always only a partial view. And egocentricity is a real thing — the only way to reduce this bias is to include diversity through a system that reduces autocracy.
Strategy
You can only construct strategy from the material that shows up. At its best, strategy would invite the withheld — the best and most authentic selves are the ones that show up the least at work, but from which work would most benefit.
When the issues are big, such as in strategy formation, design thinking is a tool to overcome despair.
Daily work
Don’t accept the tyranny of meeting-missers. Don’t repeat, don’t unpick decisions. It’s on them to catch up.
Everyone learns more in motion than in stasis.
Templates are an innovation tool. The most stubborn, rulesy person will do a template — and then you have the material for a conservation.
Advocacy
Don’t speak about stuff. Speak for stuff.
The hardest-nosed business leader cannot help but be moved by a great story.
Creative teams
To build through conversation, intentionally design that conversation to make better behaviour more likely, and poor behaviour really hard. ‘Architecting the conversation’.
Brainstorming doesn’t work when everyone just does general ‘shout your ideas’ — far better is to ask for quiet reflection, one-by-one sharing, then discussion and building. Don’t try to be fast. It privileges one type of thinking (and thinker). You want all thinking.
Creativity benefits from structure, despite what many so-called ‘creative leaders’ will tell you. Great structure enables.
The biggest creative challenge is not to have the idea. It’s to get the idea through the system and implemented.
Failure and frustration
Failure is just bad framing of learning. It comes about because of a lack of information, or a false belief. So by ‘failing’ you uncover that and can make it better.
Be really careful not to express your frustration with a system as something directed at a person. People will become defensive or fearful at any implication that you blame them for something. Be super, extra, amazingly clear that it’s the system you’re cross with, and that we will fix it together. You must be clear because everyone has history of being blamed for things, and so will always be listening for it.
Complexity
Everything connects to everything else. So summarizing any part out of context is always only a partial picture.
Which feels like a suitably random place to stop!
