Trying to develop innovative leaders? Read this blog.

“Innovative leaders build innovative organizations—period.

How many times have leaders turned to HR with a plea to ‘attract and recruit innovative leaders? ‘Let’s hire someone from a startup,’ they say, or ‘We need an innovation course in our L&D strategy.’ Maybe they suggest an ‘innovation week’ or even bringing in a speaker from Silicon Valley. But here’s the truth: none of these activities will spark real innovation. 

Innovation isn’t an event or a gimmick. It’s a commitment to strategic decisions and a culture of change that starts at the very top. Leaders, it’s time to stop outsourcing innovation and start owning it.”

How can leaders become more innovative?

Of all the definitions of innovation, the one I subscribe to is that innovation is doing something different to create value for customers. In the race for customer-centric, future-proof, organizations, the agility with which leaders learn directly impact an organization’s capacity to innovate. Tell me how learning agile your leaders are and I’ll tell you how innovative your company can be. Simply put? you can’t innovate without learning agility.

And what do we mean by Learning Agility?

Learning agility is the ability to learn fast and effectively, to discover what works even when you have never experienced a given challenge. It’s about being flexible and open to changing your perspective and approach when confronted with new information or a different point of view – and to do this faster than others.

Rita McGrath,best-selling author, longtime professor at Columbia Business School, and now recognized as one of the world’s gurus on innovation and strategy, contends that flexibility and speed are key behaviors of “dynamism,” which she considers one of the linchpins of innovation.

In the context of innovation, flexibility means not being locked into one approach to solving a problem. In a fast-moving, highly competitive marketplace, speed needs no explanation. If you’re slow to create new value for customers, your competition will eat you for lunch.

Interestingly, flexibility and speed are the essence of learning agility. This notion has been confirmed by learning agility researchers for over 30 years, including Dr. Warner Burke, Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, my partner in crime at Burke Assessments. A world-renowned expert in leadership and organizational psychology, he challenged his group of students at Columbia University to find a way to measure learning agility. The results of this research led to the development of the Burke Learning Agility Inventory, an assessment that measures 9 dimensions of learning agility in organizations.

The nine dimensions of Burke’s research are: 

1. Flexibility: The ability to change one’s perspective and approach when confronted with new information or a different point of view. In the context of innovation, this means not getting stuck on one approach to solving a problem.
2. Speed: The capacity to quickly grasp new concepts and apply them effectively. This is crucial when understanding and integrating different ideas in a competitive business environment.
3. Experimenting: Willingness to try new things and step outside your comfort zone. This dimension encourages individuals to try out different alternative ways to solve a problem.
4. Performance Risk-Taking: The courage to take calculated risks that may lead to performance improvement. In a competitive environment it involves being bold, learning from failed attempts and always trying to mitigate risk.
   
5. Interpersonal Risk-Taking: Being willing to have uncomfortable but necessary conversations about sensitive topics like assumptions, data interpretation and asking for help. It’s about creating a safe space for dialogue and disagreement.
6. Collaborating: Working effectively with others, especially those who have different perspectives or come from different backgrounds. This dimension is critical in tackling the unknown.
   
7. Feedback Seeking: Actively seeking feedback to improve performance and understanding. In innovation it means being tough on the problem but not on the person. It means seeking ways to improve.
   
8. Information Gathering: The proactive collection and analysis of information to inform decisions. In innovation it means having a network of colleagues whose efforts you can draw on. In means thinking outside the box to generate solutions.
   
9. Reflecting: Taking time to reflect on past experiences and learning from them. Reflecting while innovating requires changing perspective and assumptions.

1. Take my great grandfather Olaf Hoff for instance. He was part of a group of Norwegian engineers who played a key role in the development of bridges, tunnels and skyscrapers in the U.S. Hoff was best known for his contribution to tunneling and subway building, pioneering an approach of building a subaqueous tunnel in an excavated trench and successfully implemented this approach in 1910 on the Detroit to Ontario Tunnel.
   There had been a previous attempt to build a tunnel which had failed. In Burke’s Learning Agility language this would be an example of Performance Risk-Taking. This close-knit group of Norwegian Engineers worked on various projects together, they practiced Collaboration, another dimension.
   They most likely didn’t get it right the first time. They experimented with different options. Last, but not least, they found the right atmosphere for innovation to flourish. They were not inhibited by close-minded leaders who were not open enough to explore the new ideas my great grandfather and his colleagues had to offer or tolerate the errors that happen as a function of testing and experimenting.

   
   In today’s fast-evolving business landscape, the link between learning agility and innovation has never been more crucial. As demonstrated by the insights of Rita McGrath and Warner Burke, organizations that foster learning agility—characterized by flexibility, speed, and a willingness to experiment—are far more likely to succeed in their innovation efforts. By embracing the nine dimensions of learning agility outlined in this blog, companies can create a culture that encourages creative problem-solving, collaboration, and calculated risk-taking.

   
   True innovation is not only about making bold leaps forward but also about learning from failures and being open to new perspectives. Just as Olaf Hoff and his team of Norwegian engineers thrived in an environment that nurtured these principles, your organization can also unlock its potential by cultivating a safe space for dialogue, experimentation, and reflection.

   To invigorate your innovation strategy, encourage your teams to embrace learning agility. Promote a culture where mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth, and diverse viewpoints are cherished. In doing so, you’ll not only improve your organization’s ability to adapt and innovate but also set the stage for sustained competitive advantage in a challenging marketplace. Embrace it, and watch your organization soar.