Lead to Win: Innovation

The unfortunate truth of leadership. 

So often a leader will unknowingly make the shift from playing to win, to playing not to lose. Go back to the first day of your current leadership role, the excitement, the possibilities and how you were going to set the world on fire, or at least your team. You came in, took some time to learn the lay of the land, got to know what motivated each team member and became clear on expectations that were in front of you and your team.  You were in it to win it. 

Now come back to where you are today. 

• Are you still playing to win? 
• Have the organizational constraints, rules of engagement and market conditions sobered you up? 

The cost and reality of shifting from “play to win” to “play not to lose” is subtle. We will be exploring the impact of this shift in leadership on innovation, communication, change and sustainability in a four-part series. Today we’ll focus on innovation.

The role of your mental models.

Your experiences and your interpretation of those experiences slowly and subtly lead to beliefs and assumptions, or mental models, that then drive your behavior. 

Those mental models may be driving you to play not to lose instead of playing to win.  We will present some “playing not to lose” mental models, as well as their antithesis “playing to win”, mental models for your reflection in each of the four areas mentioned above.  

The impact of playing not to lose.

Years ago, a high tech company, AMD, had a technology lead over their competitor, Intel. Intel dominated more than 80 percent of the global microprocessor market and was much larger than AMD.  AMD’s smaller more agile design team had a superior solution that ran faster, cooler, more energy efficient, was smaller and much less expensive to purchase.  The product was designed for large servers so the price would provide lower costs to acquire and every year much lower costs to operate because of the energy efficiency. 

The cost savings alone would have justified purchasing the AMD product, but throwing in superior speed and performance made the purchase a no-brainer.

However, IT executives would not buy the AMD processor even though they acknowledged the superiority of the product.

The AMD Sales team suspected foul play until a Technology Market Analyst delivered a key note at the Annual Sales Conference.  He explained,

“If the IT Executives go with Intel and there are problems later, no one will get fired because they went with the big guys. Their colleagues would be surprised and Intel’s brand may take a hit, but the IT executive would keep their job. On the other hand, if they go with AMD and save lots of money, they MIGHT get acknowledged but if there is a problem, that IT executive will get fired because they went with a secondary player.  The upside (winning – saving money, having superior performance) is not enough to offset the downside (losing their job and looking like an idiot).”

This tendency to play it safe, or play not to lose, can destroy innovation on your team and inside your organization.

Innovation is important. 

The most recent information (2015) shows that when CEOs are asked what keeps them up at night, “innovation” appears in every list (R&D spending for innovation [Price-Waterhouse]; disruptive innovation in the markets we serve [Washington Post]; innovative talent acquisition, development, and utilization [Harvard Business Review].)

Part of a leader’s role is to inspire innovation. 

• Do you? 
• Is your team as innovative as they need to be to keep up in the fast paced business world of today? 
• How about in the much faster, even more information intensive business environment five years from now? 

Regardless of what function you manage/lead and where you are in the organization, greater success can come from innovation.

With that in mind, what could possibly be blocking your team’s innovation? A strong possibility is your mental models about innovation. 

Each of us comes to a set of mental models through experience and interpretation of that experience, so only you can say why you believe as you do. Examine the list below to see if you have beliefs that can lead to playing not to lose.

There are many ways to learn about generating more innovation from your team. The learning starts with understanding your mental models about innovation. 

Are you in it to win it or when it comes to innovation, are you playing it safe, low risk and not to lose?

 - Lexy Thomspon and Bill Gardner