Tag Archives: Paradoxical Thinking

Learning to Innovate

Learning to innovate

As a result of our short time together, my client felt confident and empowered, motivated and energized, to invest time in learning how to apply her current skills and strengths, focus and attention to connect with key people and resources, explore options globally for identifying new business development opportunities, and in developing her technical skillset.

My client enrolled in an online innovation learning program to learn to innovate by acquiring the fundamentals of mindset and behavior changes to shift their thinking and act differently.

The innovation imperative has shifted

Productivity growth needs to accelerate

According to McKinsey and Co, in the article “Investing in Productivity Growth” it’s not only time to raise investment and catch the next productivity wave; the world needs to and can accelerate productivity growth.

“Productivity growth means getting more from our work and our investments. It is especially needed now as the world faces the many challenges of a new geo-economic era. Productivity growth is the best antidote to the asset price inflation of the past two decades, which has created about $160 trillion in “paper wealth” and even larger amounts of new debt”.

Adapting to the new net zero reality

The world is currently not on track to meet net-zero targets, yet many opportunities are available to accelerate efforts and help meet de-carbonization goals. Whilst some progress has been made to reduce global carbon emissions, under the current trajectory, the world won’t achieve net-zero emissions even during this century. Again, according to McKinsey and Co., in an article “Adapting to the new net-zero reality”, mitigation efforts alone are no longer sufficient – the world will need to adapt as well by going green, ramping up technologies and increasing investments.

Improving cost efficiencies

According to new BCG research, corporate leaders are making better cost management a priority as a hedge against ongoing economic, financial, and political uncertainties, stating that:

“Wholesale cuts are one way to manage costs. However, drastic measures such as sudden workforce reductions may lead to unintended consequences because they fail to address the root causes of inefficiencies. Nor do they position an organization for future success”.

Generative Ai is a critical enabler of innovation

Whether the organization focuses on developing new products, services, processes, or business models, Generative AI (GenAI) can enhance and challenge the work of leaders and teams across all phases of the innovation cycle and process.

By learning to innovate through knowing how to generatively question and listen, reveal and challenge operating beliefs and test assumptions to enable them to emerge, diverge, converge and prioritize high-quality creative ideas for change.

According to BCG in a recent article, “To Drive Innovation with GenAI, Start by Questioning Your Assumptions.”

“GenAI’s most prominent contribution is in idea generation and validation—innovation’s divergence and convergence phases. Yet, it can play an even more critical role in helping leaders confront and update the strategic assumptions at the foundation of their business and innovation strategies: the doubt phase of the cycle. Organizations that regularly question their beliefs are more resilient because they are more likely to see and position themselves to benefit from the shifts on which competitive advantage turns”.

The innovation imperative is paradoxical.

Suppose we combine the contradictory features or qualities of developing productivity growth while adapting to the new net zero reality and improving cost efficiencies. In that case, many organizations have reverted to their conventional, business-as-usual focus, relying on Generative Ai to solve their problems.

This demonstrates a typically faddish response to a revolutionary, transformative new invention whilst being avoidant and resisting the urgent need to change by building the fundamental foundations in learning to innovate.

Thinking and acting differently

Anyone can learn to innovate, and it starts with allowing, accepting and acknowledging that a business-as-usual focus, avoiding risk, making the tough decisions and resisting change are no longer effective, profitable, or sustainable because:

We all know that doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity.
We can no longer afford to keep producing the same results that no one wants.
We can’t solve the problem with the same thinking that created it; we have to learn how to be, think and act differently to deliver the sustainable and innovative solution we want to have.

Learning to innovate requires a radical strategic shift

Harnessing collective intelligence

Anyone can learn to innovate; it’s simply a matter of knowing, combining, leveraging and scaling people’s multiple and collective intelligence – heads/cognition, hearts/emotions and hands/actions.

Revealing and closing knowing-doing gaps

Then, we should align these to close the significant knowing-doing gap or disconnect between what people know and what people do.

Everyone knows that innovation is the most impactful lever to use to scale and leverage change, yet are primarily unwilling to pause, stop and take time to retreat from their short-term focus, pay attention and reflect on how to equip people with the innovation fundamentals by getting people’s:

Heads to make sense of innovation and what innovation means by defining and framing it in their organization’s unique context, setting a strategic focus, determining the level of risk involved in achieving it, and mitigating the roadblocks that may arise.
Hearts aligned to embody and enact what innovation means by setting and sharing a passionately purposeful reason for innovation, building change receptivity and readiness for designing and delivering a range of bespoke deep learning processes and equipping people to activate it.
Hands dirty by creating a safe environment where people are encouraged to emerge and share creative ideas and permission and be allowed to experiment by making small bets and mistakes and learning by doing to know what not to do.

Innovation requires a strategic and systemic focus

Innovation is subjective and contextual, so it must be defined and framed in an organization’s unique context. It requires a strategic and systemic focus, so an organization needs to agree on whether they will choose an incremental, sustainable or disruptive strategy and the level of risk.

The 21st century requires us to unlearn, learn, and relearn a different set of mindsets, behaviors, and skills, and anyone can learn to innovate.

Commitment and conviction to learn to innovate

It’s only through being committed and having the conviction that my coaching client now has – to explore new ways of helping their organizations use their existing capital investments, collective intelligence, people resources, and expertise, supported by Generative AI and deep learning processes, to design and deliver low-cost and sustainable innovations to the market.

Image Credit: Pexels

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The Paradox of Innovation Leadership

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GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

Most of us are aware that both the organizational leadership and cultural paradigms have shifted, due to the accelerating demands of the current global VUCA/BANI operating environment. Requiring us to make sense of and navigate the paradoxical nature of innovation leadership. By developing multiple perspectives to re-think how to respond positively and creatively to the high levels of tension and range of massive disruptions we collectively face in our current high-speed, constantly changing, global operating environments.

According to Otto Scharmer in a recent article for Resilience Magazine, we are facing a looming paradox – “we know almost everything that is necessary to prevent civilizational collapse – we have most of the knowledge, most of the technologies, and all the financial means necessary to turn things around – and yet we are not doing it”.

To truly differentiate ourselves and do the “right things” as adaptive and agile 21st-century leaders, and coaches, it’s crucial to learn the “soft skills” required to cultivate true, and relevant multiple perspectives. To better serve people and unlock and mobilize their collective genius to co-create a future that is regenerative, peaceful, and just, for all of humanity.

What is a paradox?

In a White Paper – Managing Paradox, Blending East and West Philosophies to Unlock Its Advantages and Opportunities from the Center for Creative Leadership, authors Jean Brittain Leslie, Peter Ping Li, and Sophia Zhao, use the term “paradox as a general term to describe the tensions individuals face due to the coexistence of conflicting demands”.

That a paradox can also be described as tensions, dilemmas, conundrums, polarities, competing values, and contradictions, and have these principles in common:

It is often difficult to see the presence of paradoxes in organizational life and in a VUCA and BANI world.
They are not problems that can be solved, as they are often unsolvable.
They are of cyclical or recurring nature.
They can polarize individuals into groups.
They are potentially positive when managed.
Managing paradox involves developing a mindset (and perspective) beyond “either/or” logic (A is either B or not B).

Polarity is the preferred term used in long-time practitioner Barry Johnson’s work. Duality is also used, referring to the yin-yang perspective on a paradox – a pair of opposite elements that can be both partially conflicting and partially complementary.

Mastering the paradoxical nature of innovation leadership requires developing the soft skills to hold two trains of competing or complementary thoughts, or perspectives, simultaneously. This enables innovation leaders to connect to, explore, navigate, and discover new territories to sense possibilities, seize opportunities, and simultaneously solve complex systems and challenging problems differently – in ways that add value to the quality of people’s lives they appreciate and cherish.

Why is it important to navigate a paradox?

Innovation leadership involves cultivating a paradoxical mindset that enables us to work outside of the “either/or” binary and logical perspective and work within the “both/and” non-logical and multiple perspectives, by knowing how to see both the:

Perspectives clearly,
Positive and negative consequences of each perspective,
Interrelationship and interdependence between each perspective.

Shifting perspectives – Taking a skills-based approach

A recent MIT Sloane article “Taking a skills-based approach to culture change” reinforces how important it is to support digital, cultural, and other transformation initiatives by developing people’s “soft skills”, through innovation leadership learning initiatives, specifically to develop the thinking skills required to hold multiple perspectives:

“Unlike most types of culture initiatives, a skills-based approach can more effectively infuse new culture components into scale-ups and international incumbents alike. This approach is particularly effective for developing what many refer to as soft skills, such as perspective-taking. This ability to step outside one’s own perspective to understand another person’s point of view, motivations, and emotions helps build a psychologically safe environment in which people dare to share ideas and unfiltered information”.

Developing perspective-taking skills is fundamental to mastering the paradoxical nature of innovation leadership. It enables leaders and coaches to connect to, explore, navigate, and discover new territories to catalyze and harness people’s collective genius and shift perspectives differently.
Developing the 21st-century leadership superpowers necessary to reimagine, reinvent, design, and deliver innovative solutions to complex and challenging problems.

Making the shift – Taking the first steps

Barry Johnson’s work states that:

“Managing paradox involves moving from focusing on one pole as the problem and the other as the solution (either/or thinking) to valuing both poles (both/and thinking)”.

This is supported by a recent article “The Six Paradoxes of Leadership” by PWC:

“Paradoxes are not new to leaders, but they are becoming have become increasingly important for leaders to navigate”.

Drafting six key questions for leaders and coaches to consider by hitting their “pause buttons” and directing their focus and attention:

“The most urgent in today’s context and will remain important in the future. The paradoxes should be considered as a system; they impact each other and all need to be balanced simultaneously. To truly differentiate yourself as a leader, learning how to comfortably inhabit both elements of each paradox will be critical to your success.”

These multiple perspective-shifting questions include:

How might you, as both a leader (and coach) learn how to navigate a world that is increasingly both global and local?
How might you, as both a leader (and coach), learn how to navigate both the politics of getting things to happen and retain your character and integrity?
How might you, as both a leader (and coach) develop the confidence to act in an uncertain (and BANI) world and the humility and vulnerability to recognize when you are wrong?
How might you, as both a leader (and coach) learn how to execute effectively whilst also being both tactical and strategic?
How might you, as both a leader (and coach) become increasingly tech-savvy and remember that organizations are run by people, for people?
How might you, as both a leader (and coach) apply the learnings and successes of the past to help guide and direct you in the future?

Making the shift – Learning the innovation leadership fundamentals

At ImagineNation™ we have accredited more than 100 leaders and coaches globally as professionally certified coaches for innovation in our global bespoke online coaching and learning products and programs has validated three key poles innovation leadership requires.

Which is to know how to effectively move from focusing on one pole as the problem and the other as the solution (either/or thinking) to valuing both poles (both/and thinking) and developing multiple perspectives:

Both Push and Pull: noticing when people are neurologically stuck in a flight/fight/freeze mode and are reticent and unable to make the shift toward a desired future state. Leaders and coaches can safely push people towards what is urgent and “necessary” to change to survive, and simultaneously pull them towards both the benefits, rewards, and desirability of the future state and towards mobilizing them towards energetically engaging and enrolling in it.
Both Strategic and Tactical: noticing when people are so busy that they “can’t see the forest for the trees”, or are caught up and lost in tasks, and activities involved in getting things done, quickly, and often thoughtlessly. Leaders and coaches can focus on both what they are trying to achieve, and why they are trying to achieve, it whilst simultaneously engaging people in completing the task and observing and considering it strategically and systemically.
Both In the Box and Out of the Box: noticing what are peoples’ core operating systems, and being present to what is true and real for them, without judgment and with detachment. Leaders and coaches can focus both on “what is” the person’s perspective, situation, and current reality, whilst simultaneously evoking, provoking, and cultivating “what could be possible” and eliciting unconventional multiple perspectives that catalyze creative thinking differently strategies.

Grappling with the future is paradoxical

Today’s strategic landscape is like nothing we have ever seen before, which makes innovation leadership and innovation coaching skills more important than ever.

To re-think for a new age, how to courageously confront and solve serious dilemmas and complex problems, how to adapt to complex systems, be creative in transforming time, people, and financial investments in ways that drive out complacency and build change readiness.

To then deliver deep and continuous change and learning to equip and empower innovation leadership to develop the multiple perspectives required to deliver valuable and tangible results, whilst simultaneously opening new pathways to a future that is regenerative, peaceful, and just for all of humanity.

Image Credit: Pixabay