engage in creative abrasion with you if I don’t feel the support of the group. What we see is that if the leader doesn’t provide support in an environment of psychologi- cal safety, people are too afraid to share their ideas. It is too risky. On the other hand, the leader needs to confront the person who won’t refine his or her ideas, because not every idea is working to solve the problem.
What we also see—and the military really does have an advantage here—is that there has to be a common sense of purpose that matters, if the group is going to be willing and able to innovate together. Innovation leaders don’t focus so much on where we as a team are going together. Tey focus more on why we are doing it and who we are together, our collective identity. In the military, obvi- ously people have come together around a clear purpose to keep us safe, and they are willing to dedicate their lives to make sure that purpose is achieved. It’s a little harder sometimes in business—let’s say, in a company that manufactures shoes or cars—to help people understand their collective purpose.
To get innovation done in government is certainly a co-creation process among a whole range of parties. You can’t push this stuff down people’s throats. In fact, that’s one of the things that I think lead- ers forget: People have to volunteer to innovate. Tey have to find the purpose of the work meaningful, something that they want to work on and do; something they care about enough to do the hard work of collaboration, discovery-driven learning, dealing with the failures and missteps and then working through the decision-making process. (See Figure 2, Page 82.)
Te other thing we also forget about innovation is, breakthrough innovations
take a long time. You know, it took 20 years for Pixar to make a full-length computer-generated movie. It took 18 years for Corning to come up with the glass that’s on most of our smartphones. But you can’t build an organization that’s only going to innovate once every two decades. Tat’s why I think the leaders we studied had this more inclusive defi- nition of innovation: Tey said, we want to do innovative problem-solving every day, no matter what it is, and we know how to work together in a way that allows us to combine our own individual slices of genius. Tis is why the book is called “Collective Genius.”
Army AL&T: How important do you think it is, especially in the area of inno- vation, for midlevel managers to get job experience outside their workplace, such as a Training with Industry program or a detail to another organization in the government?
Hill: I think it’s very important. We know that people learn from experience, so you want midlevel people to have opportunities to lead for change or inno- vation earlier in their careers, so that they develop the risk appetite required for it and get used to leading.
It can be dangerous, though, when you promote people too fast—when you give someone not a stretch assignment, but a break assignment. I think that sometimes happens to people if they haven’t been given opportunities all along the way to take reasonable stretch assignments that help them to develop the resiliency and other kinds of qualities that are quite crit- ical to being able to lead, particularly to lead change and innovation. It is impor- tant that people have those opportunities. Maybe they get to do short tours of duty in private-sector organizations where they can be exposed to certain ideas.
Something we are seeing a lot more is that in our societies, in our countries, we need more trisector leaders: people who know how to bridge and work across the private, public and not-for-profit sectors to get done some of the things that we want to resolve.
In your military context, for example,
rebuilding a country after a war requires people from all three sectors to get it done properly. Working across the sec- tors, you get people who have different sensibilities, perspectives
and transfer-
able skills. Plus, you get that creative abrasion I was talking about. You are more likely to get innovative solutions if you can actually harness that diversity.
Te bottom line is: Leadership has always been hard, but it
is definitely getting
harder. We do see more and more execu- tives who understand that they cannot afford to stand still. Even if you were an exceptional leader 20 years ago, it’s necessary to keep in mind that you are dealing with a more diverse workforce and a world that is becoming increasingly complex and dynamic. Leading innova- tion, in particular, requires a different mindset and a new set of skills that can harness diverse talents and unleash cre- ative solutions.
MS. MARGARET C. ROTH is an editor of Army AL&T magazine. She has more than a decade of experience in writing about the Army and more
than three
decades’ experience in journalism and public relations. Roth is a Maj. Gen. Keith L. Ware Public Affairs Award winner and a co-author of the book “Operation Just Cause: Te Storming
She holds a B.A. in Russian language and linguistics from the University of Virginia.
of Panama.”
ASC.ARMY.MIL
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CRITICAL THINKING
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