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I came across a great article based on Carmine Gallo’s new book, “The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs” which are as follows:

1. Put a Dent in the Universe: “Innovation requires a team and you cannot inspire evangelists unless you offer a compelling vision….”
2. Sell Dreams, Not Products: “Steve Jobs doesn’t rely on focus groups. “Steve Jobs avoids most focus groups like the plague,” says tech analyst Rob Enderle. “It comes down to the very real fact that most customers don’t know what they want in a new product.” Apple customers should be glad Jobs doesn’t do focus groups. If he had, they may never have enjoyed iPods, iTunes, the iPhone, the iPad, or Apple Stores. Jobs doesn’t need focus groups because he understands his customers really, really well. Yes, sometimes better than they know themselves!… Sure, “listen” to your customers and ask them for feedback. Apple does that all the time. But when it comes to breakthrough success at Apple, Steve Jobs and his team are the company’s best focus group. Asked why Apple doesn’t do focus groups, Jobs responded: “We figure out what we want. You can’t go out and ask people ‘what’s the next big thing?’ There’s a great quote by Henry Ford. He said, “If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.’””
3. Say No to 1,000 Things: “Steve Jobs once said the secret to innovation comes from “Saying no to 1,000 things.” In other words, Jobs is as proud of what Apple chooses not to do as he is about what Apple chooses to focus on.  This philosophy has helped Apple introduce products that wow consumers because of their elegance and simplicity…”
4. Create Insanely Great Experiences: “There are no cashiers at an Apple Store. There are specialists, creatives — even geniuses — but no cashiers. Although the Apple Stores have no commissioned sales staff, they generate more revenue per square foot than most other widely recognized brands. Why? According to Jobs, “People don’t want to just buy personal computers anymore. They want to know what they can do with them, and we’re going to show people exactly that…”

Reflecting on the above four innovation secrets, the one that stands out for me is the ability of Steve Jobs to understand what the customer actually wants and not just what the customer needs. It is this the unique ability of great leaders, to gain deep insight into their constituents and to provide a vision, purpose and dream that speaks to their unspoken desires and aspirations. Just as a changing context allows new and innovative products to be created and become successful. A changing context calls for new kinds of leaders and new approaches to leadership. A shifting context, shapes the expectations of followers and demands new approaches to leadership…!

• How is the context changing around you?
• What does that mean for the kinds of leaders people need?
• What changes do you need to make in your or your organisation’s leadership?

Related posts:

1. Steve Jobs and his leadership
2. Steve Jobs’s Stanford Commencement Speech
3. Steve Jobs: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”!

The “2010 Global IBM CEO Study” was recently published, it’s one of the largest one-on-one CEO interview studies, surveying 1,541 CEOs, general managers and senior public sector leaders from 60 countries and across 33 industries. The four primary findings of this year’s survey are as follows:

• Today’s complexity is only expected to rise and more than half of CEOs doubt their ability to manage it. Seventy-nine percent of CEOs anticipate even greater complexity ahead. However, one set of organisations we call them ‘Standouts’ has turned increased complexity into financial advantage over the past five years.
• Creativity is the most important leadership quality, according to CEOs. Standouts practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organisations. Creative leaders expect to make deeper business model changes to realise their strategies. To succeed, they take more calculated risks, find new ideas and keep innovating in how they lead and communicate.
• The most successful organisations co-create products and services with customers, and integrate customers into core processes. They are adopting new channels to engage and stay in tune with customers. By drawing more insight from the available data, successful CEOs make customer intimacy their number one priority.
• Better performers manage complexity on behalf of their organisations, customers and partners. They do so by simplifying operations and products, and increasing dexterity to change the way they work, access resources and enter markets around the world. Compared to other CEOs, dexterous leaders expect 20 percent more future revenue to come from new sources.

After reviewing the findings it becomes clear the extent to which the economic downturn has affected customers, business and society. We will not simply go back to “business as usual” once we recover from this economic downturn. The world has undergone a significant paradigm shift and we will never be the same.

As we move towards a recovery in the world economy, global leaders are experiencing high levels of complexity and uncertainty, “eight in ten CEOs expect their environment to grow significantly more complex and fewer than half believe they know how to deal with it successfully.” This environment creates an urgent need for leadership. Given this, the survey explored what CEOs consider  the most important leadership qualities required over the next five years, the results are illustrated below.

CEOs cited creativity as the most important leadership quality over the next five years…

Creativity is essential when uncertainty is high and where the future is expected to be a significant departure from what we’ve known in the past. When uncertainty is high you cannot just repeat the successful practices of the past and expect similar results. You will need to find new ways of thinking, new ways of operating and new ways of behaving. The IBM survey puts it this way…

“Creativity is often defined as the ability to bring into existence something new or different, but CEOs elaborated. Creativity is the basis for ‘disruptive innovation and continuous re-invention,’ a Professional Services CEO in the United States told us. In addition this requires bold, breakthrough thinking. Leaders, they said, must be ready to upset the status quo even if it is successful. They must be comfortable with and committed to ongoing experimentation… It’s not that CEOs are just now becoming aware of the importance of creativity they have long been aware of the need to innovate their products, their processes and their customers’ experiences. Even in 2004, CEOs were telling us that ‘CEOs the world over were refocused on growth and they viewed innovation as the way to get there.’ But today, creativity itself has been elevated to a leadership style. Traditional approaches to managing organisations need fresh ideas, ideas that are intended to disrupt the status quo.”

It seems that we are entering a period in our history that places a premium on effective leadership. It’s not often that we have the opportunity to re-invent how we choose to approach our life and work. These are exciting times indeed…!

• What are you doing in response to this increased demand for leadership?
• Are you re-examining your existing leadership practices?
• Are you experimenting with new approaches, new paradigms, new ways of working? If not, why?

Related posts:

1. 11 Qualities of Leaders
2. Time: The Number 1 Barrier to Organisational Creativity
3. Research Finds that Future-focused Leadership brings Innovation

Mark McGuinness has collected a bunch of his best posts into one free ebook and has some additional time management  resources here. I found the book filled with valuable time management insights. Given the pressures leaders have on their time, Mark’s time management practices are extremely useful. I case you don’t want to read the entire book here is a summary of the 7 common practices….

1. Why you need to be organised to be creative

Choreographer Twyla Tharp, author of the book “The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life“, which I’ve previously reviewed here, directed the opera and dance scenes for the film Amadeus, has this to say about the film’s portrait of Mozart and the importance of being organised and disciplined….

“The film Amadeus dramatizes and romanticizes the divine origins of creative genius. Antonio Salieri, representing the talented hack, is cursed to live in the time of Mozart, the gifted and undisciplined genius who writes as though touched by the hand of God… Of course this is hogwash. There are no ‘natural’ geniuses… No-one worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose… As Mozart himself wrote to a friend, “People err who think my art comes easily to me. I assure you, dear friend, nobody has devoted so much time and thought to composition as I. There is not a famous master whose music I have not industriously studied through many times.”

Twyla goes on in her book to argue that “routine is as much a part of the creative process as the lightning bolt of inspiration, maybe more“.

Have you structured you day to be productive?

2. Prioritise work that is ‘important but not urgent’

This practice comes from Stephen Covey’s popular book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” where he classifies work tasks
according to whether they are important or urgent…

Covey points out that many of us spend too much time on tasks that are urgent and important  – in other words, staving off emergencies by rushing around to solve problems or responding to others’ demands at short notice. Sometimes this is unavoidable – ‘deadline magic’ can spur us on to feats of creative production we wouldn’t otherwise attempt. This can be an exciting and productive experience – but it’s up to you whether you want to work like this most of the time. ….. Covey’s solution is to prioritise work that is important but not urgent… Though this is hard to do on any given day, it is the only way to ensure you are making progress towards your own goals and dreams, instead of merely reacting to what other people throw at you. And over time, the more you are dealing with important things before they become urgent, the fewer ‘urgent and important’ tasks you will have to deal with.

What percentage of you day is focus in urgent thing vs. the important things? Are you focused enough on completing the important things first?

3. Ring-fence your most creative time

Pick your most creative time of day….. then ring fence it for your most creative work. Mark provide this example of how Tim Ferriss author of The Four Hour Work Week writes blog posts, in two phases and at different times of day:

“Separate brainstorming (idea generation) from synthesis (putting it all into a flowing post). I generally note down 10-15 potential points for a post between 10-10:30am with a double espresso, select 4-5 I like and put them in a tentative order from 10:30-10:45am, then I’ll let them marinate until 12am-4am, when I’ll drink yerba mate tea, craft a few examples to match the points, then start composing. It’s important to identify your ideal circadian schedule and pre-writing warm-up for consistent and reliable results.” – The Four Hour Work Week Blog

Do you know when you’re most creative? How are you using this time?

4. Avoid the ‘Sisyphus effect’ of endless to-do lists

Mark points out how endless to do lists and interruptions overwhelm us and sap our time and energy….

“The bottom line is that interruptions destroy your concentration. And loss of concentration = loss of creative work. If you’re not careful, you can end up in permanent ‘reactive mode’ – spending your time responding to others’ demands and all the things you have to do instead of the one thing you really wanted to do today…… In short, you need to install a buffer between others’ demands and your response. Otherwise you’ll end up in permanently anxious and unproductive ‘reaction mode’.”

I think we often under estimate the cost of interruptions, previously I posted on a study by Study by Time Magazine…

Researchers studying a random sample of office workers and found they got an average of just 11 minutes clear time to a project before being distracted by an e-mail, phone call or verbal interruption from a manager or colleague.

It also found interruptions now took up an average of 2.1 hours of every working day, or 28 per cent of the average person’s nine-to-five schedule, including the time to recover your train of thought following an interruption.

It took an average of 25 minutes to return to a task after being disturbed, according to the magazine.

How often do you get interrupted a day? How much productive time does this sap from your day? Are you diligently protecting your most productive from unnecessary interruptions?

5. Get things done by putting them off till tomorrow

This practice is about slowing down our response and so that we can response by being smart and not by working harder….

“In his excellent book Do It Tomorrow, Mark Forster….. suggests we create a buffer between incoming demands and our response – by making ‘do it tomorrow’ our default response to all requests. Not ‘tomorrow’ as in ‘tomorrow never comes’, but ‘tomorrow’ as in ‘tomorrow’. Not today or the day after tomorrow, but tomorrow.”

6. Get things off your mind

The practice is about having a trusted system that you can rely on to remind you of the important things that need to get done, rather than wasting your mental and emotional energy keeping track of your commitments. This allows you to commit 100% to the task at hand…..!

“What if you could dedicate fully 100 percent of your attention to whatever was at hand, at  your own choosing, with no distraction?…. No, it’s not an ancient Zen text – these words are lifted from David Allen’s best-selling book on productivity, Getting Things Done. When I read this section of the book, I grasped the true value of having a system for managing your workload – not merely to be more productive but to reclaim your own mind by clearing out unnecessary mental clutter caused by trying to keep track of all your work commitments.”

Set up ‘buckets’ to capture your commitments, to do lists arranged by your work context so that you do consume valuable mental and emotional energy trying to remember the things you have to get done….

7. Review your commitments

Reviewing your commitments help to keep things off your mind so you can focus……. Mark suggests that you need to review your commitments…

1. First, and most obviously, to make sure you actually do the tasks on your to-do lists!
2. If you don’t review the lists regularly, you’ll soon stop trusting them and won’t be able to use them to get things off your mind.
3. To think about how you’re going to approach your work. It’s tempting to ‘get going’ first thing in the morning, so you feel like you’re getting things done – but whenever I do this, my day is always less productive and more stressful than on days where I take 10 minutes to review my commitments and decide how I’m going to tackle them.
4. It helps you step back and see the ‘big picture’ of your work, weigh up priorities and make decisions about your next steps.

Overall I thought this is a great list of time management practices….. So which two of these practices are you going to implement over the next 21 days?

Related posts:

1. Leaders spend time with their people
2. The Creative Processes
3. Time: The Number 1 Barrier to Organisational Creativity

According to the article “Future-focused CEOs bring innovation” organisations whose leadership speak about future event and external activities are more innovative than those leaders who don’t.

‘By simply counting the number of future-oriented sentences in annual reports we can predict future innovation by the firm,’ said marketing Professor Rajesh Chandy of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management…. CEOs who focus their attention on future events and external activities lead their firms to early adoption and invention of new technologies and greater and faster development of innovations, said Chandy, whose study appears in the next issue of the Journal of Marketing….. In contrast, firms whose CEOs focus on internal operations are slower to detect, adopt and implement new technologies, Chandy’s study found. Words, not just actions, of the CEO set the tone to inspire, propel and motivate employee innovation, he said…. He and co-authors Manjit Yadav of Texas A&M University and Jaideep Prabhu of London University’s Imperial College reached their conclusion after studying the online banking industry over eight years….. By counting the number of future-oriented words and phrases in letters to shareholders over this period, they were able to predict the level of innovation by the firm up to five years later, the researchers said.”

We all know that vision and a future orientation is critical for leadership. This research confirms the vision and a future orientation is key to innovation, which should be on the top of a leaders agenda. How future focused is your leadership? How does this correlate to the levels of innovation in your team and organisation?

Related posts:

1. Research finds leadership critical to organisational performance
2. How to Keep Your Innovation System Alive and Well
3. 5 Principles of Innovation

Photo by Hugo_Fstop

Jeffrey Phillips of Innovate on Purpose wrote an interesting post traveling without a map, in the post he talks about innovation and the importance of knowing where you’re going two topics that are central to leadership…

“… it is sort of like traveling without a map. If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there. Management teams have not been specific enough about their expectations for differentiation, growth and change in their organizations. Look at the most “innovative” firms. They have either charismatic leadership (Apple) or exceptionally clear guidelines for growth and differentiation (3M, P&G). The words and directions from these management teams filter down and create an understanding within the product teams and business units that focus the team on the right topics and help to drive out good ideas. Without good communications, clear goals and alignment to strategy, an innovation team or process will struggle – not because they don’t understand the process, but because the range of options and considerations is simply too large. Innovation teams and initiatives need clearly defined scope and outrageous expectations to help them focus on the right ideas to bring to market as new products and services…… The challenge most of these teams face isn’t structural or process per se, but the fact they deal in a significant amount of uncertainty due to poor goal setting and communication from their senior management teams as to what is important and how to prioritize the opportunities and challenges they face…”

If you don’t know where you’re going any map will take you there! It’s astounding how many teams and organisations lack clarity as to where they’re headed.

• Is your team or organisation traveling without a map?
• Is your map clear?
• Is it specific?
• Is it communicated on a regular basis?
• Do you use your map to guide your decision making?

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