Over the years, I’ve placed a heavy emphasis on how important it is to have good leadership that can drive you and the organisation forward.
It’s critical that they not only show you the vision, but assist you along the path.
You could say, I was lucky in that aspect. Not only my immediate manager, who was Vice President of IT Leadership, but my CIO and CEO (Chief Executive Officer) were all in support of the Innovation work that was happening.
My CIO (Chief Information Officer) would often share his vision, what he would like to see happening and this was all from feedback which he’d receive from Leaders within the business and also, what the other CIO’s of major organisations were looking into.
With that leadership, we were able to develop ideas. Ideas which then went onto a pilot or proof of concept phase – using the Lean Startup methodology, we’d really work on them in a fast manner – Learn Fast, Fail Fast.
If it wasn’t going to work – that’s fine.
Let’s learn from it.
Learn and move on. Learn, why didn’t it work – and if changes were needed, make them then move onto a new test, new pilot or something new. We didn’t keep pushing the same thing until it worked. We made sure we had something that worked, that we could let the customers pull from us.
When I support and talk to other organisations, one thing is key… Leadership. They need to support. They need to be behind any new innovative ideas, technologies or thought processes.
You can look at some of the top companies in the world, and how their leaders and CEO’s talk about ideas. How they talk about innovation and either new technology or something new, that will drive the business forward and achieve success.
Shadow of the Leader
This is something I picked up from GlaxoSmithKline.
It’s very much what it is. Whatever the leader is like, the rest of the organisation will be like that. Because that is the shadow he casts onto them.
If the CEO/Leader is innovative, driving change and wants the company to be a success… that shadow will be on everyone below him, and then they’ll cast it below them. The organisation then will be successful.
What kind of shadow do you have?
What kind of shadow do the leaders in your organisation have?