Many corporate leaders are wrestling with trying to get their organizations to innovate through taking risks on-the-job.
After years of cost-cutting initiatives and growing job insecurity, most executives don’t feel like putting themselves on the line. Add to that the heightened expectations on individual performance, where a one-year term determines a large bonus, managers postpone risky decisions for fear of failure—making mistakes that could lead to innovative successes. That’s why it is difficult for executives and their direct reports to make the shift from a play-it-safe corporate culture to an innovation-driven culture.
"Four years ago, I was at a dinner with Bob Nardelli, who left General Electric after he was passed over for Jack Welch's job. He had just become CEO of Home Depot, and all he talked about was how exciting it would be to take on the challenge of building a better future for Home Depot. And I remember thinking, 'This guy hasn't had retail experience in 20 years, he's going into a situation where people are expecting him to fail, and he's following two founders -- Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus -- who were beloved. Why is he doing this?'" said Marcus Buckingham, author of The One Thing You Need to Know…About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success (Free Press).
Here in Detroit, automotive leaders are talking about an innovation-driven culture that is imperative in today’s globally competitive world. But walking the talk within the culture requires corporate leadership to recruit or promote new business unit executives who don’t have a fear of failure, like Bob Nardelli.
A leader’s independent judgment shows up as activity in his or her brain areas involved in emotion which is the cost for going against the status quo of the group. However, most people wish to socially conform to what others in the group think and feel.
People go in the direction leadership is walking, not pointing.
Have you ever stood in a group of people on the sidewalk of a busy city corner waiting for the light to change so you could cross the street? If so, you may have noticed what happens when one person, a leader, decides to cross the street against the light (when there is no vehicular traffic approaching). Once the leader begins to go across the street against the light, most of the people observing the leader perceive it is acceptable for them to cross, too.
“There’s something unique and different that makes a leader, and it’s not about creativity or courage or integrity,” says Buckingham. As important as they are, you can have those attributes and still fail to be a great leader. A leader’s job is to rally people toward a better future. Leaders can’t help but change the present, because the present isn’t good enough. They succeed only when they find a way to make people excited by and confident in what comes next.