With all the pressures of running a P&L, managing client SLA’s and supporting your people through some challenging times, we can often forget about tomorrow. The work we do today is vitally important as it pays the bills but what about tomorrow, what will we be doing tomorrow to pay tomorrow’s bills?
As Leaders we must create an environment that encourages brave thinking, that nurtures innovation and that allows ideas to come from anywhere.
We must celebrate difference, in people. Neuro Diversity should be not only encouraged within teams, but it must also be sort out and recruited for. We must resist recruiting clones and actively seek divergence of thinking.
Doing the unexpected, breaking from the norm, and taking an alternative route can deliver massive benefits. In 218 BC when Hannibal lead his Carthaginian arm over the Alps rather than attacking the Romans by sea, he thought differently and take an alternative approach.
Innovation is critical in any business, particularly in the Agency world. Innovation drives Growth. Growth in people, growth in the Agency and growth in client business. It can deliver new opportunities within your current client base in the form of organic growth, it can also open up opportunities with new clients and new industry sectors.
Innovation also drives change, change in your portfolio, change in processes, and change in people. People may need to think differently, to act differently and perform different functions. It is said that it is not change that people fear but being changed. Often the change can be facilitated by reskilling, sometimes it can only be achieved by changing the people. Fresh eyes can often accelerate innovation at a far great pace.
Donald Rumsfeld famously talked about people having three areas of knowledge: ‘the known knowns’, ‘the known unknowns’ and ‘the unknowns unknowns’. The first two areas are manageable as they are known, and what is know can be dealt with. It is what you don’t know that is the biggest challenge. This is another reason to seek fresh thinking and new ideas to unlock the unknowns.
It is critical that the environment, culture, and legacy thinking does not kill off new ideas. There is also a risk that the pressures of today steal time and resource that is needed for ideation and innovation.
It is it the role of a leader to balance the demands of today with the needs of tomorrow.
by Richard Wright
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