What is innovation and how does it relate to leadership? This is answered in the book “Breaking Away: How Great Leaders Create Innovation that Drives Sustainable Growth - And Why Others Fail” by Jane Stevenson and Bilal Kaafarani. The first section of the book focuses on defining types of innovation and the risk that is involved in each of those levels of innovation.

Breaking Away defines innovation as a product, service, or company that is “unique, valuable and worthy of exchange.” Steve Jobs left a legacy of innovation with his Apple products including the iPod, iPhone, and the iPad changing the markets and categories he worked in and adding much value to his shareholders along the way.

Apple is an example of one of the four types of innovation described in the book. The following section describes these types as well as the risk associated with each one:

Transformation Innovation - “a disruptive breakthrough that changes society.” Examples would include electricity, the internet, and mass produced cars. This of course takes the most risk and often needs an incubation period to create in order to allow for its longer term payback.

 Category Innovation - this is the new application of ideas, products or services rather than a creator of inventions. Examples include Apple’s products. The risk here is an equal mix risk and opportunity as it builds incrementally on current revenue streams.

 Marketplace Innovation - this is building or creating new markets by coming up with unique modifications for products, services, and delivery methods. Examples include environmentally friendly packaging introduced for Sun Chips as well as the social networking marketing program used for the launch of Ford Fiesta. The risk here is fairly controllable as you it’s broadening a customer base instead of creating one.

 Operational Innovation - this is innovation in the “how” of the business to stay efficient, productive, and evolving. Examples include Dell’s building computers to customer specifications and sending them directly to customers. This is the least risky as it is internal innovation, but still can have a big impact.

Overall innovation can be done in many different ways, but the impact is the same - something is created that is different, adds value, and people want to spend money on it.  It is also about progress and moving forward in your business or organization. I believe innovation is a key way to have your organization stand out from others and truly make a difference, just like Steve Jobs did.

Have you created anything valuable in your business or organization? How can you can be more innovative in your day to day work? Which type of innovation has the most opportunities for your business?

Next time I will discuss how leadership impacts innovation.

The last part of Switch by brothers Chip and Dan Heath discusses “shaping the path” of change in your organization, business, or life. Shaping the path means creating an environment that encourages change or providing a method by which change can happen.

In Switch the authors describe three ways to shape the path - tweak the environment, build habits, and rally the herd. In tweaking the environment the thought is making the journey easier. What is in the environment, culture, way of working that is making a change hard? One example is making buying books from Amazon easy by having the 1-Click system. All of your information is stored in their database so when you want to buy something you just click once and it is done. Tweaking the environment is about making the right behavior easier and the wrong behavior harder.

The second way is building habits. Habits change over time, but by visualizing doing new actions (or developing action triggers) at a certain time can help shift a habit as well as creating a checklist. Anything that reminds a person to shift an automatic behavior into a new one can help in building sustainable new habits.

Finally the third tool is rallying the herd. This means that change happens when there support and help along the way .  It is emulating behavior that others close to you are doing. So if you can get a small group to start exhibiting the change they can impact the rest of the organization. 

While these are all interesting ways to encourage change I believe that the Heath brother’s perspective on this process simplifies what it takes to really change. They provide great examples of how things can change and what it takes, but the real process of change happens in the practice of it, through the growing pains of it, and with the support and help of people who have already been through a similar process.

When have you had wins in implementing change in your organization? What did you do to encourage the change and make it so that it is accepted and implemented throughout your organization? What can you do today to begin shaping the path of change?

The next part of “Switch - How to Change Things When Change is Hard” by Chip and Dan Heath talks about the second component of making change happen in your organization, business, or life - motivating your Elephant.

The Elephant again is the emotional mind. It is one that is in touch with our feelings and emotions associated with the change. Oftentimes people are scared of the change - scared that they are not capable of achieving the change, withstanding the change, or making the change. So in order to truly motivate people the Heath brothers state that you need to make people believe they are capable of change by either “shrinking the change” or “growing the people.”

So how do you shrink the change? Well Strike says that you limit the investment that you ask for up front or you limit the amount of time that you ask for. Either way you are breaking up the change into bite size pieces so that you are providing small wins and therefore hope each time a small task is completed. As each step along the process is completed then your confidence builds that you can make the change happen and therefore your Elephant is growing.

The second way that you can help people believe that they are capable of change is to “grow the people.” That means that you can help people tie the change to a sense of pride, their identity or a vision of a better situation. As a result they have something that is guiding them towards a change and encouraging them to want to grow. It is shift in mindset to show them a vision of a better future and the benefits of that future. 

So in your organization how are you motivating your Elephant and those of your employees? Can you find ways to “shrink the change” or “grow the people” so that they are motivated to change or is their Elephant getting in the way?

This is a review of the first part of “Switch - How to Change Things When Change is Hard” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. This book describes three major ways to make change happen in any part of your business, organization, or life. They describe the three methods - as directing the Rider (your rational mind), motivating the Elephant (your emotions), and shaping the path (providing guidance on how to get there).

This post will focus on the directing the Rider. The Rider is the rational mind and can often get stuck in “analysis paralysis” when a change is occurring. The Rider might not know how to change or what to do or it could be exhausted from trying so hard to change (and moving past the emotional Elephant) that it loses steam. The rational mind can also get stuck in choosing the short term gain versus the longer term view of things (e.g. - eating chocolate now or losing weight in the long term).

So what do Chip Heath and Dan Heath say about directing the Rider? They say first that you need to find some bright spots or positive examples of when this change has successfully happened in the past. For example when have you been able to implement a successful process or technology change? What were the key components of making that successful? The Heath brothers argue that if you or someone in your organization has been able to do it before then you can do it again. It is like Tony Robbins always says: “Success leaves signs.”

The second way that Chip and Dan Heath say that you can direct the Rider is to give it direction. They say that the best way to get of the analysis of the mind is to envision a future where the change already exists. Lay it that vision in detail and know what that long term looks like and feels like. Then they say to script out the critical moves to get there. If the new vision is a new process change then script out what the old process is, what the new process could be, the gaps, and then first 5-10 ten steps on how to achieve that new process. Then your employees will know exactly what to do in bite size pieces so that they can start to make the change without the rational mind getting in the way.

So what bright spots can you identify in your organization to help you with your current change process? Or what vision are you trying to achieve in your life? And how can you map out the critical steps that you can use to start getting there today?