On Creativity Innovation and Renewal: A Leader to Leader Guide (Frances Hesselbein Leadership Forum) - Softcover

Drucker Foundat, Frances

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0787960675 ISBN 13: 9780787960674

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2002

Synopsis

On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal features the best thinking from top experts on strategic innovation, sparking creativity, and transforming organizations. Written in a concise style that is ideal for the busy executive with little spare time, the book presents a stellar roster of contributors. On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal is one title in the Leader to Leader Guides, which draw from the most compelling articles that have appeared in Leader to Leader, the Drucker Foundation's award-winning journal.

About this title

About the Author

Frances Hesselbein is chairman of the board of governors of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management and editor-in-chief of its journal Leader to Leader. She is also the lead editor for the best-selling Drucker Foundation Future Series. Hesselbein served as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. from 1976 to 1990 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian honor, in 1998.

Rob Johnston is president and CEO of the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management. He was executive producer for Leading in a Time of Change, a 2001 video featuring Peter F. Drucker and Peter M. Senge and for the Nonprofit Leader of the Future video teleconference. He is a senior editor for the Leader to Leader journal, and has contributed a chapter to Enterprising Nonprofits (Wiley, 2001).

From the Back Cover

On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal features the best thinking from top experts on strategic innovation, sparking creativity, and transforming organizations. Written in a concise style that is ideal for the busy executive with little spare time, the book presents a stellar roster of contributors. On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal is one title in the Leader to Leader Guides, which draw from the most compelling articles that have appeared in Leader to Leader, the Drucker Foundation's award-winning journal.

Learn about Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal from these Thought Leaders
John Seely Brown
James Champy
Stephen Jay Gould
Gary Hamel
Frances Hesselbein
Randy Komisar
Dorothy Leonard
Costas Markides
Nigel Nicholson
Harriet Rubin
Patricia B. Seybold
Peter Skarzynski
Walter Swap
Noel Tichy

From the Inside Flap

On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal shows leaders how to establish a workplace environment that encourages creativity and innovation while creating a sense of passion and importance. Part of the Leader to Leader Guides, which offer a wellspring of rich insight and information from top leadership thinkers, it features leading experts on strategic innovation, sparking creativity, and transforming organizations.
Drawn from Leader to Leader, the award-winning journal, On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal brings together Gary Hamel, Stephen Jay Gould, Noel Tichy, John Seely Brown, and other thought leaders to offer practical guidance for those who seek to lead their companies through organizational change. The book addresses such key issues as the need to focus on the customer and the necessity of building community within the enterprise while strengthening the organization's position in the community beyond its walls.
Each of the four volumes in the Leader to Leader Guides-On Mission and Leadership, On Leading Change, On High-Performance Organizations, and On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal -- is organized around an essential topic with a diversity of views presented in clear, short chapters. These essential collections provide leaders with insight and inspiration to take their organizations to new levels of excellence.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewal

A Leader to Leader GuideBy Frances Hesselbein Rob Johnston

John Wiley & Sons

ISBN: 0-7879-6067-5

Chapter One

When the Roll Is Called in 2010 Frances Hesselbein

To be sustainable, an organization must scan its environment to identify major trends; review its mission and refine it to reflect changes in the environment; abandon outdated views and practices; develop strategic goals that embody its desired future, based on its mission and values; and measure performance based on these. It must cultivate innovation; finance the few initiatives that will make a difference; deploy resources where they will have the most impact; refine communication; provide continuous learning opportunities; initiate job rotation and expansion; create a marketing mind-set; listen to the customer; and recognize technology as a tool, not a driver. It must create dispersed, fluid leadership; facilitate leadership development and transition; focus on strengths rather than weaknesses; increase diversity; form strategic partnerships; and contribute to the community.

I was struggling to write this article about what leaders and organizations must do, today, to be viable and relevant 10 years from now. I told Rob Johnston, our president, that I thought the title would be "When the Roll Is Called in 2010." He left and shortly returned to my office with a Web site printout of a great old hymn I remember from my Methodist Sunday School days: "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder, I'll Be There." That wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

My concern is with how our actions today shape our legacy. Building a sustainable organization is one of a leader's primary responsibilities. When the challenges of today have been met, will your organization have the vigor to grow tomorrow? When the roll is called in 2010, will your organization be present?

Few social observers project that the years 2001-2010 will be easy ones for organizations in the public, private, and social sectors. Instead, tenuous, turbulent, and tough are the descriptors I hear when thought leaders evoke the future. But inclusive, wide open, and promising are part of the picture as well.

To meet the challenges and opportunities of the years to come requires hard work. My checklist-not for survival but for a successful journey to 2010-includes the following points:

  Revisiting the mission in 2003, 2006, and 2009, each time refining or amending it so that it reflects shifts in the environment and the changing needs of changing customers as part of a formal self-assessment process.

  Mobilizing the total organization around mission, until everyone including the newest secretary and the worker on the loading dock can tell you the mission of the enterprise -why it does what it does, its reason for being, its purpose.

  Developing no more than five powerful strategic goals that, together, are the board's vision of the desired future of the organization.

  Focusing on those few initiatives that will make a difference -not skimming the surface of an overstuffed list of priorities. Focus is key.

  Deploying people and allocating resources where they will have an impact, that is, only where they can further the mission and achieve the few powerful goals.

  Practicing Peter Drucker's "planned abandonment": jettisoning current policies, practices, and assumptions as soon as it becomes clear they will have little relevance in the future.

  Navigating the many streams of venture philanthropy, whether gearing up for the "ask" or as a philanthropist seeking to make an investment in changing the lives of people by partnering with a social sector organization.

  Expanding the definition of communication from saying something to being heard.

  Providing board members and the entire staff and workforce with carefully planned continuing learning opportunities designed to increase the capacity and unleash the creative energy of the people of the organization.

  Developing the leadership mind-set that embraces innovation as a life force, not as a technological improvement.

  Adopting Peter Drucker's definition: Innovation is change that creates a new dimension of performance.

  Structuring the finances of the organization-whether as seeker or funder in the social sector, business, or government -so that income streams are focused on the few great initiatives that will change lives, build community, and make a measurable difference.

  Transforming performance measurement into a management imperative that moves beyond the old forms and assumptions and toward creative and inclusive approaches to "measuring what we value and valuing what we measure."

  Scanning the environment and identifying major trends and implications for the organization in preparation for riding the wave of rapidly changing demographics.

  Building a mission-focused, values-based, demographics-driven organization.

  Planning for leadership transition in a thoughtful way. Leaving well and at the right moment is one of the greatest gifts a leader can give to the organization.

  Grooming successors-not a chosen one but a pool of gifted potential leaders. This is part of the leader's daily challenges.

  Making job rotation and job expansion into widespread organizational practices that are part of planning for the future.

  Dispersing the tasks of leadership across the organization until there are leaders at every level and dispersed leadership is the reality.

  Leading from the front, with leaders the embodiment of the mission and values in thinking, action, and communication.

  Recognizing technology not as driver but as tool. Changing the technology as needs change, not changing needs and style to match the tool. Shaping the future, not being shaped by it.

  Permeating every job, every plan with a marketing mindset. Marketing means being close to the customer and listening and responding to what the customer values.

  Building on strengths instead of dwelling on weaknesses until the organization has succeeded in, as Peter Drucker says, "making the strengths of our people effective and their weaknesses irrelevant."

  Throwing out the old hierarchy and building flexible, fluid, circular management systems with inclusive leadership language to match.

  Allocating funds for leadership development opportunities and resources for all the people of the enterprise.

  Developing the richly diverse organization so that board, management team, staff, employees, faculty, administration, and all communications materials reflect the diversity of the community, and we can respond with a resounding yes to the critical question: "When they look at us, can they find themselves?"

  Making every leader-every person who directs the work of others-accountable for building the richly diverse team, group, or organization.

  Keying individual performance appraisals to organizational performance.

  Governance is governance. Management is management. Sharply differentiating between the two by delineating clear roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities, resulting in a partnership of mutual trust and purpose. Building the partnership on open communication, adopting the philosophy of no surprises.

  Using a common leadership and management language within the organization and beyond with people and organizations in all three sectors around the world.

  Leading beyond the walls of the enterprise and building the organization's share of the healthy, cohesive community. Forming partnerships, alliances, and collaborations that spell synergy, success, and significance.

  This checklist for viability is only a beginning. Changing circumstances will require additions as new challenges arise, and deletions where needs have been met. New customers must be welcomed as we move beyond the old walls both physically and psychologically.

  Tomorrow may be tenuous for the leader and organization of the future, but the message is clear and powerful: Managing for mission, innovation, and diversity will sustain us and those we serve on the long journey to 2010.

Chapter Two

Innovation

The New Route to New Wealth

Gary Hamel and Peter Skarzynski

Strategic life cycles are becoming shorter, and organizations that do not seek new opportunities will not succeed. By paying attention to demographics, changing technology, and consumer habits, organizations can sense needs that consumers have yet to articulate and develop new business models. Consciously creating an innovative environment involves recognizing that innovation and strategic insight don't result from corporate schedules, diversity of ideas exists across the organizational system, people need to feel safe in order to express divergent ideas, and there must be mechanisms to move from ideas to action.

Where does new wealth come from? Like a four-year-old's curiosity about how babies are born, it's a deceptively direct question that often disarms our capacity to answer. To be sure, we're ready with pat responses peppered with references to return on investment, return on net assets, and economic value added, but these measures tell us more about how revenues are rearranged than about how they're created anew. After all, we're not talking about market share sliced loose from a competitor or revenues boosted by an acquisitions binge-but truly new wealth: revenues from new customers buying products or services that yesterday they didn't know they needed and today can't live without.

Creating new wealth requires more than simply responding to market demand. Think about some of the path-breaking products of the past few decades. No car buyers walked into Chrysler dealerships in 1983 saying that what they really wanted was a van mounted on a car chassis with folding seats-and don't forget some cupholders. No customers told Sony the only thing wrong with its tape players was that you couldn't strap one on your head. Neither the BBC nor any of the Big Three U.S. TV networks saw a market for 24-hour news; it took a renegade named Turner operating out of Atlanta to wed three developments-the shoulder-held minicam, more affordable access to satellite transmission, and the fact that people no longer make it home in time for the six o'clock news-into the concept of a continuous news format. Innovations like the minivan, the Walkman, and CNN succeeded not because they responded to market need but because they created a need consumers had yet to sense themselves.

All of which attests to the fact that in the New Economy, the greatest rewards go to companies that create new business models -ideas that spark new sources of revenue based on changing technology, demographics, and consumer habits. By definition, new business models destroy old ones, which is why creating new wealth is a threat to every traditional, unimaginative business. Never before have strategy life cycles been shorter and has market leadership counted for less. Call it the First Law of the Innovation Economy: Companies that are not constantly pursuing innovation will soon be overwhelmed by it. Strategy innovation is the only way to deal with discontinuous-and disruptive-change.

The Innovation Imperative

Some companies seem to understand the innovation imperative instinctively. Consider Charles Schwab's daring plunge into the online unknown: When the bricks-and-mortar broker took the view that online trading was inevitable, it faced a choice between leading the brokerage industry to the future or being a victim of some dot-com start-up that got there first. Thus, on the fateful day in 1995 when a technology team within Schwab presented a demo of what the Web could do, senior managers almost instantly recognized how the Internet could make life better for Schwab customers. Schwab invested in the Web even before it realized it would face aggressive price-based competition from other Web brokers. By committing to the goal-and pursuing it through a series of low-risk experiments-Schwab was able to establish a dominant position in the online trading world.

Today, Schwab controls some 30 percent of all the stock trading that takes place on the Web. Even more impressive, Schwab's market capitalization-$3.5 billion in 1995, less than half that of Merrill Lynch-has now pulled even with Merrill's, which instead of engaging the Internet, pursued until recently a policy of digital denial.

You're Never Too Old to Innovate

Schwab is not an upstart. And innovation isn't the special preserve of Internet upstarts or the denizens of the dot-com motels of Silicon Valley. In fact, innovation can happen at any company, regardless of its line of business, age, or location.

Can a century-old company learn to innovate like an industry ingenue? The answer is yes-provided the company is willing to examine its orthodoxies, abandon its strategy-by-habit ways, and engage its employees broadly and deeply in the effort to envision the new markets and new opportunities that promise new wealth.

Consider the experience of PECO Energy Corporation-the old Philadelphia Electric Company. Founded in 1881, PECO had operated for its entire existence within the public utility paradigm, with a regulatory strategy that brought it significant success. In June 1997, however, the company was looking to transform its regulatory strategy to fit the dawning deregulated environment.

Working to examine its hidden assumptions, PECO uncovered a core competency in operating large, mission-critical infrastructure-a competency honed in time of crisis a decade earlier when PECO grappled with bringing its own Peach Bottom nuclear plant into federal compliance. PECO emerged from the Peach Bottom process with a proven ability to bring "problem plants" to high-capacity performance with low operating costs. As a result, where other companies saw liabilities, PECO saw opportunity.

Continues...

Excerpted from On Creativity, Innovation, and Renewalby Frances Hesselbein Rob Johnston Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0787960675
• ISBN 13: 9780787960674
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180