Stress can kill you. Literally. While the image of the tough-talking, high-powered boss may be appealing in the movies, in real life your body is a finely tuned machine. Chronic stress can wreak significant physical damage that can shorten your life. And if you’re...

Since ancient times, the merits of humility in a leader have been extolled by people who know a thing or two about leadership. As the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu wrote 1,500 years ago, “I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness;...

In the past twenty years the process of reaching your customers and interacting with them has undergone a massive change, and it’s still changing. Before the digital revolution, connecting with potential customers was a hit-or-miss proposition. By sending advertising...

Every innovation leader needs to periodically step back and assess how they’re doing in relation to their colleagues, their competitors, and especially to the standards they’ve set for themselves. Personally I do this twice a year. I’ve found it really helps me stay...

What’s the “Osborne Effect?” It’s a particularly tragic story of a self-imposed disaster that could have been avoided by the innovator getting out of the echo chamber and basing business decisions on reality, not over-exuberant fantasy. It demonstrates that innovation...

Again I return to the nagging yet very important question: How do your employees feel about your leadership? What’s the best way to obtain an accurate impression? This is a tricky question. Let’s say Susan is an employee, and you give her a survey that asks, “Rate...

These days, there’s an online test for nearly every facet of human behavior, and your skill as an inovation leader is no exception. These tests all have a similar structure. First, they ask you a series of multiple-choice questions designed to reveal various facets of...

When managers or innovation leaders need to receive a 360 review, the organization may hire external consultants to administer the surveys. The consultants then analyze and share the data with the leader, and in some cases with the managers and staff. Ideally, the...

The question every innovation leader should grapple with is, “How am I doing?” Sure, you’ve got key performance metrics like revenues and market share that you can use and are also used by analysts and investors to judge your performance. And of course the one metric...

I’ve discovered that the most successful innovation leaders have yearly or twice-yearly leadership checkpoints. We were recently engaged by an organization that delivered innovative services to the automotive industry. The organization was comprised of really great...

Imagine, if you will, that you’re getting ready for a significant social or business event to be held in the evening. Perhaps it’s an award program or the capstone event at a conference. You’re the guest of honor, and all eyes will be upon you. You need to be...

The preening boss loves the trappings of power and prestige. He or she wants the biggest office, the most luxurious limousine, the newest private jet, the most expensive paintings on the wall. Such bosses justify their behavior by asserting that their display is...

This blog post is about earning the respect of your colleagues and subordinates. The clueless leader may assume that the best way to get his people to respect him is to be “tough” and “push them hard.” He thinks bosses who are “soft” are not respected. It reality,...

There is an old adage that says, “You should never get your honey where you get your money.” Your work is not Match.com. Keep your love life outside the building. This is especially true if the person you’re interested in is your subordinate. To this I say one thing:...

Instead of pitching in themselves, lazy leaders dump the responsibility for innovation onto their subordinates. This can lead to low morale from overworked and under-appreciated employees. Before long, the entire organization’s productivity plummets, innovation dries...

This sounds obvious, but honesty requires all of the components of integrity. If honesty isn’t part of your individual DNA, you will fail. There are many ways a leader can be dishonest. Some are small and some are big, but all are bad. A few could land you in prison....

The day you stop learning new things about the world and your work, you might as well go to bed and stay there, because you’re not going to be an innovation leader. Frankly, the benefits of lifelong learning are so obvious that I’m not going to list them all here. I...

In their pursuit of innovation, your employees and stakeholders want clarity and consistency of values, procedures, and evaluations. They trust you to set the course and stick to it. Being flexible does not mean you change direction like a leaf in the wind. If you’re...

In many ways your work colleagues are your customers, and you need to give them a reason to want to work with you every day. When it comes to respect, you reap what you sow. Expecting anyone to respect you when you’re disrespecting them is an exercise in futility. Bad...

While innovation is an activity where success is never guaranteed, saying you’re going to do something or achieve something and then failing to take action and deliver results will kill your reputation. When you promise something that you don’t deliver, your...

Saying one thing to one person and something else to another in order to gain favor or advantage will kill your reputation and stifle innovation. Eric Schiffer, chairman of Reputation Management Consultants.com, said that such double-talk chips away at how others...

I’ve seen gossip kill the reputation of so many leaders, yet it’s incredibly predominant. This is the ironclad rule of gossip: If you tell Jones what stupid thing Smith did, then Jones will conclude that you’ll turn around and tell Smith something terrible about...

Innovations don’t have to be new inventions or breakthrough products. You can innovate in how you treat your stakeholders—your employees, customers, vendors, investors. Here are five key tips for keeping the innovative edge in stakeholder experience.   Know the...

When relating to your employees, do you lump them all into the same personality basket? Do you expect each of them to respond to your leadership the same way? If yes, you might want to rethink that strategy. Consider a company we’ll call Fizz Beverages, Inc. Based in...

To become and remain an innovation leader, be sure to focus on these four key personal attributes. When you have them, you’ll be much more likely to stay ahead of the innovation curve—and your organization will be all the more profitable. 1. Develop a Keen Inward...

We recommend our clients go through the process of ideation to identify the various personas of the key innovators working within their organization. This is a custom process. It’s not one-size-fits-all. In all their myriad behaviors, dreams, and expectations, humans...

Instead of clinging to old-fashioned demographic stereotypes, innovative employers see each person as an individual. They don’t make the catastrophic mistake of putting their employees into crude generational boxes labeled “Baby Boomers,” “Millennials,” or “Gen Xers.”...

In bricks-and-mortar retail, a key number is the dollar amount of sales per square foot of usable store area. In retail stores, the average sales per square foot is $325 per year. Data from eMarketer and CoStar say Apple is America’s most productive retailer, with...

When Steve Jobs died in 2011, many investors wondered how the company could continue without his singular presence. But others knew better. As Eric Jackson wrote in The Street in 2012, shortly after the death of Jobs, “Apple could have the most amazing management team...

If human employees were robots who instantly followed commands from the singular controlling entity, then the top-down model would be the most agile; and if the all-powerful leader were endowed with perfect abilities and flawless judgment, the organization would stay...

Innovations aren’t always amazing inventions or new products. In many cases, the most powerful innovations are internal, and which affect or transform the way an organization operates. This includes the delicate relationship between a leader and his or her employees....

It’s easy to think of innovation as happening only in a trendy Silicon Valley or Brooklyn startup, where kids ride bicycles to work and appear to be thinking about stuff that may become real ten years from now. In fact, meaningful innovation can happen in every type...

Because of the increasing pace of business innovation, the need to adapt is becoming more urgent. As Martin Reeves and Mike Deimler wrote in “Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage” for the Harvard Business Review, in the past thirty years the volatility of...

Both discomfort and its more intense cousin, disruption, are forces that you can leverage and ride, just like a surfer rides a powerful wave. They can propel you forward and give you an exhilarating ride with high-fives all around when you hit the beach, or they can...

Disruption is commonly defined as a “disturbance or problems that interrupt an event, activity, or process.” Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, wrote that successful, outstanding “incumbent” companies can do everything right and yet still lose...

Adaptation is usually triggered by some irritant or threat. Discomfort, disruption, and destruction are what drive an organization to adapt. If these forces did not exist, then nothing would change, year after year. But that’s not the way the world works—especially...

In the dictionary, to adapt means to adjust to changing requirements or conditions, whether internal or external. In business, it means to not merely adjust to but to embrace changing conditions. To leverage change to your advantage. To bake it into your organization...

You can enhance innovation in your organization by creating employee engagement programs. They can work if they’re accessible, action-oriented, and authentic. As the Aberdeen Group found in their 2015 report, companies with effective and consistent employee engagement...

It’s one thing to make a state visit to your front-line employees, like the Queen of England inspecting her household staff before a big party. It’s quite another thing to actually get down into the trenches or, if that’s not possible, get unfiltered feedback and...

You’ve probably seen the TV show where the CEO dons a wig, makeup, and funky clothes, and goes to work for a day at one of his or her stores, or a company warehouse, or at a franchise. We see the boss interacting with a variety of front-line employees, some of whom...

This equation is very simple. In the marketplace of today—where innovation is accelerating and disruption deepening—the winning leader needs to connect with his or her stakeholders on three levels: with intellect, emotions, and aspirations. Let’s look at each of the...

It may have been true that even a decade ago, a successful leader could have been a technocrat, well versed in one facet of the business, who could depend on external reports and data inputs to fill in the gaps and make up for the fact that he or she was functionally...

Ask the typical CEO if he or she is connected to the company’s top stakeholders—the executives, board members, big shareholders, and vendors—and they’re likely to reply, “Of course I’m connected to them! What a ridiculous question!” When you probe a little deeper, you...

Our family pet is a French bulldog. His name is Lucky. In their behavior, dogs of this breed are somewhat like houseplants: They don’t like to be too hot, too cold, or really too anything. They are known for range of common ailments, and as a result we spend an...

No matter how you seek to inspire through communication—with words, your appearance, or even with art or music—you need to address what people really need. People will respond most powerfully to what they value right now on the deepest level. This was brilliantly...

Words are things – Maya Angelou   There is perhaps nothing I find more surprising than the fact that many leaders are incredibly careless about the way in which they use language, particularly when it comes to innovation and new ideas. In its most simple terms,...

We don’t make mistakes. We just have happy accidents - Bob Ross Not everyone who innovates—and makes a difference to peoples’ lives—is an entrepreneur or chief innovation officer of a high-tech company. Here’s a true story that showed me just one of the many aspects...

Here are a few examples of innovation leaders who consistently have stayed, or did stay, one step ahead of their competitors by inspiring those around them. They’re all very different people! Some are “high profile,” while others are low key. With LeaderLogic, there’s...

Notice in the title I used the word “earn.” I did not say “deserve,” or “are entitled to,” or “should expect.” Any leader who struts around and expects to be respected just because of the nameplate on their door, or the view from their corner office, is making a big...

H.G. Wells once wrote: “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.” The renowned science fiction author may have been talking about the future of humanity, but winning leaders understand exactly what he was saying. In business, change is the...