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 up, and employees start heading for the exits.

Or the lazy leader works four days a week, and barely does anything at all. He comes into the office late, goes out on extended lunches with clients, and leaves early. To add insult to injury, the lazy leader gets paid much more than the employees, yet they do all the work and cover for their boss too. And yet he expects them to come up with exciting new ideas!

Employees get their revenge on sites like Glassdoor. Here’s an entry from an assistant department manager at a major national department store: “Stuck under a lazy manager…. DMs [department managers] are held on a pedestal even though they’re lazy and make their assistants do all of the work for them, including but not limited to merchandising, coaching the team, unloading truck, opening rewards, ringing, helping customers, etc…. They sit in the back texting, playing with their hair, and chit chatting while their assistants and sales team do all of the work that we truly need their help with.”

There’s more, but you get the idea. Is there any respect in this workplace? Hardly. Any innovating? No.

Based on this description, would you—or your college-age kid—want to work there? I’ll bet not.

Innovation Leaders Know…

Innovation is nothing more than a process of consistently doing the daily work. Your number one task is to show up and do it. It’s really pretty simple, when you think about it. Just do your job!

Don’t avoid the tough stuff. Ask yourself every day: “What difficult problem am I avoiding?” Ask to be informed about obstacles. Listen, and work to remove them. Remember that your stakeholders are looking at you to set the example. As Steve Jobs said, “Management is about persuading people to do things they do not want to do, while leadership is about inspiring people to do things they never thought possible.”

Innovation leaders consistently under promise an over perform. They are consistently giving it all they’ve got while concurrently maintaining a healthy work-life balance.