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 leaders who cared about their people and the customers they served. The problem was they were growing quickly, and as a result their customer service, management systems, and virtually everything was spiraling out of control. The company reached out to us because they were having serious customer service problems and they were quickly losing customers.

We conducted a comprehensive customer experience readiness assessment and discovered that the problem was not customer service, but that bad customer service was actually a symptom of a larger disease. The customer experience problems were symptomatic of what we call scale fail—in other words, the needs of the organization were growing much faster than the capabilities of the organization. Because the organization couldn’t cope with the growing demands placed on it, their team was losing faith in their leaders and all hell was breaking loose. This was actually incredibly sad, because their executive team included some of the coolest people I’ve ever met. They honestly care about their customers and their employees in a real and meaningful way.

The CEO Said, “I’m Sorry—I Was Being an Idiot!”

Once we presented the leadership with the various management system gaps and other mechanical problems, they quickly spring into action and began to fix the problems that were killing their customer relationships and their reputation with their employees.

Once they made the necessary repairs, their incredible leadership team put together a reset conference that included keynote presentations with some of the country’s top leadership experts. With hat in hand, their CEO honestly and openly admitted that they had made mistakes along the way and they intended to not be idiots anymore. The sincerity and lack of excuses was extremely well received by their team, and as a result their organization got back on track and has continued to grow and scale to this day.

Sustained innovation requires toughness, honesty, and the willingness to take a hard look in the mirror. This incredible rebound was made possible by objective self-assessment and a decision to press the innovation leadership reset button.