Today’s guest post is by Jeff DeGraff – author of Innovation You (CLICK HERE to get your copy).  You can learn more about him at the end of the post. “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. “ Arthur Schopenhauer Dale Carnegie advised never to talk about religion or politics in public because you never know who you might offend. While I will leave religion to the wise, I would like to tackle the politics of the day for it provides a luminous example of how innovation really works… and doesn’t. So while I may not win friends or influence people, I do hope to use recent exasperating events to illustrate its fundamental dynamics. Case In Point: According to the Congressional Research Service, the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times since March of 1962. However, on the advent of the 75th “adjustment,” it became clear that projections of growth and expenditures by the US Federal Government resulting from myriad of factors, including the Great Recession of 2008, would put the credit rating, and the cost of capital, of the great nation in peril. While the deadline of August 2nd for a new agreement loomed large in the psyche of the world economy, it seemed to have little effect on the über-quibbling of our friendly neighborhood “representatives” who resolved the conflict at the proverbial eleventh hour through Homeric acts of derring-do. Ta-Dah! What, no applause? Whereas this type of “trigger” event is boondoggle for traditional management, it’s a veritable windfall for instigating the nouveauté. Why? Because breakthrough innovation typically occurs in either crisis or exceptional situations.

Today’s post is by Maureen Metcalf – a thoughtLEADERS instructor and author of The Innovative Leadership Fieldbook.  You can learn more about her at the end of this post.  Here’s Maureen: Are your leadership actions impeding innovation?  Are your change initiatives successfully implemented and delivering the benefits you expected?  How is YOUR behavior impacting their ability to delivery results? Many traditional leaders spend more time perfecting their golf swings than they do improving their ability to lead in this current environment.  The most successful leaders continue to improve their leadership skills including the level of self-knowledge and introspection that provides a feedback loop for ongoing improvement. Innovative leadership is the type of leadership that allows already successful leaders to raise the bar on their performance and the performance of their organizations. An innovative leader is defined as someone who consistently delivers results using the following: Strategic leadership that inspires individual goals and organizations vision and cultures; Tactical leadership that influences an individual’s actions and the organizations systems and processes. Holistic Leadership that aligns all key dimensions:  Individual, culture, action and systems. While others differentiate leadership from management this definition includes both because, to fully implement innovative change, the organizational leaders need to both set the strategy and be sufficiently involved in the tactics to ensure innovation and changes happen.  This does not mean micro managing – it means an awareness and involvement in all elements of the innovation and change process. This includes continually growing and evolving leadership capacity and actions, leading and implementing culture and system changes within the organization. Let’s look at an example of a leader who faced a change she had not previously faced in her business.