Chapter 48 Chapter 48 Don't always walk on the old road

Continuous innovation and forge ahead are the essential characteristics of leadership.Innovation is the source of vitality of an enterprise. The comprehensiveness, complexity, and variability of leadership work itself determine that leadership work must be a creative activity.Being content with the status quo will definitely be eliminated by the rapidly changing situation. Leaders must be willing to forge ahead and be innovative in order to be called true leaders. The drive to lead innovation comes from a commanding mind and a desire to be new.Leaders should be good at observation, good at thinking, and be good at discovering problems beyond ordinary people in life and management work, making judgments and predicting the future, and finding ways and means to solve problems in time.An excellent leader, no matter in terms of production technology, operation management or institutional organization, must constantly innovate and be at the forefront of the times.

A person who does not have a sense of innovation will not be an excellent business leader.Throughout the history of industrial economic development, we can hardly find business leaders who did not innovate and were truly successful. All business leaders who have achieved success and made outstanding achievements are all full of innovative spirit and unremittingly carry out innovative activities. Proven by countless facts. Swedish management authorities Lied Staley and Nordslam believe that in today's vast market economy, it is becoming more and more difficult to make yourself different. “The vast majority of what your business does can be obtained from other people. There is only one way to solve this problem: do things in the world that have not been seen before. Innovate, and you can stay different for a while, keep unrivaled competitiveness".

The northern pike is a large freshwater fish that feeds on other fish.A glass tank was divided in half by a glass plate, a northern pike was placed in one half of the glass tank, and many small fish were placed in the other half of the glass tank.The northern pike kept trying to grab smaller fish, but each time it hit the glass partition and got a very painful bump on its nose.When the glass partition was carefully removed, all the fish could swim in the tank, but the northern pike did not attack or prey on these small fish.Because it already knew that attacking these small fish would not only be unsuccessful, but also very painful, so it didn't try again. "Pike syndrome" is derived from this story, and it refers to an inability to adapt to changing circumstances, falsely believing that the situation is fully understood.

Some leaders are often like this northern pike, every time they deal with a problem, they will apply the accumulated experience to this problem.This mental baggage prevents them from embracing innovative ideas and instead simply doing what they have always done, leaving the organization stuck in their standard operating model.Instead of spending time finding a better model, a better way to work, they try to make the current model work better.As an authority on management, Gary Hamel put it this way: "Many companies know how to improve continuously, but not innovate intermittently. They know how to do better, but they don't know how to be different. "

To break out of a stereotype, try a new idea. In the early 20th century, all stores were places where shop assistants served customers.When the customer comes to the counter, the clerk takes out the items the customer needs.In the 1920s, a man named Michael Cullen took a completely different view.He asked a question like this: What if we reversed the store and let customers pick up the items they need, and then they paid at the end? No doubt there are many who object to this view. "Customers want service, they don't want to do all the work themselves." "Everything has to be priced." "Customers will get confused if there's no clerk to help them." "You have people milling around the back of the warehouse Go, what will happen?"

However, Cullen persisted in this view and created the world's first supermarket, the King Cullen store in New Jersey. What a simple idea—and yet such an effective one!The mere perspective of making customers serve themselves has changed not only our stores, but the layout of our towns - old streets filled with small shops have been replaced by large self-service supermarkets. One of the biggest problems with the established education system is that there is only one correct answer to almost every question it teaches.Exams with multiple-choice questions make it even more difficult for students to choose the only correct answer and avoid choosing three wrong answers.So when our students leave school, they're stuck in a pattern that tells them that just finding the "right answer" will solve the problem.Unfortunately, this is not the case.For almost every problem, there are multiple solutions.As a leader you have to move away from this model of school and into a way of always looking for more and better answers.

It is natural for business leaders to focus on improving efficiency and streamlining current processes because it is clear that "we can do our job better."Improving efficiency is necessary, but not sufficient.If you make horse-drawn carts, it doesn't matter how much you increase efficiency, because cars will stop you from making horse-drawn carts.If you make gas lamps, and focus on improving production, it won't do much, because electric lights will make your gas lamps obsolete.If you make compact discs, it doesn't matter how much time you spend improving quality, because compact discs will put you out of business.If you make typewriters, it doesn't matter how much you improve the operation of the mechanics, because electronic document processors will make your business fail.

The message here is that innovation beats efficiency.You have to improve the work you're doing, but you also have to find new and better ways to do it. The innovative leader must question every aspect of the business like a consultant or a new employee on their first day at the company.The longer you work in the unit, the harder it is to do this.On the first day at work, we ask many questions - why are we doing this?How do we make it happen?What is its purpose?what does it meanThe longer we are at work, the fewer questions we ask and the more complacent we become.You have to keep asking basic questions and listen carefully to the answers.If you ask the same question to different people at different times, you'll get different responses—responses that can provide clues about the change.It's better to ask more probing questions and listen more carefully so you can understand more deeply.

In 1985, Intel's main business was making memory chips, but fierce competition from Japan made memory a commodity with thin margins.Intel founders Andy Grove and Gordon Moore sat down to ask themselves some tough questions. “If we were kicked off the board and they brought in a new CEO,” Grove said, “what do you think he would do?” Moore's answer was "withdraw from the memory market." This point of view makes them plan to shift from the memory chip market to the processor chip design and manufacturing business with more added value.In order for them to think like a newly appointed team, Grove and Moore mentally fired themselves.They step out of the shadow of their former roles and see themselves as new appointees to the job.By asking these kinds of questions and solving them, Grove and Moore made the shift that transformed the business.

In order to change the trend of the company's low-speed decline in revenue for several years, a large pen company has appointed a new vice president of marketing."What business are we in?" the new vice president asked subordinates at a manager's meeting. His colleagues looked at him dismissively and said, "We know what kind of business we're in - the pen business". "I don't think so," he replied, "I've been asking why customers buy our pens, and now I know they don't buy our products as pens, but as gifts. When When someone retires from the office, when a son or daughter graduates from college, or when it's given to a dad as a Christmas present - our pens are given as gifts. We're not in the pen business, we're in the gift business. We Our pricing, promotions, distribution and marketing strategies should be changed to accommodate this."

Then they did, and it was a huge success. Sometimes, a person's ideas are limited, if you can make your team members have innovative spirit, then your organization will be full of vitality.Everyone has a creative spark within them, and the job of a leader is to inspire people and enable them to unleash that spark.In a small team, people can inspire each other, and one idea of ​​one person can inspire several ideas in others.The great inventor Edison did not create everything alone, he had a team of 14 assistants around him. To build an innovative team, each employee must feel that he is a business leader who can contribute ideas and solutions.Every point of view, no matter how stupid, is welcomed because it has been accepted that bad points of view inspire good points of view.It is important that senior leaders and "experts" do not criticize new ideas or judge them unduly.If they demonstrate their superiority by criticizing other viewpoints, they choke off the fountain of the bright fountain of the future. You have to encourage people to volunteer their ideas.A good way to do this is to present a challenge to a small team, a department, or the entire organization.We have an urgent problem and we need your help to come up with a good solution.When someone develops a point of view and ultimately brings about an innovation, they must be recognized, praised and rewarded.Words are quick to show that good ideas are welcome, crazy ideas are not ridiculed, and that everyone has something to contribute to making the organization more successful. Google has innovated to become the foremost Internet search engine.Where did it get this view?Naturally, it is from its employees. Google needs new ideas to emerge continuously, so employees from all departments are encouraged to contribute their ideas to internal pages. "We never say, 'This group should innovate and everyone else just does their job,'" says Johnson Rosenberg, vice president of product management. "Everyone spends some of their day on research and development".They found that even employees who would normally be afraid to voice their opinions in meetings were happy to voice their opinions on the internal Web page.The best ideas are discussed at the Friday meeting, where each person has up to 10 minutes to present the most promising ideas.Meetings are shorter and action-oriented.Often the person who makes a point of view will be empowered to turn that point of view into reality. To be truly creative requires encouraging people to come up with lots of ideas, then whittle them down to just a few and test them one by one.To make your organization more innovative, you must increase the volume, and then gain from the volume.Why do we need more views?Because when you start to come up with ideas, you come up with obvious, easy answers.As you collect more and more ideas, you get more wacky, crazy, creative ideas -- ideas that lead to really advanced solutions. If leaders do everything right, the spirit of leadership permeates the organization, leading to innovation.But why didn't it happen?Many CEOs, chairmen, vice presidents and directors are aware of the need for their businesses to be more creative and produce or offer a wide range of innovative products and services.Yet they don't pay enough attention to the training or methods that make innovation happen.Worse, they may not be aware of the many practices in their operations that stifle idea generation, which keeps innovation from being born.Here are some of the most common mistakes, and they are all important ways to kill creativity. 1. Criticism No matter what new idea you hear, your first instinct is to criticize it, point out some of its shortcomings and shortcomings, and thus suppress it.The more experienced and smarter you are, the easier it is to find gaps in other people's perspectives.Deca Records didn't embrace the Beatles, IBM rejected the idea of ​​photocopying that later led to Xerox, Data Equipment didn't embrace the concept of the spreadsheet, many large publishers rejected the Harry Potter novels, and so on.Now, the same thing is happening in many organizations. New ideas are often only partially formed, not fully thought through, and are therefore easily dismissed as bad ideas.They are different from the narrow view of our current focus in the enterprise, so it is easy to brush them aside.But there really isn't a bad point of view.Bad ideas are often the starting point for good ideas.Every organization needs a lot of bad, stupid, crazy ideas out of which we can refine some of these concepts to become effective innovations. Leaders should remember: Whenever someone presents you with a point of view and you criticize him, it will prevent the person from making more suggestions.Because it sends the message that new ideas are unwelcome, and those who volunteer them risk criticism or ridicule.This approach is also bound to stifle the creative spirit of your employees. 2. Neglecting Brainstorming Some leaders see brainstorming as old-fashioned, outdated, but a good brainstorm is still one of the best ways to generate ideas, and it involves employees at all levels.If your organization isn't having regular brainstorming sessions to find creative solutions, you're missing out on a huge opportunity to find new ideas, and you're sending the message to your employees that their ideas don't matter. It is not necessary.Your brainstorming sessions should be short and maintain a high level of energy.They should have a clear goal and make a lot of points about it.They should be appointed by an enthusiastic authority who encourages the presentation of ideas and who assures that they will not be critical and judgmental from the outset. 3. Backlog of issues Some leaders have a manly notion that supervisors and senior leaders should take responsibility for solving all important problems in the company.For ordinary employees, strategic issues are too complex and too high-level to reach.In addition, they also have a fear that if the employees below know some of the strategic challenges facing the company, they will feel insecure and threatened. Instead, people at lower levels of the organization are often closer to customers and can see what's working and what's not.They can be very acutely aware of what's going on.If you engage them, give them a challenge, and ask them to help find solutions, then you will find a very rich source of perspective and a sense of shared purpose.You'll make better decisions, and employees are more likely to accept the perspectives they contributed to than simply accept tasks passed down from the top. 4. Overwork Long hours of hard work are often associated with a focus on efficiency.The problem here is that people think that hard work alone will solve the problem.What we often need is to find a different approach to a problem, rather than just working harder on the original approach to the problem. If you're all focused on doing things the old way, and devoting all your time to making that work, how will you have time to try new ways to achieve your goals?If you've been making gas lamps all day, busy making more lamps, you won't have time to learn about electricity and study lamps.In our day jobs, there needs to be time for fun, for some out-of-the-box thinking, for some crazy ideas, and for testing some new proposals. 5. Not in the plan "We're not going to try that idea because it's not in our plan, and we haven't budgeted for it." Organizations that detail budgets and then implement plans put themselves in a bind.They limit themselves to the picture of the world that the planners saw when they conceived the plan.Markets and needs change so quickly that what we saw last week may well be outdated today.So how could the plan we made last December be accurate?Corporate plans should use loose frameworks as guiding outlines rather than detailed roadmaps.Changing market conditions, emerging threats and opportunities, and future experimentation must be taken into account.Planning should not be a hiding place for unimaginative leaders. 6. Promote from within In general, promoting from within is a good sign.It helps retain top talent, and employees see rewards for loyalty and hard work.However, if all managers are promoted from within, it means that they all grew up in the same culture, which is "inbreeding", it is difficult to see the flaws and shortcomings in your work, it is difficult to See the business through the eyes of an outsider.You end up with a "this is the way we do things here" attitude - inhibiting change versus inhibiting breakthrough. Fresh blood on the management team helps you see other ways of doing things.When you're hiring, don't just look for those who are "the right" and who align with the company model, look for those who are different and have the courage to bring a different perspective into the organization. 7. Hand over innovative projects to the production department A common mistake in large organizations is to hand over innovation projects to existing line managers who are also responsible for the day-to-day business.It seems to be a natural thing to do this, but generally speaking, it has a fatal disadvantage: new products or services are like fragile seedlings, which should have been cultivated in the greenhouse until they are stronger. They cannot be left to fend for themselves.The day-to-day business manager is too busy meeting monthly goals to give the pilot business the care it needs.It is better to entrust the care of seedlings to special departments, sometimes referred to as innovation incubators.This type of department has different goals and objectives, operates over a longer period of time, and is headed by an innovation executive with high authority in the organization.