S11E18: The Leader-Innovator: Why innovation is no longer a nice-to-have but a fundamental requirement for modern leadership

Speaker A: Welcome to the Rethink Leadership Podcast with me, Jeremy Blaine. I interview leaders, experts and business professionals from around the world who are bringing leadership principles and know how into the digitally driven 21st century workplace. With focus firmly on the how to rather than the what. Each episode is in aid of a charity chosen by my guests and since 2020 we've made donations to over 80 global and local causes. Welcome to the Rethink Leadership Podcast with my guest, Tom Pullen, the award winning author of innovator M&CEO of Invinco, a uh, company that helps large corporations to maximize business growth by accelerating innovation. Since founding Invinco in 2017, Tom has helped over 30 of the world's leading companies to accelerate innovation performance, including Coca Cola, Toyota, Unilever and many more. In this deep dive, Tom helps us dismantle the myth m that innovation belongs in a lab or a specialized department. As the pace of market transformation accelerates, we explore how to bridge the gap between high level strategy, leadership, sponsorship and grassroots creativity to experiment, innovate and make it happen at all levels. With the full support of management. This episode is in aid at the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's charity in London uk as a thank you to Tom for joining specifically to an initiative established by a friend of Tom's who raised over £350,000 for Great Ormond Street Hospital in memory of her daughter.

Speaker B: Tom, thank you very much for joining me. Please introduce yourself and your expertise.

Speaker C: So great to be here. Uh, my name is Tom Pullen. I the uh, corporate guy really. So I spent 18 years on the corporate side working for wonderful companies, uh, such as Boots, uh, Mars and Danone. And it was actually at Danone that I found a passion for innovation so driving growth through new products and services and ended up spending six years there as the global Innovation Director and then decided I wanted to go and uh, take that expertise elsewhere and work on different industries, different categories. So went to do a quick executive mba, uh, one of Europe's leading business schools and then set uh, up the company that uh, I run. And we uh, work with about 30 different uh, corporations across all industries all around the world.

Speaker B: Wow, great. And all with innovation at the heart of it, which is the topic for today. Right. And I know exactly you assert that innovations a fundamental leadership capability in the fast paced transformational workplace that we are. Why is that, Tom?

Speaker C: Um, so innovation's kind of magic within a business. Right? So if you think about what innovation does, why it's so important, you know, first and foremost it helps companies to Adjust to the context which is changing around them. So if you think of your business as being kind of here and tomorrow the world is here, then innovation is kind of the bridge between those two things. You've also got everything that it delivers on. Company growth, the strengthening of company culture, the competitive advantage versus all those people who are grabbing at your heels. And um, really, I guess, especially in today's world, it's also a massive way to attract people to come and want to collaborate with you, whether that's as employees or as kind of partner organizations who you could work with in order to make your business grow.

Speaker B: Yes, I'd agree with that. So in that same sentiment then, is innovation an all level activity or is it fundamental to leadership in your view?

Speaker C: Oh, uh, 100% all level. Because yes, leaders have to do innovation for all of those reasons we just talked about, because they're responsible for growth, they're responsible for company culture, they're responsible for being uh, competitively advantaged. But they obviously can't do it alone and they need the teams to operate within that kind of same mindset. Ideally within a culture that's been built from the leadership down.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And it's funny, isn't it, how many of these things boil down to culture and bringing people along with you. So based on what you've just said then, Tom, um, what are those common cultural barriers, let's call them, that leaders face when shifting innovation from either the purview of the C suite or specialists in the organization to the company wide capability?

Speaker C: So I think there are really two. I think the first one is that we're talking about humans, right? Humans and organizations. And humans typically don't like risk. And I think that's especially exaggerated if you're working in a large organization where firstly you want to progress through the organization and um, secondly, where you kind of know you're going to get paid anyway, right? You're kind of normally in quite a comfortable position. So putting a risky activity into that mix where you maybe don't have to is sometimes creating a rod for your own back that you don't need. And let's be honest, in a lot of companies today still, um, when innovation goes wrong, there's still a little bit of finger pointing. And so there is an inherent danger attached to being the person who tries to shift things within an organization and tries to launch things that actually may, uh, not work when they hit market. So risk is one thing. One of the things that I found in order to really try and remove Some of that risk from people, especially, uh, below the C suite, is really to focus on kind of really positive behaviors that put them more in the posture of an innovator. So instead of saying you must do it and it's risky, why not let's work together on building your behaviors such that innovation's more likely to happen. And actually, um, in the book I talk a little bit about, uh, there being five core behaviors, actually call them the innovator score behaviors, which we really use, especially in levels below the C suite, to say if you behave a little bit more in this way, then you're going to be more innovative in your job, regardless of which function you're in and regardless of which level you're in. And so those are, uh, strategy smart. So being really clear on what the strategy is and making sure that what you do on an everyday basis is aligned with that. Because we know that when there's an alignment and a clarity, people are much more likely to innovate in a direction which is helpful rather than unhelpful. That the second one is called customer curious. So having on a daily basis more curiosity about who your customers are, what their challenges are, what their needs are, uh, how we might be able to help them better actually is a fundamental fuel for innovation. The third one is opportunity oriented. So instead of almost refracting of ideas and new ideas, when they come in, kind of actively look for them and try and embrace them a little bit more and be open to things that maybe you don't know about today and, uh, maybe your business doesn't do today. The fourth one is reality rooted. So making sure that everything you do in your job, in your business is rooted in the reality of the world and your customers, rather than being focused on internal stuff, internal opinions, internal mythology. And the last one we call execution elevating. So we put stuff out into our companies, into the world, in front of our customers, uh, more often than not, it can and should be improved over time in the execution. And so always having that eye on, um, how could we do this a little bit better? How could we get a bit more growth from this? How can we make it a little bit more customer oriented actually has a massive difference. So those five behaviors, if we encourage them actively within teams, we see that it kind of reduces the level of risk that they see and perceive in innovating in their jobs.

Speaker B: And uh, Tom, you go deeper into that, into your book Innovator.

Speaker A: I do.

Speaker B: And then you go a step further, talking about those 10 steps that actually people lean into to get it done. And I want to come back to that in a second because I think that's interesting to get into too. But those five elements really talk to me, particularly around reality in the customer. Focus that uh, external first, outside in thinking rather than inside out. Perhaps this is unfair to ask, but it's something that I've noticed where organizations are desperate to focus more on how AI impacts their organization or business with some. What I'm finding is almost they're going back two steps, focusing internally first rather than having the customer in mind. Is that your experience or is that just me?

Speaker C: Um, I think there's a lot of confusion about AI actually. I think it's almost become this mythical holy grail of a technology that, that people are a bit mystified by. And um, what, what surprises me a little bit, but also kind of is unhelpful is when people see it as a strategy. And um, the way that I always try and just simplify it. It's just a tool, right? It's a really good tool and it's probably one of the most powerful ones we've ever had. But it is a tool and therefore it's a tool that has to you use to help you achieve something. And what you want to achieve with your business hasn't changed and shouldn't change, at least not that much. And so I think the key thing on AI is to make sure that it's helping you go faster, quicker, more efficient on doing your business in the best way that you can. And the business in the best way that you can should include being rooted in the reality of your customers. And um, they're trying to achieve, uh, and how you can serve them better. So I think a lot of internal navel gazing a little bit about AI and how to integrate it, but if you see it just simply as a tool that should help you achieve your results quicker, better, faster, then actually it just kind of de. Dramatizes the whole subject.

Speaker B: That's really well said. De dramatize is a great word, which is I'm going to claim now, um, uh, that that can be used in many, many, many aspects of the trust.

Speaker C: To be really honest, Jeremy, I think that uh, it's actually probably a French work because I'm based in France. After 16 years, there's a few Frenchisms that have crept into my language. So that's probably one of them.

Speaker B: There are some fantastic Frenchisms though, that really gets to the heart of what you.

Speaker C: What the.

Speaker B: What they mean. I know what you mean there. Um, right. I'm just gonna go back because I, I, you, you talked about risk and as we're moving into being innovators at all level, whether it's through AI, whether it's something else, is that we have to be able to take risks, experiment in a safe way, be supported by it, not denigrated for it, and accept that there could be some potential failures um, along the way. But that's all at the heart of that sort of growth mindset. Yes, often that is underpinned by what we've come to know as psychological safety. So if I go back to the leaders who are driving this through, letting go of some of this, how do they effectively recalibrate psychological safety within their teams, which encourages experimentation for innovation without compromising the reliability of those people in their day to day job, but also focuses on that specific expertise that we might even not know exists yet?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a brilliant question because psychological safety is brilliant as a concept. It's great that we are talking about it. It's especially important that we talk about it, uh, when it comes to innovation because innovation won't happen without it. So we talk about it in many contexts of the organization and the functions and leadership. But actually if there's one area of the business where it's such a critical need, it has to be an innovation. Because if people don't feel safe, they won't do it. And if people don't do it, it doesn't happen. And I think the way that I sort of see that from the innovation perspective, I talk about this a little bit in the book, but if we want to get innovation to work in our organizations, we have to give our people and our teams what they need to be able to innovate. And when you think of how to articulate what people need, I always come back to Maslow looking at the hierarchy of needs. But at the bottom then we've got our physiological needs which are, uh, do people have the resources to innovate? Do they have the skills to innovate? But the next level up in Maslow's pyramid is safety. And if we don't crack that, then it's really tough to make this stuff work. The good thing is there are things that leaders can do. There are things that I've seen leaders do over the many years that are incredibly effective. I think the first one of those is leaders having the humility to share in ideally very large audiences the fact that they tried something in their career and it didn't work. And uh, yet they are still in the place where they are today. And I think when leaders sort of expose themselves in that way, it gives people more permission and a bit more kind of, uh, kind of, oh, okay, well, they've made a mistake. I can make a mistake too, and I can learn from it. So that, to use the word we used earlier de dramatizes a bit what happens if something goes wrong. So sharing those learnings, I've seen that used as a technique in a number of different companies, systematically effective. Because if it's done in a credible way, obviously I think the second thing is to focus a bit less on binary, um, did it work, did it not work? When we're experimenting and focus uniquely on the learning so it's not really failure or success. It's in either case we learned some stuff which is valuable for the business. And so whatever the outcome, there is a positive outcome, which means that the organization has learned and therefore we're more likely to succeed next time. And I think the third thing is that a very practical, um, technique, almost a good example where we talked about AI earlier, actually experimenting together as a team. So rather than saying to one member of the team, right, you are going to be the AI champion and I put this monkey on your back and you kind of need to sort it out really, to say, look, let's make some small tests, some small bets, some small experiments together, try together, learn together, sometimes fail together. But at least we're doing it as a unit, as a team, which also helps to build the culture and that strengthen the culture of the team as well. And then it takes the, it takes a little bit of the personal risk out of it, I think.

Speaker B: Yeah, some great points there. So I like that final bit that, that sort of use the crowd, that crowd experimentation, whether it's a team, whether it's cross functional, um, whatever. And I also like that point about focusing on the learning that comes from it, that that's the power of the learning mindset. It's that movement from performance management to performance support. So it does involve the leaders in management, uh, just kind of reorientating them themselves too as well of their people and making it secure and safe. Uh, as you've, as you so rightly pointed out, um, we've touched on your book and I know that you've got some great frameworks because it's very much about how to. And so we've talked about a lot about so far. What do we need to have in place. So tell us about some of those frameworks that you implement and that you cover in your book to ensure that this um, grassroots innovation remains a, aligned to the high level growth objectives and strategy of the organization, but also involves executive leadership and management in that very strongly supportive learning based role.

Speaker C: Yeah, sure. So I think to give you a point of context about um, my experience, I guess with methodologies, you know, there are lots of innovation methods, frameworks, tools around the place. And back in 2011 when I kind of started the core of my innovation roles and the work I did on innovation, uh, one of parts of my remit was to test them. So we didn't have them in place in the organization I was working with. So it was a case of let's test some different things, see what works and then double down on what works. And uh, what I quickly found was that actually two things, firstly companies, a lot of companies, and I found since that the majority of companies think they've got an innovation process or method in place, but actually they don't. What they have is a governance structure. So if you think about uh, the majority of large organizations have sort of like an innovation pipeline or an innovation funnel, uh, or an innovation stage gate process, often the stage gate process and sort of superficially that looks like this is how we do innovation. But the only objective of that thing is to make the decisions. That does not help in any single way the people in the teams who are trying to push those projects forward in a good, uh, positive, successful way. So that was really missing for me, uh, within the organization I worked with and subsequently with lots of other organizations that I've worked with. I think the second thing was that we all know that innovation in large corporations needs to go a bit faster than it does typically. Right? But a lot of the methods that are a little bit more agile, a little bit more lean, a little bit more sprint, not really designed for the reality of large corporations. And so we want a bit of it, but we can't employ it directly because actually it doesn't work in the context that is very specific about larger organizations. So that's where um, I decided to create a method, a framework which as he said in the book, so it's called the Innovator Way. Um, it's ten simple steps to help you innovate with speed, scale and confidence. And the starting point for that was just saying, look, could we make innovation as simple as painting by numbers, that is, can we boil it down into a uh, step by step color coded process which allows someone with no innovation experience to move from strategy right through to launch and reviewing a project afterwards. And so that's what the book is, that's what the method is. Ah, it's exactly the same method in the book as uh, I deploy in corporations today. And it works really well. We've tested across cars, construction, healthcare, um, and logistics and luxury and lots of different sectors.

Speaker B: Great. And as a framework behind the book, the innovator way makes a lot of sense. It's a journey, it's getting everything in place. First of all, building that foundation for people to, to move from the right management in place to do so, um, etc. Um, so I'm sure Tom, there are ah, many leaders tuning into this, say right, well okay, I get all that but how do I start or how do I accelerate? So do you have three pieces of advice for them?

Speaker C: Yeah, sure, I think so. The first one would be just make sure that your strategy is short, sharp and engaging. You know, innovation is and um, will only ever be a means to achieving strategy. So unless that building block is in place and it's clear and it's short and it's sharp and it's engaging, the innovation won't flow from that in a, in a meaningful way. And uh, the analogy I often draw is, you know, at some point over the last 20 years we seem to have confused strategy with a uh, 264 page PowerPoint deck. That is not a strategy. That is a very long confusing PowerPoint deck. The best strategies that I've seen in my corporate career would be summarized on the side of a mug. And incidentally if you have it on the side of a mug and it sits on people's desks, then people's actions in the team are much more likely to be aligned with that. So the first one, one be incredibly sharp, engaging, short on what your strategy uh, really is. The second one is a really basic one. But increasingly as leaders get busy, as they get swamped with meetings, swamped with different projects and priorities, they typically spend less time with customers. And that is a huge mistake because we know that customer centric organizations perform better than non customer centric organizations. And I often tell the story of one of my previous bosses who was the cmo, uh, at a large organization who every single business trip he did around the world he made time to go into customers homes. And that was the cmo, right? So if he can do it then we should all be doing it more frequently and um, building it into our agendas. Not as an on top, nice to have, just as a way of um, that's the way our business, our team functions. We're going to spend a day out, once a quarter or every two months, we're going to go and visit customers in their office, in their homes, spend some time and learn what we can do better. And I think the third thing would be, you know, if we want our teams to innovate, we have to help them to innovate, like do innovation. Right? We cannot just say, just go and do it, because that's like saying to, uh, someone who's running the marathon, just go and run the marathon and win the marathon. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. We need to support them, help them, guide them, coach them, train them to give them a fighting chance to deliver innovation for success. And there's almost no excuse for that today because, you know, there are books out there and some great ones. There are training programs that are really good as well. There are podcasts, there are, uh, videos. Really, there's so much great material available that we just need to point our teams in the right direction to get the stuff that's specifically going to help them in their jobs.

Speaker B: Well, in three points, what a way to, with using my new favorite word, de, dramatize innovation. Thank you for that. And you're, you're so right. If, if you can capture the strategy in such a meaningful, short, powerful, repeatable way for everybody, you help your teams by doing that as well. You get customer centric and you have the customer at the heart of it. You're, you're well on your way. Um, and then giving people, giving people those, those, um, those resources to help them and the ideas. And I can think of no better resource than the book by you, Tom. Innovators. How do people get hold of your book? Find out more about your services and get in touch to continue the discussion.

Speaker C: Yeah, of course. So happy. Ah, to help. So the book, um, looks like this. I don't know if I show that. Um, so it's available on Amazon. Um, uh, it was actually the bestseller in nine categories on Amazon at publication. So very happy with that. Um, for people listening in the uk, it's also available in Waterstones, Foils, Hatchets. Ah, so the best bookshops, uh, um, in the UK as well. Also available online in places like Barnes and Noble and in the US and obviously all of the big chains around the world as well. Uh, in terms of connecting with me, I'm a very big LinkedIn fan, so please feel free to follow Connect DM. Um, as you wish. I'm on there every day trying to share some thoughts about innovation and how to do it and also things that I see as I travel around the world. And, uh, that's it, really.

Speaker B: Well, Tom Pullen, thank you for joining me.

Speaker C: It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you.

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