Three times a year, Solvay Brussels School organises a “Business-essentials” programme for Pfizer. During one of our sessions, I gave an intensive one-day workshop on innovation leadership. Here are a few insights about the creation of an innovation mindset.
The fact that the first word of this “Leading and Living Innovation” seminar is about leadership is no coincidence. I believe all significant advances in life start with leadership. While innovation also starts with leadership, it doesn’t end there.
We’ve come to live in a fast-changing world where “you need to do things to learn what to do”. This requires everyone to get involved in the innovation game: it needs to be a collective effort at all levels of the company. Hence, leaders need to actively encourage an innovation mindset.
But how?
Creating an innovation mindset combines accountability and psychological safety. Making people feel safe and at the same time rendering them accountable might seem paradoxical, but it is not. Accountability is about owning up to what you do: your achievements as well as your mistakes. The key here is how you react to people’s mistakes. Holding them accountable is not the same as blaming them. This is where psychological safety comes into the picture. Your people need to feel they can make mistakes and accept responsibility for them without being afraid of a backlash.
Combining accountability with psychological safety creates a learning environment, a culture where it is OK, or, rather, expected, to make mistakes, because this is how you learn. Indeed, curiosity and learning are the basis of innovative ideas: these are not born perfect, but rather carefully crafted during a process of trial and error. When people know they can safely experiment, their creativity will flow and they will learn, grow and innovate.
In such a culture, leaders are not there to tell people what to do, but rather to create and support learning zones in their organization. Leadership is a responsibility, not a privilege, and definitely not a position. Leaders are there to serve, not to dictate.
What makes a great leader – one who can effectively create this culture of innovation? I think it must happen on three levels:
I also bring my philosophy of “engagement” into my teaching sessions: I try to “lift people into the learning game”.
To achieve this, I create an environment of psychological safety, “the shared belief by the group that the classroom is safe for interpersonal risk-taking”. Life is more interesting outside your comfort zone, and this attitude encourages the participants to live the mind-heart-body philosophy.
I combine this feeling of safety with an appropriate sense of accountability through interactivity during the lectures, and by using relevant, illustrative case studies. The cases are chosen from different industries to open the minds and allow for horizontal learning. The students imagine and analyze real-life applications of the subjects introduced during the lectures. They explore them in depth in small groups and report their conclusions to the plenary.
This allows higher-order learning by closing the circle to grasp the core concepts. It’s a very powerful tool.
This approach allows me to pass on a large amount of actionable insights, even in relatively short sessions. After every module, I always ask the “So what?” question. How do the participants plan to apply what they have learned to their daily lives? How will they measure their achievements and progress? This gives them time to reflect on the key insights and allows them to internalize what it means for them.
When a company like Pfizer invests so heavily in training, developing, and growing its people, it is critical to make sure that the knowledge they acquire will also have a direct, tangible impact inside the company.
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