BOTTOMS UP

BOTTOMS UP

Look beneath the surface of almost
anything produced by an organization that
is new, useful, and even moderately
complex, and you'll almost certainly
discover it came from multiple hands, not
the genius of some solitary inventor.
INNOVATION IS A TEAM SPORT

innovation
cannot be
compelled or
commanded
CAN’T FORCE IT TO HAPPEN

OLD SCHOOL
• Most of those in positions of authority have been taught a concept of leadership
that actually stifles innovation. They think their job is to come up with the big
ideas and mobilize people to execute them. Somehow they see themselves as the
ones who make innovation happen. But this approach makes no sense when the
goal is the creation of something original. In that setting, no one can know in
advance, by definition, what the outcome will be, not even the leader.
• Abandoning the “Follow me! I know the way!” approach that many consider the
core role of leadership. They need to replace it with a different mind-set about
how leaders foster innovation from everyone in their organization.
• Leaders who live on the harness side will never unleash the full slices of genius in
their people. And those who always stay on the unleash side will have constant
chaos and never solve any problems for the collective good
• Over the past few decades, the leader's role has become equated with setting out
a vision and inspiring people to follow. This conception of the leader's role can
work well when the solution to a problem is known and straightforward, but is
counterproductive when it's not.

OLD SCHOOL
Over the past few decades, the leader's
role has become equated with setting out a
vision and inspiring people to follow.

THE NEW LEADER
• Reminded people of deadlines, budgets, and other overall constraints. They made
sure people had the information and other resources they needed. They kept the
group focused on its fundamental purpose and the organization's overall needs
• When conflict was becoming personal rather than focused on ideas, they
provided valuable new data or insights. They created bridges with outside sources
of support or important information. They constantly asked leading, probing
questions—What about … ?, What if … ?, When … ?, Why … ?—that encouraged
the group to test its ideas, reflect on what it was learning
• Natural hierarchies often replace more formal ones.
• Influence and status are determined more by contribution than by title.
• Managing tensions in the organization is an ongoing issue … you don't want an
organization that just salutes and does what you say. You want an organization
that argues with you. And so you want to nurture the bottoms up, but you've got
to be careful you don't just degenerate into chaos

“My job,” he said, “is to set
the stage, not to perform on
it.”
THE NEW LEADER

SLICE OF GENIUS
• Every person in your group, whether that's a small team or a large corporation,
contains a slice of genius. Your task as leader is to create a place where all those
slices can be elicited, combined, and converted into collective genius.

WILLING & ABLE
WILLING: bound by common purpose, shared values, and mutual rules of engagement.
• Succeeded as a community not only because they pursued a common purpose but because they also shared fundamental values
and followed certain rules of engagement that the founding leaders established and subsequent leaders continuously reinforced
• That purpose imbues their collaborative work with higher meaning and leads them to endure the stresses and turmoil that
inevitably come with innovation.
• Members can feel safe to offer ideas and to hear criticism of their ideas because they know the goal is finding the best way to
achieve the community's common purpose
• Community building consists not only in what the leader does but also in how it's done. Every act of the leader—from working
with and respecting member organizations to structuring the ecosystem to creating and enforcing the rules that govern it—is
done to foster and sustain that fragile but all-important sense of common purpose and shared values.
• Without a sense of community—of being pulled together by common purpose, shared values, and clear rules of engagement
openly developed—an innovative ecosystem is likely to flounder. Without a leader who understands this and works diligently to
build and sustain that sense, the ecosystem will likely remain a mere collection of players who cooperate and coordinate, not a
community capable of breakthrough work.
ABLE: collaboration, discovery-driven learning, and integrative decision making
• You must create an organization in which people are able to do the work of innovation. You do that by building three
organizational capabilities essential to innovative problem solving: creative abrasion, creative agility, and creative resolution.
Many organizations won't be able to innovate routinely until they revisit their assumptions about leadership. The innovation leader's
role differs from the conventional image that many hold of good leadership. Great leaders of innovation, we found, see their role not
as take-charge direction setters but primarily as creators of a context in which others are willing and able to make innovation happen.

WILLING
WILLING & ABLE

TALENT IS CRITICAL
• Even with the right people, there's still the huge problem of getting them to work together
productively.
• The unavoidable paradox at the heart of innovation is the need to unleash the talents of
individuals and, in the end, to harness those talents in the form of a collective innovation
that is useful to the organization.
• Leaders create the environment that somehow draws out the slice of genius in each
individual and then leverages and melds those many slices into a single work of innovation
• It's not just about talent, but it is about talent in the right context.

TALENT IS CRITICAL

CONSCIOUS EXPERIMENTATION
• Learning and Development versus Performance While learning and development are
important, performance—Did you solve the problem?—is what ultimately matters. Thus,
leaders of innovation encourage people to test and learn from new ideas. But they also
demand that people be data driven in their experimentation and performance focused in
evaluating results. They want people to try new things, and they set high standards for how
carefully the experiments are done and analyzed. They take outside-the-box ideas seriously
and do things outside normal channels.

EXPERIMENTATION
Intuitive as it sounds, this characteristic also contradicts yet
another myth of innovation, that great new
ideas spring in full and final form.
Missteps, dead ends, and rework are inevitable and must be
accepted, even encouraged. Innovation requires a mind-set of
try, learn, adjust, try again.

COLLABORATION
• The process of innovation needs to be collaborative because innovations most often arise from the interplay of ideas that occur during the
interactions of people with diverse expertise, experience, or points of view
• Innovation requires not “get along” or “go along” cooperation but creative collaboration, which typically involves—should involve—passionate
discussion and disagreement
• collaboration meant embracing diverse points of view and even conflict.
• Yet the friction of clashing ideas can be hard to bear. The sparks that fly in heartfelt discussions can sting. At a minimum, they can create
tension and stress. Many organizations consequently dislike conflict in any form and try to discourage it
• Collaboration means group members embrace the friction, make themselves vulnerable, and allow others to ask hard questions. Still, even in
the best circumstances, these debates, no matter how well intentioned and constructive, can be emotionally draining
• Innovative companies value collaboration and take conscious, proactive steps to build it into the way they work.
• the way people interact is the essence of collaboration
• create the psychologically safe environment where creative clashes can happen because individuals are willing to share their craziest
thoughts. Who will volunteer ideas—the foundation of collaboration—if they know that others are likely to belittle or attack them personally,
or take credit for their ideas?
• also a core element of collaboration, if differences of opinion are discouraged. And, without rules, people will hesitate to experiment to avoid
failure.
• Collaboration takes energy.
• People are reluctant to share information. People are paranoid that others are going to get more credit and therefore more business. It's the
opposite of collaboration
• their ecosystems required a robust infrastructure of processes and tools that facilitated the work of collaboration and innovation

COLLABORATIVE
“One of Pixar's unusual features as a studio was
that all three functions of the organization—art,
technology, and business—were considered
equal partners in the process of making great
films. No one voice dominated.”

CREATIVE ABRASION
…is a process in which potential
solutions are created, explored, and
modified through debate and
discourse. It can and often does
involve heartfelt disagreement or
heated argument, but not always.
Abrasion in essence means simply that
ideas and options compete in order for
the best idea to emerge.

CREATIVE AGILITY
…is the ability to Pursue new
ideas quickly and proactively
through multiple experiments
Reflect on and analyze the
outcomes of their experiments
Adjust subsequent actions and
choices based on what they've
learned.

CREATIVE RESOLUTION
…is the organizational ability to make
integrative decisions. In many companies we've
seen, differences are resolved by one
dominant individual or group, or they're
settled by compromise, some form of splitting
the difference that usually ends the conflict
but pleases no one. Innovative organizations,
on the other hand, are able to make choices
that integrate disparate and even opposing
ideas into a single superior one.

PARADOXES
INDIVIDUAL
IMPROVISATION
SUPPORT
LEARNING
PATIENCE
VS THE COLLECTIVE
VS STRUCTURE
VS CONFRONTATION
VS PERFORMANCE
VS URGENCY

INDIVIDUAL VS COLLECTIVE PARADOX
• The unavoidable paradox at the heart of innovation is the need to unleash the
talents of individuals and, in the end, to harness those talents in the form of a
collective innovation that is useful to the organization
• People are willing to face the personal challenges of innovation when they feel part
of a community engaged in something more important than any of them as
individuals and larger than any could accomplish alone. A sense of community is
powerful because it's about belonging and, above all, identity. Members consider
their inclusion in the community a key part of who they are. Its collective “we”
helps define the “I” of each member. Thus, members feel a strong bond with each
other and are eager to do their part in supporting the vitality and advancing the
cause of the group. They feel responsible both to it and for it. They believe its
survival and success depend on each of them. No one wants to let his or her
colleagues down.
• That shift in perspective—when “we” becomes as or more important in key ways
than “I”—is what enables every member to do work that feels unfamiliar or risky
but is needed for the good of the community.

INDIVIDUAL VS COLLECTIVE
PARADOX

IMPROVISATION VS STRUCTURE PARADOX
• The goal was to add some method to their madness without losing the madness entirely
evaluate projects according to their impact.
• Improvisation versus Structure Too much structure—rules, hierarchy, planning, and the
like—will stifle innovation, but too little will produce chaos.
• To deal with these tensions that constantly threaten to tear every community apart, a
creative community needs what we call “rules of engagement.” Innovation and rules may
seem like an odd couple. How can creativity and improvisation require rules? Aren't
innovators rule breakers, people willing—eager, even—to challenge the status quo?
• They try to define what the innovation will look like, often through something like a list of
requirements or characteristics, and then lay out the steps that will produce such an
outcome. But, virtually by definition, a real innovation cannot be identified in advance. The
most innovative teams proceed neither by detailed plans nor by no plans at all. Instead, they
alternate brief periods of planning with longer periods of execution and improvisation.
• Many leaders, of course, like structure because it provides the comfort of control

Left to their natural tendencies,
organizations, even successful
ones, ironically, will proliferate the
number of control structures they
use—specific goals, detailed plans,
progress reports, hierarchy,
processes, policies, and the like—
even in the search for innovation.
They neither understand nor feel
comfortable with the improvisation
and autonomy that innovation
requires.
IMPROVISATION VS STRUCTURE

SUPPORT VS CONFRONTATION
• How can a leader productively encourage team members to support one another
while simultaneously encouraging them to provoke and challenge each other
through robust debate? Creating the context where this can occur is tricky, to say
the least. The answer is to build a community in which there is a strong sense of
“we” and a belief that “we all succeed or fail together” and that no individual can
succeed if the team fails.
• “When you have these constraints,” he added, “everyone is forced into a weird box.
You're all friends, each of you is handcuffed to the others, and you all have knives.
Everyone is trying to support their own point of view about what should be done,
but it's a difficult situation. People are competing with each other to achieve their
goals and simultaneously trying to accomplish the company's goals.”
• Confrontation can stifle the willingness of people to offer ideas. But group
members can become too supportive as well and stop challenging each other at all.
• Brainstorming is all about support and only support. Creative abrasion, on the
other hand, is about support and confrontation. That's why it only works with a
community built on purpose, values, and rules.

SUPPORT VS CONFRONTATION
“We have heated debates. We reach
consensus or I make a decision. If I am wrong,
I change it, and I don't take myself too
seriously. But we made a pact that when we
leave the room, you support the position.”

LEARNING VS PERFORMANCE PARARDOX
• Difficulty of the learning-versus-performance paradox is only heightened by the unavoidable
fact that most ideas, options, and experiments fail
• Time will appear to be wasted on pursuits that after the fact may seem to have been
misguided
• Treated them as sources of learning and not occasions for censure and punishment
• Organization trying to innovate will improve its chances of success if it acts more like a jazz
ensemble
• Postmortems following every major project were another form of structure
• They constantly wove together reviewing, planning, and doing, with a heavy emphasis on
learning from doing.

LEARNING VS PERFORMANCE
PARADOX
Experiments must be
relevant, designed
properly, and run
rigorously so that they
produce real learning
need to be boundary
conditions—guardrails—so
that failure isn't
catastrophic

PATIENCE VS URGENCY
• They did insist that people work quickly and nimbly. Speed based on a real sense of
urgency was a key way they matched the need for experimentation with the need
for performance
• Creativity followed its own schedule. It could not be rushed or commanded. To
combine existing ideas in new ways, they and their people needed time to absorb
and digest the ideas
• Urgency is not necessarily a bad thing. Many of the leaders in our research
considered necessity the mother of invention
• Constraints could spur innovation
• ideas need to marinate and simmer
• “Our creative process will go on forever unless there's a hard stop. Constraints seem
to sharpen thinking because they force the team to find ways to get around them
• The right balance between patience and a sense of urgency can spur innovation.
But too much tilt in one direction or the other will produce the opposite outcome

PATIENCE VS URGENCY PARADOX
Part of the leader's job, they felt, was to confront the group with
critical deadlines or budget realities, which could foster creative
thinking by forcing the evaluation of key assumptions and the
reframing of opportunities.

CREATIVE INTEGRATION OF THE PARADOXES
• Much of creating something novel and useful arises from combining existing ideas, including
ideas that once seemed mutually exclusive. To do this requires moving from either-or
thinking to both-and thinking
• Finally, in addition to making arbitrary, premature choices, many leaders accept or pursue
other methods of early closure, such as compromising or taking a vote. Unfortunately, these
methods rarely produce the best possible outcome and seldom please anyone. They're used
when a group and its leader lack the patience and fortitude to press through to something
better. In the end, they sacrifice all the value that might have been realized, with patience
and deeper consideration, by finding clues to a superior model in the tension among ideas
• To make integrative decisions possible, leaders must know when to allow debate and
discovery and when to move on to decision making and execution

CREATIVE INTEGRATION OF THE
PARADOXES
What integration requires is: inherently discomforting,
both emotionally and intellectually. Leaders often don't
know what to do with opposing and seemingly
incompatible possibilities. Only human, they crave the
certainty of simplifying and choosing quickly, especially
when the situation feels urgent.

PURPOSE DRIVEN COMMUNITY
• Purpose is often misunderstood. It is not what a group does but why it does what it does. It's
not a goal but a reason—the reason it exists, the need it fulfills, and the assistance it
bestows. It is the answer to the question every group should ask itself: if we disappeared
today, how would the world be different tomorrow?

PURPOSE DRIVEN COMMUNITY
“We need to recreate the spirit of a small
company within a large organization.”
IDENTITY. BELONGING. WE.

VALUES
“Design was not just a service supplied to clients
… it was a calling, a style of being, a whole way
of life.” They believed in the power of design to
improve the quality of people's visual and
intellectual lives.”

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Innovative groups consciously practice an approach of
questioning everything. Anyone who observes such a
group at work will be struck by its lively spirit of inquiry
and even friendly skepticism.

TOMORROW’S LEADERS
Idealists, yet pragmatists Our leaders epitomized bold ambition. They eagerly took on complex, difficult problems. They thrived on pushing the boundaries of
possibility. But they also understood the need to balance unbounded thinking with levelheadedness. They were fully aware of the persistence and practical
steps necessary to overcome inevitable challenges
Holistic thinkers, yet action oriented The leaders were holistic or integrative thinkers; they saw problems in all their complexity and enjoyed unraveling them
down to their core. They appreciated the intricacies and nuances of a problem. They understood organizational dynamics and thus could balance the tensions
built into innovation. Yet they could take action, too. They were inclined to try things, to experiment again and again. They knew that solutions emerged from
trial and error, not thought alone
Generous, yet demanding For these people, leading for innovation was hard, never-ending work, much of it behind the scenes. If they'd wanted, most of
them could have been the star on stage in their own right. Yet they believed in others' slices of genius and let them take the spotlight. That took generosity—
the willingness, based on their own sense of personal security, to share power, control, and credit. Many of them were reluctant to be singled out when we
talked about what their organizations had accomplished. Instead, they consistently pointed to the individual and collective talents of their colleagues. At the
same time, they held people accountable and expected results. They didn't hesitate to change what didn't work or terminate those who ultimately couldn't
perform
Human, yet highly resilient These leaders were far from perfect. Like all of us, they had anxieties, regrets, and fears. They made mistakes. They had bad days
and even bad months when they became self-protective and defensive. Sometimes they lost their way. Yet they were resilient in the face of mistakes and
regrets, able to try again and again in the face of disappointment and failure, and capable of coping with uncertainty, complexity, and conflict. Consequently,
they brought calm to chaos when others were overwhelmed, disillusioned, or frightened
Think about what most organizations seek when they try to identify high-potential candidates for a leadership program. How many of them look for
candidates with these traits, “idealistic,” “a thinker,” “generous,” “willing to admit imperfections and ask for help”? Yet these same qualities are the ones we
most frequently see in leaders of innovation. They are the individuals uniquely willing and able to create a place where others can engage in innovative
problem solving
Too often, such behavior as taking the lead in meetings, being tough-minded about people, or appearing to know everything and being the smartest guy in
the room are still considered indicators of leadership potential. Ironically, these behaviors represent traits that are likely to stifle others' ability and
willingness to create new and useful breakthroughs. Effective innovation leaders, in contrast, are sensitive to the demands of the situation and display those
conventional qualities only selectively. Because their behavior or way of approaching problems and working with groups seldom fit the profile of a
stereotypical high-potential leader, they risk becoming what we call “stylistic invisibles.”
Leaders who live on the harness side will never unleash the full slices of genius in their people. And those who always stay on the unleash side will have
constant chaos and never solve any problems for the collective good
Do you cling to the idea that you the leader are the one who sets vision and drives your people to pursue new and useful solutions? Or do you see yourself as
someone who creates a place that elicits people's slices of genius and turns them into collective genius? Leading innovation begins with this kind of selfreflection.

idealists, yet pragmatists
holistic thinkers, yet action-oriented
generous, yet demanding
human, yet resilient
TOMORROW’S LEADERS

THE OPPOSABLE MIND
Working through complexity creates anxiety because it
requires holding incompatible ideas without resolving them
right away. To ask people to keep thinking holistically, to
forgo rapid simplification and reduction, is to ask them to
live willingly in a state of tension and ambiguity.

A CASE STUDY: SHIFTING TO AN
INNOVATIVE CULTURE
WHY? PSYCHOLOGICAL SHIFT TO ENABLE WILLINGNESS
HOW? ‘EMPLOYEES FIRST, CUSTOMERS SECOND’ & ‘TRUST
THRU TRANSPARENCY’
WHAT?
‘MIRROR, MIRROR’: WEEKLY POLLS
‘U & I’: AN ONLINE TWO-WAY CHANNEL
‘DIRECTIONS’: ANNUAL EVENT MEETINGS
EMPLOYEE PORTAL: EVERYTHING IN ONE PLACE
PROJECTS PORTAL: TRACKING CUSTOMER PROJECTS
360 DEGREE REVIEWS: FOR DEVELOPMENT, NOT EVAL
EMPLOYEES FIRST COUNCILS
COMMUNNITIES OF PASSION
‘MY BLUEPRINT’: YOUR PLAN FOR THE YEAR