For Charismatic Leaders, Innovation Is a State of Mind

Charismatic leaders are known for creating great visions and innovations seemingly out of thin air.  You probably know the myth of innovation as a sudden flash of insight that comes from nowhere. We read about that "aha" moment or that light bulb turning on in the mind of some inventor or innovator. This is true to a certain extent. Einstein really did get flashes of insight while shaving in the morning.  However, he was of course working on the particular problems he had insight into and he didn't suddenly have ideas for new kitchen gadgets or movie plots.

 

Einstein’s innovations, in other words, no matter how "sudden" the original ideas were, came from past and present mental work. It is like a singer who works at his craft for ten years and then becomes an "overnight success." Innovative people only have "sudden" new ideas because they have habitually worked and thought in certain ways for some time. If you want to become an innovative thinker, why not start cultivating those mental habits?

Mental Habits Lead To Innovation

Problems can be opportunities.  A "Problem" may have a negative connotations, such as being a hassle or stressful, but any problem can lead to an innovation that improves our lives. Not knowing the time led to clocks small enough to put on our wrists. Nasty diseases lead to sanitary sewer systems. Start looking for opportunity in every problem. Even a mundane problem like not having enough storage space could lead to a new innovation. You may just build a plywood floor in the attic, but you could invent a new type of outdoor storage unit.

Innovation begins with understanding the key elements. Metal, wood, and glass are not key elements of a door to an innovator. A way to get in, a way to keep others out - these are key elements. Begin with these and soon you're imagining new ways to make a door. You could design a door that is opened by your voice (nice when your hands are full) or one that shuts and locks itself when anyone else approaches. Think of the key elements in things.

Attitude helps innovation. The creative problem-solving technique of concept-combination involves combining two ideas to see what new idea or product results. The crucial point is that you assume there will be a useful new idea. Starting with that assumption, your mind will work overtime to produce something.  A shoe and a CD have nothing to do with each other, but it took just a minute to imagine a CD player with headphones that only plays the music correctly if a jogger maintains his ideal pace. When you assume there is something there you'll often find something.

Playfulness helps innovation. A playful mind is a creative mind and while high IQ doesn't correlate with creativity, put it together with playfulness, and you have an Einstein. Remember, he imagined himself riding on a beam of light in order to arrive at his theory of relativity. Why not start playing with ideas and things in your mind and in your surroundings.  Innovation should be fun and an excellent way of doing good while doing well.

To develop the leadership traits of innovators, visit: Charisma

Innovation: The Life Blood Of Your Business

The Charismatic Leadership model is often credited for developing great innovations and If you’re running or managing a business and want it to be around for a long time, you need to spend a good part of your time innovating. That’s because, in a fast-moving world, where people expect things to get better and better, and cheaper and cheaper, innovation is your route to getting ahead of your competition.

Here are 7 ways to put new life blood into your organization through innovation.

1. Create An Innovative Climate. Goran Ekvall of Lund University in Sweden has defined three conditions needed for a climate of innovation. They are: trust, dynamism, and humor. One of Ekvall’s case studies was a Swedish newspaper where the team working on the women’s section consistently outperformed all the other teams. The reason? Quite simply, this group trusted one another, had a high level of energy and shared a common sense of humor.

2. Develop Washing-Up Creativity. According to the Roffey Park Management Institute, most flashes of inspiration come to people when they are away from work and not forcing their conscious brains to find solutions to their problems. For some, ideas come while mowing the lawn or taking the dog for a walk or playing golf or waiting on a railway station. For Isaac Newton, it was an apple on the head while sitting in the garden. For Archimedes, it was in the bath. For others, it’s while doing the dishes; that’s why Roffey Park calls these flashes of insight: “washing-up creativity”.

3. Make New Connections. Making new connections between existing features of your product or service is a popular way to innovate. Akio Morita, chairman of Sony, said that he invented the Walkman because he wanted to listen to music while walking between shots on his golf course. His team simply put together two seemingly incompatible products: a tape recorder and a transistor radio.

4. Find Out What People Need. Necessity is a great spur to innovation. Take, for example, writing paper. The Chinese had already made paper from rags around the year 100 BC but because there was no need for it, nothing came of it. When it did reach Europe in the Middle Ages, when writing was all the rage, the supply of rags and worn-out fabric soon dried up. That’s when a French naturalist made the discovery that wasps made their nests by chewing wood into a mash that dried in thin layers. Within 100 years, all paper was made using the idea of wood pulp.

5. Test, Test, Test. Product testing is the way most inventors and organizations go about innovation. It may not be the quickest route to success, but it is often the surest. Jonas Salk, for example, discovered the polio vaccine by spending most of his time testing and testing and continually finding out what didn’t work. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the filament light bulb, recorded 1300 experiments that were complete failures. But he was able to keep going because, as he said, he knew 1300 ways that it wasn’t going to work.

6. Adopt and Adapt. One relatively easy approach to innovation is to notice how others deal with problems and then adapt their solutions to your own. It’s known as “adapt and adopt”. It’s what watchmakers Swatch did when they realized that the more reliable their watches became, the less people needed to replace them. Their solution? Borrow an idea from the world of fashion and collections by turning their watches into desirable fashion accessories. Now people buy Swatch watches not just to tell the time but because it’s cool to do so.

7. Take Lessons From Nature. If you really want to be inventive, you can’t beat nature. The world of nature gives us an endless supply of prototypes to use in our own world. Take Velcro, for example. Velcro was patented by Georges de Mestral in 1950 after he returned from a hunting trip covered in tiny burrs that had attached themselves to his clothing by tiny overlapping hooks. De Mestral quickly realized that here was an ideal technique to fasten material together. A whole new way of doing things was suddenly invented.

The history of the world is the history of innovation. Thomas Kuhn called each acceptance of a new innovation a “paradigm shift”. For once a new innovation becomes accepted, the world has changed forever and can never go back to the way it was.

For more information on developing the skills for becoming an innovator, visit: Charisma

Wanted: Charismatic Leaders and Ideas

Since the election of President Barack Obama, the conversation surrounding charismatic leadership has quieted. This is a dramatic shift from candidate Obama who regaled the world reminiscent of John F. Kennedy’s “Camelot.” Obama’s youthful vigor, enthusiasm and good looks were a breath of fresh air in an attempt to “reset” the agenda for geopolitics and commerce in a global economy. The world had waited for a change in business and politics and Obama seemed to answer the clarion call. What happened? How could a candidate who came out of virtually nowhere have a meteoric rise and then the connectivity and charisma ascribed to him become muted? The obvious question would be, “Was candidate Obama a bona fide charismatic or merely more interesting compared to the field of his non-charismatic competitors?” More importantly, is society so desirous of leadership with passion and a compelling vision that it will support anyone who comes close to this ideal? Suffice to say that when leaders, generally, and charismatic leaders, specifically, are not in abundance, any uptick towards a semblance of leadership is not only embraced, but revered. The fact is that charismatic leadership is scarce because there are too few people steeped in the field of ideas. Sexy marketing is in and the hard fought battle of reconciling disparate ideas and concepts is out. Contemporary society is witnessing the “dummying down” of intelligence in an information, digital age. Such a thought appears oxymoronic. How could the democratization of information produce so few great men and women of ideas? How could the great universities of the world not produce a sea of Einsteins or a phalanx of Alexander Hamiltons? Only in a time where one does not have to dig for information could ideas that produce compelling and magnetic leaders be quashed.

What is the connection between charismatic leaders and ideas?

When the mind is disciplined to read and absorb a great deal of information, it sees patterns and voids in ways the less intellectual cannot. If the mind is a computer within itself, it arranges ideas that seem disconnected into a tapestry of form. It fills empty spaces within the human experience with substance hoped for, but not realized until now. It is like someone having a taste for something sweet, but does not know what dessert would actually fulfill the desire. If one was posed options to select from, the person would decide the appropriate treat based on taste and satisfaction. Thought leaders who turn ideas into compelling visions do not create to lead, they create and the audience embraces the viability of the idea and follows. The thought leader revels in the field of ideas. Ideas revitalize, capture and spark new realities converse to mere existence. The individual devoid of ideas is a lifeless lump of clay. Better yet, a living, breathing, “Lifeless,” lump of clay.

Thought leaders with compelling ideas delivered with passion reflect charismatic leadership. They breathe life into individuals that either encourages similar initiatives or a renewed purpose on the part of individuals. The field of ideas creates these leaders, but one must be intellectually curious to wallow in the possibilities. Because the Information Age has not produced individuals with great intellectual curiosity, it has not produced an abundance of thought leaders who inspire hope and the manifestation of ideas. It has created people who regurgitate information as a means of satisfying limited needs (Term papers, answers to immediate questions, trivial pursuit, etc…), but not the next Alexander the Great, Emerson or Machiavelli.

Within any presidency or position of leadership, it is important to inspire hope and optimism, but at the end of the day, the continuous creation, processing and implementation of ideas are essential. The world can become saturated with entertainment, sports and even technology, but the field of compelling ideas with never be overrun. The charismatic leader chooses the road less travelled. To choose the road less travelled makes all the difference in the world.

For more information, visit: Charisma