Driving Growth: Why Top Business Leaders Understand the Importance of Innovation
Today I want to talk about business innovation, the what, why and how, transformational leadership and why these are important to your business.
Why are they important? Because the companies and organizations that embrace change and disruption and view them as opportunities to make their businesses better are the ones that will excel, not just thrive and not just survive in the coming years.
I together with my friend Michael Haynes hosted a LinkedIn Live stream last week. Michael Haynes is an expert in business innovation and growth for small to midsize companies. You can watch the full 31-minute stream on my YouTube channel. Get Access Now! or click on the image below.
Transformational Leadership
We can get complacent and assume that the strategies and tactics that used to work are still effective today. If the pandemic has taught us anything it has taught us to take a fresh new look at nearly everything.
Know that the speed of change has accelerated. Do you want things to get back to normal, the way things were before March 2020? That's a choice, one that may leave you behind your competition.
A Culture of Innovation
Markets are changing rapidly and just as you are facing uncertainty, so too are your customers.
As Michael shared, embracing a culture of innovation requires listening to your markets and empowering your team to identify new opportunities. It includes being market and customer driven.
As Michael likes to say, listen, innovate and grow. It requires focus from the top and a level of discipline that is exercised through systems and processes to identify opportunities for innovation.
I think, too, that to make this shift in culture to innovation, you can't be afraid to innovate. You must accept the possibility that mistakes will happen. That's okay. You can mitigate any financial loss by having systems in place to have continuous feedback loops to assess what's working and what's not.
The Benefits
Some of the benefits of adopting innovation and transformational leadership include:
Higher customer retention rates
Improved profit margins for existing customers
Greater relevance in the eyes of your customers and in the marketplace
Higher probability of staying abreast of future market disruptions
Sustainable growth
Higher levels of employee engagement
Reduced turnover of key employees
Final Thoughts
What a great opportunity this has been, this disruption. I say that because it has given you and me an opportunity to look at how the business could be improved and where it is strong and where weaknesses lie.
It has provided an opportunity to accelerate decision-making, and paradoxically provided an opportunity to have time to step back and reflect on the business instead of being deep in the weeds working in the business.
Listen to your customers, adopt a culture of seeking ways to innovate, challenge the way things have always been done, lead by example by making it okay to fail and outperform your competitors who just want to have things they way they were.
Until next time!
About John:
John J Fenton is an executive leadership coach who works with Ceos and Managing partners who love growing their businesses and leading their teams, but hate the stress these bring. A former managing partner with one of the world’s top accounting and consulting firms, John is now an award winning speaker and bestselling author. You can connect with John and schedule a call on his online calendar Right Here.