Building an Agile Ecosystem
Identify leadership behaviors to stop, start, and keep
Yes, Agile Innovation elevates the speed, quality, and ROI of business innovation. But its longer-term effect can be even more transformative. Agile Innovation triggers a shift in habits and mindset across the organization, which eventually change company culture.
Conversely, the seeds of Agile Innovation grow best in a supportive cultural ecosystem. Business and product teams, for example, are inspired to innovate when actively supported by the organizational environment that surrounds them. That ecosystem support must start at the top, with the business leadership team.
How is the leadership team best engaged to foster an Agile ecosystem? A powerful early step is to identify specific executive behaviors to stop, start, and keep. In other words, start with a small set of concrete leadership behaviors, rather than mission statements and abstract exhortations.
The practical experience of a large optical technology developer shows how this can work…
An internal team at this company conducted an extensive series of brief interviews with a cross section of the organization, asking in this case about empowering (and disempowering) leadership behaviors. The resulting data was synthesized into ~50 specific executive behaviors – each concretely defined with quotes and examples. These behaviors formed the basis of an executive workshop, during which the leadership identified specific behaviors to Stop, Start, and Keep.
The outcome was a single-page manifesto or social contract, signed by each member of the leadership team, targeting a small but high-leverage set of behaviors to power Agile Innovation across the organization. The document is public and shared widely, and it serves as an ongoing reference for evaluation and improvement.
Agile Innovation, at its foundation, is a two-prong approach to innovation strategy and execution. Coupled with 1) well planned and executed team-based initiatives is 2) a deliberate effort to build the surrounding ecosystem. The two prongs represent two sides of the same innovation coin. Innovation value is faster and greater when Agile teams and their ecosystem operate synergistically.
Identifying concrete leadership behaviors to Stop, Start, and Keep is a big step in that direction.
© OIC Innovation LLC 2022