Page 160 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

Innovating for the Future 149

The second villain is internal: success breeds complacency, inward
focus, and even arrogance. As your unit or company keeps winning, belief
in the status quo hardens: “if we’ve done something well, there’s no need to
change.” And that belief is only strengthened by cheerleaders—short-term
investors, stock market analysts, exuberant customers—who keep urging
you to do more of the same and not take bold moves that might rock the
boat. Boston Consulting Group president and CEO Richard Lesser ob-
served to us that most CEOs get trapped by their own success. They get ac-
colades for a successful transformation or improved results, but then they
aren’t willing to take a hammer to what they have created and to transform
it again to get to the next level. “In some ways you have to be able to start
all over again periodically,” he advises. “But you also have to instill that
mindset into the organization so that there’s always a healthy dissatisfac-
tion with the status quo.”
Overcoming these challenges is critical, whether you are heading a
large enterprise, launching a startup, or leading a part of a bigger company.
Sustaining your business into the future is a vital component of achieving
impact. And for rising leaders, there’s no better way to build the innovation
skills and mindset you’ll need at higher levels of an organization than to
practice them hands on. You’ll be able to make your mistakes and learn
from those at smaller scale. And indeed, opportunities for innovation exist
at all levels. If you’re now heading a company division, a business unit, or
even a small team, you need to understand how that team contributes to
the overall organizational portfolio of today’s cash and tomorrow’s re-
invention. And you need to be able to sustain your own part of the business
into the future as well.
This is particularly true because a great deal of corporate innovation
is bottom-up—it’s not simply directed by a CEO or invented by an R&D
department. Frontline leaders working closely with customers, suppliers,
or other partners are exposed daily to different needs and opportunities in
the market, new approaches to working, and insights about competitors,
new technologies, and business-changing trends. Embrace these relation-
ships for what they can teach you about the future of the business you lead
now, as well as the broader organization that you may lead in the future.