What to do when your leadership team struggle with innovation and taking risks
It’s not unusual for senior teams to learn they’re more risk-adverse than they realised. Sometimes, this comes to light through a team assessment or leadership session. Other times it’s through a shared sense of creative stuckness. Whatever the trigger, it can raise concerns for CEOs – what happens if the people at the top are holding back big, bold thinking and new ideas?
The good news is that, even if your exec team’s natural tendencies lean towards caution, change is still possible without needing to replace the team (or rewrite everyone’s personalities!).
If you can relate to this, it feels important to start by saying this – personality tests, dynamics tests, diagnostics, etc., can be a helpful tool to recognise a particular part of ourselves, but that is all they are. Firstly, they’re not 100% reliable, meaning they don’t necessarily show what they claim to show (you might have had a bad day and come across as more negative than you really are, to take just one example).
Secondly, just because we might ‘be’ a certain way naturally (stubborn, creative, risk averse) doesn’t mean we can’t counteract that if we just put in a bit of effort.
And so just because your team might be naturally risk-averse or find it hard to innovate, it doesn’t mean that they can’t find ways to do it. Writing yourselves off is not necessary.
1. Encourage the team (and change their mindset)
You can begin by identifying the people in your team who are most inclined towards the desired characteristic (risk seeking, or innovative) and look for ways to encourage them to share their views and ideas in a way that reflects their stronger tendency towards that aspect. It can feel hard to be an outsider, so make sure they are praised for speaking up and thanked for their contributions.
You can then provide structured activities that allow greater opportunities for risk-taking and innovation. Running innovation sprints, or asking brave questions (‘What might we do if we weren’t scared of losing our best client?’) or encourage people to think about the ‘risk of not doing this’. All of these help people to step into a slightly different mindset for a while and access those thought patterns which don’t come naturally.
Use tech to help you work with your blind spots
Asking AI to road test decisions that have been made, ascertain if they are too risk-averse/lacking in innovation, and suggesting any improvements can be helpful. A good prompt for AI might be: ‘This is a decision that we are planning to take as a team. However, we are aware that as a group, we tend towards being risk-averse, and we naturally lack skills of innovation. If we were a team better-represented in these areas, how might our suggestions differ? Recommend other directions we could take this decision in which might have a more balanced risk profile or allow more space for innovation.’
3. If you can't recruit, you can co-opt
If there’s no budget (or want) to hire new team members, look for people who have a higher risk appetite or are more innovative, but are one level below the C-Suite. Ask them to get involved with key projects or decisions and to bring their different approach with them. Create a warm, welcoming environment as it can be intimidating to be asked to ‘think differently’ to your seniors, but show that their contributions will be gratefully received.
In this case, I have a strong feeling that fortune will favour the brave the people who are happy to step out of their comfort zone for a while.
3 resources to develop boldness, bravery and innovation at work:
How to be braver: bravery training ideas from Forbes
How to increase innovation: some great examples
Why you shouldn’t let personality tests dictate how ‘brave’ you are: (because people can't be summed up by a personality test)
Did you find this post helpful? For more content like this, sign-up to my newsletter, ‘Dear Katie’, where I help solve real-life messy leadership problems.
Have a leadership problem of your own? Submit it via email – katie@katiebest.com – and I will answer it anonymously in a future issue.
