The Innovation Paradox: The Many Minds of A Leader

I’ve never met a leader who hasn’t learned to adapt their speech, mannerisms, focus on detail, and other aspects of their leadership style based on the situation they’re in. A classic example is managing up often looks quite different from managing down. Yet, I find that many leaders are unaware of a similar situation where they must often be of two minds at the same time. I call this the Operator and Innovator mind.

The Operator Mind

The operator mind is what I find many leader’s default. This isn’t a fault, as this is also a highly intuitive and encouraged mentality. In the operator’s mind, you are looking at things from the perspective of performance, predictability, and consistency.

Some people reading that may already bristle at the notion that these are attributes to strive for, but I will assure you they are perfectly reasonable in many situations.

When you’re in the operator’s mind, your focus will be hitting targets, managing risk, performance, and efficiency. These concerns will show up in many meetings as you and others discuss meeting deadlines, system performance, tool selection, vendor management, and roadmap planning.

In 1:1s, this mind will prefer to focus on performance, an individual’s ability to manage work efficiently, and discussion of growth and development will also emphasize growth towards better performance.

For many leaders, this is the default mind at work, and it is nothing to feel bad about or to avoid. Rather, it is good to know when to be of this mind compared to the next.

The Innovator Mind

The innovator’s mind is often discussed but rarely realized. The innovator’s mind is a mind of change and disruption. In the innovator’s mind, you’re looking at things from the perspective of results, bets, risk, and dynamics.

At this point, when I say innovator, I am focusing on the nature of innovation of doing something new and novel. That could be anything from product to team growth.

When you’re in the innovator’s mindset, your focus will be on examining results to inform your next bet. You examine how people respond to given stimulation and how it may reinforce or dampen existing patterns. You see the world through the lens of only making one move at a time based on what you’ve seen. This will appear in meetings as seeing how you’re trending toward a result, psychological safety, hypothesis, and investments.

In 1:1s, this mind will focus on the individual’s growth and steps they can take based on the current situation and environment. It will also focus on stressors and interpersonal issues.

For many leaders, a strong desire for this mindset may exist, but it is far from common or natural. Many organizations favor and reward the operator’s mind.

It Takes Both

I’ve never met a leader or organization that thought they did not need to change. Sometimes, that change is taking the next step on the path they’re on, and a great many more times, a significant shift is desired.

The operator’s mind struggles with change as it disrupts everything it strives for. The operator’s mind stands to lose its ground and hard-earned predictability. The operator mind will struggle against change as it asks, “What if” and “What about…?”

The innovator’s mind understands that disruption, discomfort, and general unpleasantness come with change. It understands that it really doesn’t know the path forward, and so it has to make many small attempts before a big change happens. The innovator’s mind struggles to come up with a plan since they are smitten with questions like, “What if” and “What about…?”

At the end of the day, if you want change, even small change, you must give priority to the innovator’s mind. That means knowing you cannot predict the future, but you can make a small bet today to see what might happen. You know things are going to get hard, and you have to make that safe for your staff. You won’t have a plan you can trust, a deadline to march toward, or a sense of what constitutes good performance. All you can know is whether you are moving in the right direction or not.

When you want to change, and you adopt, let the innovator’s mind take over; what happens to your old friend, the operator’s mind? Well, it isn’t gone, just not in control. The operator’s mind is great at detail and rigor. The operator’s mind will yell out when things are too chaotic. The operator will crave structure, and structure is important.

Building A New Business

This is a story to demonstrate these two minds and is based on a client experience. The client was a traditional IT operation. Essentially, it is a cost center building administrative and back-office software. They realized radical change had to happen, and I happened to be there. The change they requested was to convert the cost center into a profit center. That meant building revenue-generating software in a company with a legacy of shipping barely anything.

Here was a company that spent decades in the operator’s mind. Their focus was on time execution, annual planning, and vendor contracts. If anyone used the software that eventually was built, nobody knew.

I was their innovator’s mind. I built a new software team that operated differently than the others and worked with a product manager to make continuous bets on what would be valuable with the products.

We were generating revenue before release.

Now, I was certain that what we did would be terminated, even though we were successful. So why shut it down? There are many reasons, but as for this article, the insidious reason was the operator’s mind could not abide the innovator’s mind and its work.

This was evident when we transitioned the product to the larger group. They rejected all aspects of it because it didn’t look, work, or operate like the other things they had done. They could not accept that doing things differently was necessary to get different results. When we told people that we had paying customers, they literally could not understand what we were telling them. They lived in their operator minds so long and so deeply they filtered out what we were saying as it could not exist in their worldview.

I had worked with one of the senior leaders well in advance of this, and introduced him to this concept of understanding that there are two modes or two minds that must exist if he wants continued success. I told him how hard it would be and gave him a cheat sheet of questions to ask, when to ask them, and how to take part in this more fully.

Ultimately, the product was shut down. It wasn’t shut down due to security issues, bugs, disappointed customers, lack of revenue, and no plan for growth. It was shut down because the operator’s mind could not accept it, and no innovator mind could exist.

Split Model

The takeaway here for any leader is to realize that you must adapt yourself to be of these two minds far more than you may otherwise find comfortable. The operator’s mind seeks stability, and the innovator’s mind seeks results in the unknown.

One way you help yourself with being of two minds is to formalize your organization around these two ideas. One area will be one that thrives because of the operator mindset. The other will be one where the innovator’s mind runs free. Now, for some guidance on which is which, examine the major characteristics of the work and what success means.

Operator’s Organization

• Long (6-week or longer) planning expecting accuracy
• Formal release cadence and release checklists
• Scope vs. Budget vs. Time constrained decisions
• Risk is limited or well-known
• Type of work is well-known (A team that builds reports that is building more reports)
• Reliance on off-shore vendors

Innovator’s Organization

• Planning with no expectation of accuracy (The plan will change all the time)
• Demos, previews, and early access to incomplete work are favored for quicker learning and feedback
• Goal setting based on outcomes is favored
• Risk is absolute and must be proven otherwise
• Type of work is new (A team that builds reports is going to sell their platform for the first time)
• Low reliance on off-shore vendors
• The questions, “How will we know?” and “When will we know?” are more important than, “What is the work?”

Now, if you look through these characteristics, you may feel drawn to one over the other. Many leaders are drawn to the innovator’s organization but actually behave as though they’re in the operator’s instead. You must be aware of what you do compared to what you wish to do.

If you behave as an operator, then this is your group’s default. It does not have to be this way forever, and there is not one version that is necessarily better. The operator’s mindset is perfect for a product that is stable and well-established, for instance.

Memento

Now that you know which groups you will approach with an operator’s mind and an innovator’s mind, you can map these things out on a bit of paper. Keep this paper visible on your desk. Keep it in your pocket.

This paper, or something similar, is a memento of who you must be as you interact with the different groups.

If you’re reading this and thinking it’s silly, it’s no different from any other ritual you’ve adopted or created over the years to prepare you for your workday. The memento will help you remember to step into the correct mindset when your instinct will be to do the opposite. It will help you conserve your energy throughout the day as you do something unnatural. It will provide you a moment to reflect on who you are in that mind.

Don’t overlook the power of a physical reminder.

From here, you can create additional reminders, like the types of questions you should ask when you’re in the mindset that is least comfortable for you. You can develop ways to celebrate success and when to celebrate, as milestones will be different, as well as what is good.

Shift and Grow

I have found over and over that the majority of groups are of an operator’s mind, and so the innovator’s mind and group will start as a new and small group. After you’ve formalized the organization, which primarily involves how you approach the two groups, you will now want to ask yourself a few new questions.

What do I need to see to…

• Introduce more of the operator’s mind to the innovator’s group?
• Bring more innovator’s groups in?
• Incorporate more of the innovator’s mind into the operator’s group?
• Move a natural innovator to an innovator group or an operator to an operator group?
• Correct weaknesses in the operator group the innovators don’t have and vice versa?
• Communicate effectively to my peers when I operate differently within my own group.
• Ensure innovators are working well or operators are working well?
• Realize I need more help?

These questions are useful as you operate in the two minds to help you see where things are going well, where they aren’t, and how you can shift your groups further and find a balance between the two minds.