Visionary leaders hope to get everyone excited about innovation and transformation, making systemic change and new beginnings easier and more rewarding. The pragmatics of transformation, though, mean creating visionary systems that reward risk and reward, built on trust. Here’s Henry Doss, entrepreneur and blogger at Forbes, about the ways leadership and innovation fuel transformation, and the ways our focus on systems and evaluation cripples the process.

“Our culture tends to place an inordinate amount of value on the linear, the measurable, the predictable. We idolize our organizational charts, our forecasts, our systems of measurement and evaluation, and we come to believe that these measures are our business, rather than dangerous and potentially misleading signposts.  When good things happen, we magically attribute them to our ability to manage – rather than lead – our organization.  Our logic:  “We measured and planned and executed, so – post hoc ergo propter hoc – our measurement, planning and execution must have caused the outcomes.”  This is the first step down a very bad road.

The problem arises when we ask:  “Is the primary cause of innovation leadership or systems?”    For good or ill, our answer to this very simple question will inform our priorities and our focus….

The most critical aspect of building an innovative organization – leadership  – is missing or incomplete in your thinking (if you believe innovation is a product of systems).”

Read the whole article…

Taking a Risk Together is Exhilarating

Doss argues that trust, diversity and risk are products of leadership not systems. They are values and relationships that make organizational stakeholders reach for innovation. Rather than clinging to systems analysis and trying to transform the cogs of a set machine, Doss believes leadership with these values builds innovation that, through good leadership, builds systems that work for healthy change.