FastForward Radio Podcast Clay Richardson

What are the five key distinctions I see that separate the best from the rest?
The most effective innovators are partnering and co-innovating with stakeholders. The key to effective innovation leadership is acquiring the skills necessary to partner very closely with the stakeholders in your organization and co-own getting to those outcomes you wish to achieve. After reading CEO Excellence, written by senior partners at McKinsey, it made me think about the key capabilities that differentiate mediocre innovation leaders from those innovation leaders who are knocking it out of the ballpark. 

I had a chance over the summer to spend a lot of time with my dad. I learned that he wasn't doing well, we found out that he had cancer. Knowing that he was sick really prompted me to start spending much more time with him and just asking him a lot of questions.
My conversations with my dad led me to learn three big innovation leadership lessons. I want to share these lessons with you as the foundation of how to continue leveling up as an innovation leader.

With persisting talk of inflation and recession, many of our colleagues and clients are anticipating a slowdown period in which innovation takes a back seat to cost-cutting and downsizing. These pullbacks may test the nerve of many innovation leaders, but I’m here to tell you: there has never been a better time to lean into the challenges ahead.
Listen now to learn the three steps you can take to prepare. 

One of the most powerful tools in the Innovation Leaders’ quiver is the design sprint.
Design sprints are compressed agile development cycles (quite typically a few days or weeks) in which stakeholders identify problems, then rapidly brainstorm and build out prototype solutions in order to validate ideas before investing heavily into developing them.
Embrace letting go of control over your design sprints to discover your new superpower as an Innovation facilitator.