Explore: Fostering Innovation and Sustainability

Getting to market often requires immense speed and intensity during a company's start-up phase. However, any successful company must eventually become predictable and sustainable. Perhaps the most famous of these stories is that of Steve Jobs and Apple. Steve Jobs is famous for his vision and innovation.

Still, in 1985, he was ousted from Apple because his frenetic pace at launching new products led to internal discord, stressed-out employees, unrealistic deadlines, and failed products. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 with much more restraint and introduced an annual product cycle that streamlined the product line and made predictable product launches. This made managing workloads, allocating resources, and creating customer anticipation easier.

This is true of any great institution; consider schools; everyone knows when they start, end, and when teachers and students vacation. Professional development and planning times are also baked into their annual calendars. You must have predictable annual cycles for your leadership team to be sustainable and innovative.

Identify High and Low Seasons: Managing Workloads and Preventing Burnout

There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for this because each industry, and indeed, each company culture, is unique. So, what I do with my clients is get the leadership team to discuss when the high and low seasons are in the company and when they would like it to be high and low.

For example, I identify that the beginning of September, January, and July are slow seasons in my practice. For this reason, I make these my vacation times, and because the pattern shows annually, existing clients can expect this. For myself, it means I can plan my vacations and work accordingly.

I had another client who held the busiest sports competitions leading up to competition season and the lightest just after. Since they can identify this, they can also build this into part of their company culture so that everyone knows when to take a break (and have permission to do so). A company must have fast and slow seasons. Fast seasons are for running hard after audacious goals (which, as we know, is one of the elements of goal-setting theory).

Slow seasons are for rest and reflection before setting up the next fast season. If your company is only steady-paced and never fast, you will fall to your competitors. Yet, if your company is only fast and never slow, your turnover will be high and creativity stifled. 

Encouraging Team Innovation through Cycles

Do you or your team have a formal innovation process? If not, most processes involve iterating through these four phases.

1. Generate: This is the phase where individuals or teams generate as many ideas as possible from different sources. From there, evaluate the ideas and ultimately choose one to test.
   
   
2. Test: Before scaling an idea, a pilot season should be given to test its effectiveness. If the idea is successful, move on to implementation. If it wasn’t, consider whether it needs more time to develop, pivot, or simply move back to phase one.
   
   
3. Implement: The idea is formed and tested; now is the time to scale it.
   
   
4. Evaluate: Like any good process, debrief what was learned in this process and move back to phase one of the cycle.
   

There are two types of innovation: 1) novel ideas (like a new line of product or a new way of doing things) and 2) iterative ideas (to slowly improve existing processes, products, or services). Both are necessary, and the individual and team can use the innovation process. One way to ensure this process is regularly used is to bake it into your annual cycles! Consider the high-low seasons you already mapped out; generate and test phases can usually be during the low seasons, and implementation and evaluation can be done during the high seasons. .

Studies have shown that organizations prioritizing continuous learning see higher employee engagement, innovation, and overall performance (Mone et al., 2011). For this reason, you need to make innovation one of your core values so as not to fall behind in your competition and to foster leadership skills within your team.

By having formal ways to capture ideas and formal processes for innovation and having it baked into your annual calendar, you will be cementing your business as an ever-growing, and sustainable business into the future even in your absence. Understanding team dynamics during these innovation cycles is crucial to ensuring smooth collaboration and effective problem-solving.

Implementing the E5 Leadership Framework: Steps to Get Started

This was called a definitive guide, and it can be overwhelming. So, how do you make E5 a reality for your team? I have a diagnostic that has 25 items, 5 for each of the E foundations. I suggest getting an overall score from the diagnostic and seeing how you scored in each of the foundations. When I work with my clients, we start at the beginning and work our way down until each section can be scored at least 80% or above. So the first step is to diagnose, and you can do that right here.

Need help implementing this framework into your team? We have a program just for that, called the Empowered Leadership Intensive.

Reference:

Castellano, S., Chandavimol, K., Khelladi, I., & Orhan, M. A. (2021). Impact of self-leadership and shared leadership on the performance of virtual R&D teams. Journal of Business Research, 128, 578-586.

Chamakiotis, P., Panteli, N., & Davison, R. M. (2021). Reimagining e-leadership for reconfigured virtual teams due to Covid-19. International Journal of Information Management, 60, 102381.

Chanana, N., & Sangeeta. (2021). Employee engagement practices during COVID‐19 lockdown. Journal of Public Affairs, 21(4), e2508-n/a. https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2508

Chen, Y. S., Lien, C. M., Lo, W. Y., & Tsay, F. S. (2021). Sustainability of positive psychological status in the workplace: The influence of organizational psychological ownership and psychological capital on police officers’ behavior. Sustainability, 13(5), 2689.

Dai, Y. D., Altinay, L., Zhuang, W. L., & Chen, K. T. (2021). Work engagement and job burnout? Roles of regulatory foci, supervisors’ organizational embodiment and psychological ownership. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 46, 114-122.

Fallman, S. L., Jutengren, G., & Dellve, L. (2019). The impact of restricted decision‐making autonomy on health care managers’ health and work performance. Journal of Nursing Management, 27(4), 706-714. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12741

Gardner, D. G., Pierce, J. L., & Peng, H. (2021). Social exchange and psychological ownership as complementary pathways from psychological contract fulfillment to organizational citizenship behaviors. Personnel Review, 50(6), 1479-1494.

Han, Y., & Hong, S. (2019). The impact of accountability on organizational performance in the U.S. federal government: The moderating role of autonomy. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 39(1), 3-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0734371X16682816

He, Y., & Oxendine, S. D. (2019). Leading positive change in higher education through appreciative inquiry: A phenomenological exploration of the strategic planning process. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 41(2), 219-232. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2018.1558720

Huh, E., & Lee, E. (2022). Can abusive supervision create positive work engagement? the interactive moderating role of positive causal attribution and workplace friendship. Management Decision, 60(3), 531-549. https://doi.org/10.1108/MD-10-2020-1356

Kauffeld, S., Lehmann-Willenbrock, N., & Willenbrock, N. (2011). Meetings matter: Effects of team meetings on team and organizational success. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 15(1), 24-37.

Kim, W., Han, S. J., & Park, J. (2019). Is the role of work engagement essential to employee performance or ‘Nice to have’? Sustainability, 11(4), 1050. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11041050

Kwon, K., & Kim, T. (2020). An integrative literature review of employee engagement and innovative behavior: Revisiting the JD-R model. Human Resource Management Review, 30(2), 100704. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2019.100704

Lee, M. C. C., Idris, M. A., & Tuckey, M. (2019). Supervisory coaching and performance feedback as mediators of the relationships between leadership styles, work engagement, and turnover intention. Human Resource Development International, 22(3), 257-282. https://doi.org/10.1080/13678868.2018.1530170

Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2019). The development of goal setting theory: A half century retrospective. Motivation Science, 5(2), 93-105. https://doi.org/10.1037/mot0000127

Mone, E., Eisinger, C., Guggenheim, K., Price, B., & Stine, C. (2011). Performance management at the wheel: Driving employee engagement in organizations. Journal of Business and Psychology, 26(2), 205-212. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10869-011-9222-9

Roels, G., & Corbett, C. J. (2024). Too many meetings? Scheduling rules for team coordination. Journal of Operations Management, 74(1), 115-134.

Slåtten, T., Mutonyi, B. R., & Lien, G. (2021). Does organizational vision really matter? an empirical examination of factors related to organizational vision integration among hospital employees. BMC Health Services Research, 21(1), 483-483. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-021-06503-3

Vafeas, N. (1999). Board meeting frequency and firm performance. Journal of Financial Economics, 53(1), 113-142.

Waltz, L. A., Muñoz, L., Weber Johnson, H., & Rodriguez, T. (2020). Exploring job satisfaction and workplace engagement in millennial nurses. Journal of Nursing Management, 28(3), 673-681. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12981

Wang, N., Zhu, J., Dormann, C., Song, Z., & Bakker, A. B. (2020). The daily motivators: Positive work events, psychological needs satisfaction, and work engagement. Applied Psychology, 69(2), 508-537. https://doi.org/10.1111/apps.12182

Zhang, Y., Liu, G., Zhang, L., Xu, S., & Cheung, M. W. L. (2021). Psychological ownership: A meta-analysis and comparison of multiple forms of attachment in the workplace. Journal of Management, 47(3), 745-770.