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Styles of Innovative Leadership

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I have paid close attention to various styles of innovative leadership, and if I was asked to name the top five innovative leadership models of this generation, I would certainly have Apple and Google as my top two. Both are a big part of my everyday life and work, and I am sure you would agree.
 
One of Google’s tenets of innovation is that data is apolitical. They pay close and intense attention to what their customers express they need and then work very quickly and precisely to create what customers want.
 
The late Steve Jobs as CEO of Apple took a quite different leadership tack than Google when it comes to innovative leadership. Apple, as a result, seems to envision what the future is and develop products that customers want but just didn’t know it. Apple thinks innovatively for its customers about what would make life easier, more fun, better connected, more creative, a better experience – about what is necessary for their future. Apple leads the industry and leads its tribe of customers who rely on them to do so. Apple sees a world in which we fashionably wear our technology, and the world follows.
 
As a choral leader, which would be your style? To have an understanding of your innovative leadership style is essential to understanding your future.
If your style is more like Google’s, surveying your community on a regular basis to see what they would like and working quickly to give it to them–that would be a customer-centric style that is built upon the assumption that customers understand their needs better than you do.
 
If you rely more on your organization’s knowledge and growth as the expert and make changes and innovations in your work based on your vision of what is necessary for your people, then you would be a more visionary leader like Steve Jobs  and Apple in foreseeing what the future requires today. This style believes that opinions and taste are important, but they do not accurately suggest future direction like you, the expert observer and analyzer, can.
 
Is one better than the other? Yes, and no. But what is important is an awareness of both and not becoming trapped in only developing one approach and one style of innovative leadership. Google has a close intimate relationship with its customers that helps them stay relevant and even indispensable in their lives. Google earns trust with its customers because they act on customer need quickly and expertly. Google would not be successful if they listened to customers and didn’t act adeptly and quickly.
 
Apple creates the future by determining what must be next based on what we see and have at our disposal now—Mobility is the future. Aesthetics are delightful. Content must be abundant. Knowing all those things, what device makes sense? Apple doesn’t wait to see what other people are going to do and try to play catch-up. Apple defines and sets new standards for others to follow.
 
Which route is your leadership taking? Are you the innovative leader organizing today based on what the future is telling us? Or, are you gathering data to use to innovate and are you committed to acting – launching big and early and iterating often?
 
I think it is necessary to be intentional about innovation, with one or the other strategy because choosing to wait and see what develops, waiting to see what everybody else is going to do is not a winning strategy. Your constituency is counting on you to craft the experiences they need now to be prepared for the future. Envision it like Apple does and align to it. or scan all the data including listening closely to customers, and create new all the time, staying in close sync with today, knowing the future is evolving.
 
Either way, innovation is how we remain relevant, even indispensable, to our people, job, or organization. Innovation is all about creating value today and in the future. Innovation is about leadership.

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Comments

  1. Hmmm, I don’t know how most visitors “use” ChoralNet, although I do know that I’ve read many creative and/or innovative solutions to various challenges that have been posted in the Forums over the years.  So, it might work best for you to post a special blog about the possibilities (maybe in January?), and see what kind of responses you get.  It may be that simply inviting visitors to blog about a particular effort or experience involving sustainable creative innovation will fit the bill (and then maybe these blogs could be stored in a special place by subject category for easy searching later on?), or perhaps visitors would appreciate being able to access a new dedicated place here on ChoralNet where creative, sustainable innovations could be posted at will and then perused via subject category by anyone, anytime.  The subject categories could include things like fundraising, recruitment, retaining and building audiences, dealing with administrators, preventing burnout, and so on. 
     
    Those are just a few ideas; I’m sure others will have more.  It will be interesting to see what everyone thinks would be most useful to them.
     

  2. Julia–Brilliant, and might I add, innovative! Let’s do it. How can we create a flow of innovative offerings based on other’s experience, here on ChoralNet? I am willing to moderate, since I am passionate about this topic, and the need for this mindset. I am very aware that my innovation may be just another day at the office for another person, but still, it is worth the effort. Let’s create a thread for this idea and come up with the best way to share the information. Perhaps we need to create a “Community of Innovation” here on ChoralNet. What do we think?  TS

  3. Tim — Thank you from the bottom of my practical little heart for your lovely reply. I eagerly look forward to reading your upcoming “application of innovation” blog posts, and wish you the very best as you complete your book. Perhaps sometime in the future it might be interesting to invite ChoralNet visitors to share their own efforts regarding sustainable creativity and innovation in this blog space, especially those who read and then put the contents of your new book to good use.
     

  4. Hi Julia,
     
    The lack of literature related to innovation specifically targeting our choral profession is indeed why I have taken this topic on. I am working on a book now called Innovation in the Ensemble Arts: Sustaining Creativity, which will be published in 2016. In this book, I am applying innovation to the challenges you have addressed in your reply to my blog. I like your choral taxonomy. I think of it in a little different way–I think instead of what motivates the existence of a choir. You mention religious institutions, and I categorize those as choirs motivated by “faith”, which is a strong motivator; you list educational choirs, and I think of those choirs as ones motivated by the search for “knowledge and truth”, another strong motivator; and you mention freestanding nonprofit organizations, which I see as those motivated by the desire to have meaningful “serious leisure” experiences. These “motivators” clearly overlap in all choral organizations. To your list, I think you would agree that there is a small number of choirs that are motivated by “profit motive”, although this is tiny in comparison to the other categories, and those singers no-doubt have some of the above motivators at work. You use the word “barrier”, and I choose to use the word “tension”. I see “tension” as the catylist for innovation, which is where my book begins.
     
    In 2016, I plan to flip my blog from the theoretical, to the actualy application of innovation to the ensemble arts. So, thank you for anticipating my next steps!!
     
    Tim Sharp, ACDA

  5. Tim — I’ve been reading your ChoralBlog posts with interest since you began this series on creativity, innovation, leadership, etc., and have noted that many (perhaps most?) of the examples you’ve mentioned come from the for-profit world, as in the current examples of Apple and Google whose shared primary goal is to make a financial profit from their activities.  
     
    While spending about half of a non-musical career in the for-profit business world, and the other half in the topsy-turvy, perpetually resource-challenged, Alice-in-Wonderland nonprofit world, I often questioned how much of the accumulated wisdom and successful strategies of the for-profit business world could truly be applied to the nonprofit world of publicly-funded entities as well as independent nonprofit organizations, both of which have very different values and goals from those of the business world.
     
    It seems to me there are three major kinds of choirs:  those associated with religious institutions, those associated with educational institutions, and those that are freestanding nonprofit entities.  The first two often face institutional “rules and regulations” barriers, as well as financial barriers, to creativity and innovation, while the third primarily face financial and other resource barriers even when creativity and innovation are seen as desirable or even necessary for survival and growth.
     
    As all creative changes and innovations require time, energy, and especially money, all three of which are in perpetually short supply in nonprofit organizations and are often in much larger supply in for-profit businesses (at least the successful ones), could you in a future blog perhaps write about these issues as you see them from your vantage point?
     

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