{"id":49213,"date":"2020-04-10T10:10:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T14:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ccl.org\/?post_type=articles&p=49213"},"modified":"2025-05-08T07:09:22","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T11:09:22","slug":"role-innovation-depends","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ccl.org\/articles\/leading-effectively-articles\/role-innovation-depends\/","title":{"rendered":"Your Role in Innovation Depends on Where You Sit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Driving Innovation at Every Level of the Org Chart<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s obvious that leaders at different levels of the organization have to lead differently \u2014 think about how different the leadership challenges are for a line supervisor than a CEO.<\/p>\n

So it shouldn\u2019t be surprising that leaders who are looking to drive innovation have different challenges depending on their position. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.<\/p>\n

Regardless of where you sit in an organization, it\u2019s useful to understand the challenges unique to leading innovation efforts \u2014 and the 3 leadership imperatives that provide emotional support innovators need.<\/p>\n

Understand Your Role in Innovation<\/h2>\n

Unsure where you stand on pushing innovation forward? Consider where you sit in the organization. Innovation at every level looks different. Here\u2019s a rundown of the roles and responsibilities, by leader level, specific to innovation to get you started:<\/p>\n

\"Infographic:<\/a><\/p>\n

5 Key Innovation Leadership Roles<\/h3>\n

Leading Self: Creating<\/h4>\n

At the level where you don\u2019t have direct reports \u2014 where you\u2019re an individual contributor, maybe serving as a role model, or perhaps a leader of project teams \u2014 the responsibilities around innovation fall mainly into the realm of knowing how<\/em> to generate creative solutions<\/strong> and having a keen interest in participating on a team made up of diverse talent.<\/p>\n

Core to this is the ability to find sources of inspiration for new approaches, whether that means looking at other industries, engaging customers and stakeholders, or exploring patent databases for similar challenges that have been solved by others.<\/p>\n

Basically, at this level, your role in innovation is that you\u2019re responsible for ideation and creation, generating novel solutions to challenging problems.<\/p>\n

Leading Others: Facilitating Innovation<\/h4>\n

Team leaders or line supervisors need to possess additional skills. They must know how to lead the group process<\/strong>, which requires special facilitation skills on top of those necessary for being an effective team leader or project manager.<\/p>\n

And for innovation to take root and spread through the organization, these leaders or supervisors need to know how to obtain resources from outside their units<\/strong> to support the work of innovation.<\/p>\n

At this level, your role in innovation is about leading group processes that support innovation and obtaining resources to support your team’s efforts.<\/p>\n

Leading Managers: Advocating\/Bridging Innovation<\/h4>\n

When you lead people who are leading others, a key value you bring to the challenge of innovation is supporting and protecting the team from superiors or other parts of the organization.<\/p>\n

Great leaders create a protective umbrella over their people to ensure that the discomfort, risk, and potential disruption of the business don’t cause others to try to shut down these efforts. These managers also have to know\u00a0how to build a case for grassroots innovation<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0how to bridge groups that are working on similar challenges<\/strong>\u00a0to ensure constructive cooperation.<\/p>\n

At this level, your role in innovation is facilitating cooperation between groups working on similar opportunities.<\/p>\n

Leading Functions: Directing\/Protecting Innovation<\/h4>\n

Leaders of a function or significant silo need to provide clear direction for the scope of the innovation efforts and also need to manage conflicting demands for resources. They must initiate strategic and structural changes to accommodate promising innovations and establish a strategy that bridges the silos.<\/p>\n

As if that\u2019s not enough, they are critical to modeling behavior and driving communication that sets the organizational tone that determines broader support of innovation. They\u2019re also critical in the management of the innovation pipeline and balancing the portfolio \u201cbets\u201d that help determine the future direction of the organization\u2019s innovation. Consider how you respond to new ideas and whether you foster innovative mindsets<\/a> on your team.<\/p>\n

At this level, your role in innovation is knowing how to develop the innovation strategy and manage the pipeline of new products and services,<\/strong> while bridging silos in the organization.<\/p>\n

Leading the Organization: Mandating\/Fostering Innovation<\/h4>\n

Finally, we have the top of the organization. These are the people who have the critical job of setting a strategy to ensure that the organization has a clear direction on where it\u2019s going.<\/p>\n

More than that, they are the keystone for fostering a culture of innovation, a big part of which is modeling behaviors to ensure that the walk matches the talk, which sometimes means showing support for different, new, or disruptive ideas.<\/p>\n

Like other top leadership responsibilities, it\u2019s imperative that they know how to communicate the vision<\/strong> over and over and over again. And at this level, it\u2019s critical you avoid subconsciously sabotaging innovation<\/a>. Perhaps the hardest job is finding ways to hear and see unfiltered concepts, since the further you go up the hierarchy, the less connected to \u201cwhat\u2019s really true\u201d you become.<\/p>\n

At this leader level, your role in innovation is shaping the organizational culture to support innovation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Regardless of Your Role in Innovation, Leading It is Challenging<\/h2>\n

Regardless of their position in the organization, individual leaders tasked with leading innovation efforts \u2014 either because that\u2019s a part of their role or because they\u2019re responsible for the day-to-day management of a specific innovation project \u2014 will have different leadership challenges.<\/p>\n

Why? Because leading innovation is distinctly different than leading ongoing business operations. Leading innovation is different than leading in general in 4 critical ways:<\/p>\n