Before you and your team begin the innovation process, you must understand what kind of innovator you are.
If you’ve followed along with The Innovator’s Advantage for a while now, you know one of my favorite things to remind people is that you are all innovators. Each and every person can innovate, but no one innovates in the same way!
Optimizing Strategy for Results differs from other books on strategy in four main ways. First, it introduces strategic foundation, composed of purpose, core values, and vision as a distinct stage. We argue that strategy cannot be developed and executed without establishing this foundation, an argument that is not found in many strategy books.
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By Dr. Evans Baiya
A good strategy is an innovative strategy. Without the flexibility provided by innovation, your strategy will grow stale and stagnant—and your organization will soon follow.
In my most recent book, Optimizing Strategy for Results: A Structured Approach to Make Your Business Come Alive, my co-authors Ron Price, Professor Tim Waema, and I outline seven stages for building an optimal strategy. Stage three is where the options come in because this stage is where you exercise creative strategic thinking to inform possibilities. This part of strategy is critical—organizations need to know what options are available to them to build the most successful strategy.
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Ron Price
From Episode #68 of The Complete Leader Podcast
Today, empathy is a critical skill in successfully leading others. Unfortunately, it is also an often-misunderstood skill. Some studies show that the further up in the organization you rank, the less empathy you demonstrate. To me, this makes perfect sense—the more responsibility you have, the easier it is to be insulated in your own opinions, biases, and troubles. As a leader in today’s world, ignoring what’s happening in others’ lives won’t serve you.
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By Dr. Francis Eberle
Leadership development is worth the effort and time. According to a Lorman survey, retention rates rise 30-50% for companies with strong learning cultures. And 74% of surveyed employees feel they aren’t reaching full potential at work due to lack of development opportunities.
Particularly with workforces shifting, employees retiring, and younger employees taking over those roles, leadership development is a crucial need. It can help address the gaps created, fast pace of work, demands for effective and agile teams, and employees’ desires for advancement.
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Part Two of a two-part interview with the Authors of Optimizing Strategy for Results: A Structured Approach to Make Your Business Come Alive
By the TCL Team
For authors Dr. Timothy Waema, Ron Price, and Dr. Evans Baiya, strategy is only one part of the work they do for clients across the globe. Together, they bring decades of knowledge on strategy, leadership, and innovation into cohesive teachings—which led them to collaborate on their latest book, Optimizing Strategy for Results: A Structured Approach to Make Your Business Come Alive.
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Dr. Francis Eberle
Recently a client of mine who is a self-starter decided to change jobs. Moves like this take a great deal of effort. They disrupt your routines, your work style and sometimes relationships. For my client, the new position required moving to a new state and learning new roles, people and systems. As we talked, I realized she wasn’t talking about her Why: what drives her and why she wanted this position.
So I asked her, what about this position was worth all the transitions and new challenges? Without much hesitation she stated her reasons. It was not really a surprise that they were grounded in her principles and values.
I tell you this because self-starters can often be quick to action. They can sometimes do things without asking or try new things to just to test them. Throughout my management career and coaching work, I’ve seen that it’s not just about the action itself. In fact, self-starters who are successful have a deeper, more intrinsic reason for their actions, even if those decisions are made quickly.
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By Jalene Case
When was the last time you discovered that you didn’t measure up to someone else’s expectations? The message may have come from a boss, co-worker, colleague, client, family member, or friend. Do you remember the feeling? It might have been a visceral, sinking feeling in your gut or some other physical sensation that comes when your confidence takes a plunge.
I went through this tough experience with a coaching client recently. Initially, he was knocked off-track and didn’t know what to do to regain his confidence. Like a car hitting an icy patch of road, he was swerving uncontrollably. Eventually, he was able to gain control of his internal steering wheel again. Now that he’s beyond the rough patch, he can look back at the resiliency skills he developed along the way. We used the following six strategies to bring him relief, as well as personal growth.
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By Dr. Evans Baiya
In helping businesses and leaders build their innovation abilities, I see certain traits that stifle innovation again and again. Whether they surface in an individual leader or employee, or afflict the organization as a whole, these repeating issues become a hindrance to future success. Here are 12 enemies of successful innovation to avoid on your innovation journey.
Lack of Clarity
It’s not easy to follow someone who does not know what problems they are solving and why. As a leader—especially if you are attempting change—you need a clear vision of the what, the when, the why, the who, and the how to create momentum for those who follow you.
All of this can be clarified in your strategy to reduce noise and inaction. Without clarity, the noise will overwhelm both internal and external stakeholders. They won’t know what to pay attention to, believe, or act upon. Practice clarifying your strategy.
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Part One of a two-part interview with the Authors of Optimizing Strategy for Results: A Structured Approach to Make Your Business Come Alive
By The TCL Team
We all did a little something different during our extended time at home during the early days of the pandemic. With Zoom as our new neighborhood hangout, we worked, exercised, and socialized. For authors Dr. Timothy Waema, Ron Price, and Dr. Evans Baiya, it was the perfect time to collaborate on a book they had been dreaming of for years.
From their homes across the world in Boise, ID, and Nairobi, Kenya, the authors pooled together their collective knowledge on strategy, leadership, and innovation to write Optimizing Strategy for Results: A Structured Approach to Make Your Business Come Alive. This step-by-step model is meant to help leaders prepare, create, and optimize great strategy—making those elusive “how’s” and “what’s” of successful strategic planning clear.
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