January 2002

February 2002

Innovation Tips

…for thriving on collaborative innovation

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Pursue the Light of Success

Managers love to solve others’ problems. That is what they do, almost by definition. But leaders pursue success and let the people solve their problems.

The Pareto 80/20 rule offers apt counsel: Strong leaders ought to spend 80% of their time praising, encouraging, recognizing and identifying the successes of the organization, and 20% of their time solving problems.

Managers, on the other hand, are more apt to be problem solvers. They are trained to solve problems and expected to make the executive judgments that fix the problems of others. Managers become leaders when they let people fix their own problems and help those people move in the direction of common dreams, visions, purposes—and especially success.

Problems are better fixed not by a boss but by the people doing the work—the people most affected by the problem. The collaborative genius of people thinking together will virtually always exceed the intelligence of a single boss. Further, when people are engaged in solving their own operational problems, they take deeper ownership for the work; they experience the thrill of achievement when they solve problems and enhance operational success. Taking orders from a problem-solving boss numbs initiative and suppresses creative problem-solving.

It is not the leader’s job to solve the problems. It is the leader’s job to see where the organization is having its greatest successes and to navigate the movement of the enterprise toward those successes—to nurture, encourage, promote, commend, acknowledge and pursue success at every turn.

Many of the great organizational success stories have been born of pursuing unexpected success. The multibillion dollar international McDonald’s corporation was born when Ray Kroc noticed that a small hamburger shop in California was buying an unusual number of milkshake makers. Honda Motor Corporation seized and expanded the majority of the U.S. motorcycle market when three of their employees noticed that a lot of people were asking about the Super Cubs they were riding on weekends in the hills outside of Los Angeles. Chrysler made windfall profits on the LeBaron convertible when Lee Iacocca noticed that a lot of people were asking about the convertible they had custom made—just for the fun of it.

Peter Drucker has noted that the easiest, most accessible, most fruitful innovations in any industry are usually those born from some unexpected success. It is the leader’s job to identify these successes when they occur and expand on them—to let them guide the organization’s growth and development.

The great difference between managers and leaders is that managers focus on problems while leaders focus on success. Leaders move to success the way that plants move toward light—and the light of success has guided many organizations to abundant prosperity.

As a general operating principle, consider spending 80% of your time on successes and 20% on problems.

(This is the second in a series of articles on leadership and collaborative genius.)

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