For an innovation effort–and the transformation it requires–to succeed, employees must be convinced that company leaders are serious about supporting new ways of thinking and acting. Is it just talk or have you as an innovation leaders been given a strong mandate to make real change? This is the first big question any innovation effort must answer.

The mandate should be easy to communicate to the stakeholders who will be involved in reaching the intent or purpose. The mandate:
•  Should lay out the resources and authority given to the innovation team.
•  Clarify how potential conflicts are to be handled.
•  Encourage stakeholders to solve problems on issues such as resource allocation
   and commitment without involving the executives.

The innovation leaders must get full support from the executives in the early phases of the setup where they have to prove their mandate. If the middle managers sense that the innovation leaders do not have executive support, they will tend to focus on their own agenda rather than on what is best for the company. In such cases executives need to send strong public signals internally that they support this initiative even to a level where they commit personally. Executives will also need to have showdowns with individuals or groups that appear to be less than supportive of change.

Innovation leaders must also “educate” the executives on innovation and, more importantly, they must make the consequences of executive decisions very clear. The executives often do not have this overview.

It is not easy being an innovation leader or an executive when dealing with innovation issues. A few years ago, I had an interesting talk with an innovation leader at an international producer of high-end goods. The company had relied on a stable product portfolio for many years. It has been successful, but the company knew they had to look beyond incremental innovation to prosper in the future. They needed to work on paradigm shifts that included a stronger focus on services and solutions rather than just products.

For this they brought in a great innovation leader who quickly built a team of people with different backgrounds and competences than the other people working with innovation. It was a good match between incremental and radical innovation, but inevitably this also caused many clashes between the different mindsets.

The innovation leader had to educate the CEO on his ideas and mindset. That process went well but the innovation leader and his team continued having clashes with other parts of the organization. The innovation leader brought this up with the CEO and he was a bit surprised to receive this response: “Bob, I like what you are doing and I really want to support your work. You know that. However, if your initiatives cause too much trouble, I need to listen to our core people. They are the guys who bring in our revenues and profits and we need this. Try to work this out in a subtle manner.”

More directly speaking, the message was that if there is too much trouble, the CEO would have to kick out the innovation leader with short notice to satisfy the other guys. Unfortunately, many innovation leaders do not have a clear mandate from their executives. This can cause bad situations, and it definitely makes the job of an innovation leader even harder.