Ten Skills for Innovators
The Capabilities Needed to Navigate What's Coming
Summary
“Innovation – particularly transformative innovation – involves learning. You never have all the right answers formulated in advance.”
Gary Pisano
Innovation is rare. The word gets bandied about a lot, but I find it’s often used to describe operational efficiencies, to unveil a new program, or to tactically respond to the latest trend. All of these are normal and expected and if you’re doing these things you probably oversee a well-managed association.
Innovation is something altogether different. It’s a serial investment in value creation to serve the needs of an evolving membership. Innovation focuses on differentiation, offers a unique value proposition, and requires making specific intentional choices. Do we know what’s coming? Are we prepared? What steps do we need to take?
This article focuses on the capabilities you and your team need to break through the cliches and position your association for indispensability.
The product community is a product development learning community designed specifically for associations.
Why Innovate?
“Above all, Leonardo’s relentless curiosity and experimentation should remind us of the importance of instilling, in both ourselves and our children, not just received knowledge but a willingness to question it—to be imaginative and, like talented misfits and rebels in any era, to think differently.”
Walter Isaacson from the book Leonardo da Vinci
Innovation is focused value creation.
Scott Berkun takes it further: “Innovation is significant positive change. It’s a result. It’s an outcome. It’s something you work towards achieving. If you are successful at solving important problems, peers you respect will call your work innovative and you an innovator.”
Innovation is important for several reasons. Here are five:
Creating value. Being able to turn ideas into tangible value (products, etc.).
Solving problems. Being useful and solving problems for your community.
Differentiation. Being unique and hard to copy.
Agility. Being positioned to respond.
Recognizable. Being unmistakably clear.
Yes, innovation is rare, but there are still many ways to innovate. I like the model outlined by Larry Keeley, et. al in their book Ten Types of Innovation: The Discipline of Building Breakthroughs. They organize innovation types by three groupings.
Configuration
Profit model – The way in which you make money.
Network – Connections with others to create value.
Structure – Alignment of your talent and assets.
Process – Signature or superior methods for doing your work.
Offerings
Product performance – Distinguishing features and functionality.
Product system – Complementary products and services.
Experience
Service – Support enhancements that surround your offerings.
Channel – How your offerings are delivered to your customers.
Brand – Representation of your offerings and business.
Customer engagement – Distinctive interactions that you foster.
I will cover the Ten Types of Innovation more thoroughly in a future article.
The diversity of innovation gives us options. It is through this concept that I have created the top ten skills for innovative association professionals.
Challenging the Status Quo: The Ten Skills
“It’s more important to invest in good people than in good ideas.”
Ed Catmull
Innovators create energy. They are positive multipliers that balance openness and discipline, ideas and execution, vision and action. Innovation is a learnable skill and should be distributed throughout an organization (not just at the top).
In building this list, I decided not to focus on skills common to associations (e.g. membership, content development, volunteer leadership, or events management). Instead, I tried to build a list that can be considered common amongst innovative people and achievable by professionals in associations of all size, complexity, and purpose. This list is not intended to reinforce or create silos; it’s intended to create a baseline body of knowledge that serves as a horizontal connector.
Cross-boundary collaboration. Innovators use openness to create shared purpose and communicate with professional candor to build serial trust. Innovators listen more than they talk, build empathy, combat silos, and create relationships. Innovators work fluidly across the aisle, collaborating with diverse colleagues to solve interdisciplinary problems. It’s where the willing meets the smart and the creative meets the numbers wonk.
Usable strategy. Innovators understand that all action is governed by a set of discrete of focused choices. Nearly all associations have a strategic plan; very few have a differentiated strategy that is equal parts compelling as it is achievable. Innovators use strategy to build focused momentum by making specific choices and rallying the community behind these choices to inform how we do business and enlighten our communities.
Value creation. Innovators create value, but the best innovators know that members don’t want more stuff. They want the right value at the right time to solve problems, make connections, learn something new, or make progress in their career. Product development is relationship-centered and underscores all value creation, which is the heart of all member communities. It’s why people come and why they engage deeply.
New markets. Innovators serve the core membership, but have a keen sense of what’s coming and how to grow the pie. Most associations serve finite markets (within a particular industry or profession). A healthy association focuses on problems that span industries, associations, and professions. This alone can broaden our relevance as we shift from satisfying the status quo toward a healthy network of partnerships and adjacent influencers.
Community-centric problem solving. Innovators are community people. They understand that problems are best solved with open and ongoing multi-way communication with their communities. They are relationship builders, idea gatherers, and serial connectors. Building a thriving, indispensable community is not only a required skill, it’s at the heart of why we exist and what we need to do in order to adapt and succeed.
Persuasion with numbers. Innovators use good data to communicate with clarity and authority. They understand that drowning in numbers (or not collecting data) undermines our identity and direction. Making choices on who we are and where we’re going helps us decide which problems to solve. This will help create discipline in what data we collect and results in clean, usable data. Innovators use this data to persuade, build coalitions, and make sound decisions.
Continuous discovery. Innovators are idea people and they know that the best ideas come from authentic and sustained relationship-building. Knowing our customers helps create a clear, shared, and ongoing understanding of who we serve and why. In fact, the best way to understand our people, community, or market (past, current, prospective) is not to send out semi-regular surveys, but to invest in continuous discovery.
Journey building. Innovators successfully marry today’s actions with a keen sense of what’s coming. Innovators resist the tyranny of the urgent as they understand that short-term action alone results in a tactical, band-aid approach to relationship building, problem solving, and community growth. Innovators earn trust and build for the journey by stitching experiences and content together. They believe in through-lines not instances.
Fun as a cultural driver. Innovators are serious professionals who have serious fun. Innovation work can be scary and as serious as a heart attack. If not properly embedded and practiced, it can be abstract, ambiguous, and stressful. What do we value? How we spend our time? Where do we invest our resources? How can we become more innovative? What does it take to embed fun into our everyday lives? How can this fun create an innovative and effective culture of joy?
Learning. Innovators read, write, listen, consume, converse, experiment, connect dots, cross boundaries, and constantly apply what they know. Innovators are constant learners and gain knowledge from lots of sources and diverse people and fields. They try new things. Innovation can be intimidating, but like anything else it can be learned through practice, experimentation, and consuming and sharing new ideas.
I want to reiterate a couple of things before moving onto the next section: first, innovation is rare, but possible; second, innovation is learnable through collaborative practice; third, innovation is replicable. Once you get a hang of it, you can apply it throughout your organization.
What would be on your list of innovation skills?
Innovation Readiness
“Continuity of strategy does not mean that an organization should stand still. As long as there is stability in the core value proposition, there can, and should, be enormous innovation in how it’s delivered.”
Joan Magretta
We all know when we’ve made a great hire. They make the best employees; they are thoughtful and smart, they take initiative and roll up their sleeves to get the job done. They contribute positively and candidly to a healthy culture. They bring unique talent yet position themselves to learn more. They collaborate naturally, but understand boundaries. They use examples and share what they know. These people pass the “I want to have a beer with you” test.
This innovative colleague is a starting point for the ten skills outlined in this article. Independent of rank or status, this person is a leader and great leaders are great learners. This makes it possible for anyone to gain and practice the ten skills. If this baseline is possible then innovation can indeed become an organizational rhythm and common skill, and shared launching point.
Doing so, will make our investments in innovation more embedded and natural thereby vastly improving our odds at becoming the organization our members want us to be.
I lead the product community; we are a learning community because we believe great relationships help us create the value our members want. Remember, product-led growth fuels connection. Join the product community and flip your destiny.
About the Author
James Young is founder and chief learning officer of the product community®. Jim is an engaging trainer and leading thinker in the worlds of associations, learning communities, and product development. Prior to starting the product community®, Jim served as Chief Learning Officer at both the American College of Chest Physicians and the Society of College and University Planning. Please contact me for a conversation: james@productcommunity.us