Analyze the results of your assessment—how your own strengths equip you—and how your weaknesses hinder your ability to support organizational innovation.
An innovator or executor quiz is based on analyzing skills in which one can understand and assess the capability to know which criteria a person lies in based on the results. The weak and strong skills will decide the organization’s future. As emphasized in the article and before the quiz, an MBA mostly contains the capabilities needed in entrepreneurship because MBAs are the people who run the organization the way it should be. The leader should be the one who can be both, but before pursuing the quiz, one needs to understand what both of these skills tell about the leader (Contributor, 2018). First, the executor is the one who contributes to the production while following the direction of created policies. Executors are known as the doers of the company. They consider it to be task-oriented. The executor’s duty is to reach and meet the company’s set goals. Sometimes, organizations need these leaders because they are the ones who, while following the directions, meet the set requirements for achieving the goals. The other type mentioned in the quiz is innovators; these leaders, as indicated by the name, focus on innovation and introduce ideas, methods, and new products. These types of leaders take the initiative and set definite goals. Companies start with leaders who think outside of the box and provide solutions to problems. Several organizations are doing the same work, but the innovator will bring something new. There are several ways to conduct one task, but innovators always tend to introduce efficient ways to do the task effectively(Ezzat, 2017).
The organization’s main concern is that both should work alongside because sometimes set goals need to be done before creating and setting new goals. The set of questions asks for the two answers yes and no. If the number of yes increases from the number of no, then the orientation is strong and will provide the chances of success, but a maximum number of no needs teaching and awareness of the concept of leadership.
From the set of questions from the innovation part, the first question provides guidance as the leadership to situations with no visible directions. I would have considered myself to have such a set of skills that enables me to solve unstructured situations. The second question refers to old and new ways; it’s about the convenience of how much the existing ways are providing, but I would prefer effective ways that help make the task effective and efficient with minimum resources. The third question will be yes because the clear and precise information helps clarify the direction in which work needs to be done. The fourth and fifth questions will be yes because a proactive approach needs to be adopted by the leader to prevent any possible issues that can come in the future. The sixth question is yes because, with the rapidly growing market, decentralized decision-making helps to cope with problems that need proactive response.
The execution part also contains six questions with different dimensions according to the nature of the execution of goals and tasks in the organization. The first question will be yes because the order and regulations should be in the organization, which helps establish a clear path to work on. The second question, yet again, needs effectiveness and efficiency; the reason for no will be the effectiveness of new ways compared to technological advancement. The third question will be yes because it helps make work easy for others. The fourth question will be no because it causes strategic drift when dealing with problems that can be addressed efficiently, and a leader should maintain the priority through which problems should be dealt with. The solution to future problems also helps in preventing current ones. The fifth question will be no because accuracy doesn’t matter regarding innovation. A leader’s innovative approach must be full of risk, and stagnation in one task stops the growth. The sixth question will be yes because it supports the organization and staff.
After the quiz, the author also provides solutions to help develop innovation and execution skills. If one is weak the concept of both will not be integrated. As mentioned earlier the organization needs both the executor and innovator. Innovation needs exposure and knowledge while learning from others’ experiences. On the other hand, the executor can be learned through a set of skills because execution needs a specific set, which helps in executing any task to reach the goals.
Assess your use of at least two leadership practices that you have used to spur innovation with your team or in another relevant context. If you have not had the opportunity to use leadership practices, discuss two leadership practices you could use and how you would use them to spark innovation.
For innovation in the organization, two leadership approaches can provide better guidance and an effective way to execute the task and meet the organization’s goals. The first leadership approach will be strategic leadership. This approach emphasizes the ability to contribute a strategic vision to the organization. Along with vision, leaders must provide motivation and acquire a set of skills that can help reach the goals and proposed vision. This approach also refers to utilizing the skills to create strategies for managing the employees. The common goal used by the organization is to manage the change through specific and relevant strategies (Bonanno, 2016).
The change requires resource allocation and environmental handling of the organization. Innovation comes from the change in the organization because pursuing innovative goals means change effectively and efficiently. There are the following most relevant traits that a strategic leader needs to manage innovation:
- Loyalty: The strategic leader should be loyal to his/her vision when implementing change and innovation strategies.
- Updating: Keep up with every update about the organization’s progress.
- Power Use: Power should be used wisely. It should be used to help enforce innovative change and win employees’ consent.
- Wide Perspective: The strategic leader has broad knowledge about everything and doesn’t use a narrow mind.
- Motivation: Motivation is not always about money but about motivating employees according to their own preferences. Identifying employee needs and wants will let the leader become a good strategic leader.
- Self-control: The leader should control his feelings, especially his anger because it will demotivate the employee.
- Compassion: A leader should hold compassion for the work and for the employees.
- Reliability: The consistency of the leader’s vision will enable the enforcement force to help bring about innovative change in the organization even before the execution.
The other leadership approach that better helps in innovation in the organization is the team leader. The team leader is one of the best in terms of effectiveness towards the employees, which provides them with motivation for the job and helps them meet the goal of innovation implementation (Rao, 2015).
Following are some of the most effective and common traits of team leaders that make them the best leader:
- Communicator: Being in a team and working alongside others will help in clear communication, which will allow the employees to know the exact work and let them know that their work is producing something.
- Organized: The team leader has exceptional organizational skills. These skills help in defining the tasks for each employee efficiently.
- Confident: It provides confidence to employees because working alongside the leader will help them, giving them the purpose and confidence that their work will be valued.
- Influential: Working with employees alongside them can better help in influencing the employees which helps gain confidence through influencing them
Assess your own use of each of the five discovery skills. Analyze your strengths and weaknesses in using each skill in the context of workplace innovation. Provide at least two actions that would enhance your use of each discovery skill.
The five discovery skills help leaders initiate and implement innovation in the organization. These skills are exceptional and rarely possessed by leaders because their implementation requires high risk and is only based on the leader’s intuition (Ezzat, 2017).
Those five skills involve the following:
- Associating: This skill is sensed by the leader, who makes either employees or customers feel associated with the organization. Sometimes, both stakeholders are involved in the association. It can be anything from the employment strategy to the marketing strategy, which gives a sense of association to employees and customers.
- Observing: This skill requires a close and accurate sense of observation around the leader. The leader looks closely and observes the missing things, which can be the opportunity for the leaders to create something good out of it.
- Experimenting: This involves trying new things every once in a while and taking risks to make them profitable and beneficial to the organization. The experiment involves those things that have not been practiced in the market before.
- Questioning: The leader questions everything and raises the question, which leads to new opportunities and possibilities of gaining something innovative for the organization.
- Networking: Making networks and partnerships with other organizations helps one learn new perspectives. Every organization and person carries new ideas, which a leader should sense by networking consistently.
References
Ezzat, H. (2017). Leader for Creativity: Modeling and Experimenting Defixation-oriented Leadership (Doctoral dissertation, MINES ParisTech-PSL Research University).
Bonanno, K. (2016). Being a leader in your school community. Access (Online), 30(2), 10.
Rao, M. S. (2015). Spot Your Leadership Style–Build Your Leadership Brand. The Journal of Values-Based Leadership, 8(1), 11.
Contributor, M. (2018). Are You an Innovator or Executor? Take This Quiz to Find Out.. Entrepreneur. Retrieved 13 February 2018, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/276754
