Leadership Practices That Support Innovation in Organizations Leslie’s (2009) white paper discusses twenty leadership practices and how they support innovation currently and how they will in the future support innovation. After reading some of the other classmate’s U1D2, I realized that there were a lot more important leadership skills that were not mentioned that are vital to support innovation in an organization. The skills I feel are valuable are employee development skills, leading people, inspiring commitment and strategic planning. All four are somewhat similar in the aspect that their purposes are merely for some type of employee stimulus.
According to Leslie (2009) employee development is coaching and encouraging employees to develop in their career. As Spender and Strong explain, innovative ideas come from employees. “They come from the people who daily fight the company's battles, who serve the customers, explore new markets and fend off the competition (Spender & Strong, 2010)”. Although every employee may not have the best discovery skills they can develop them with the right leader behind the wheel to guide them. Like I mentioned in my U1D2 post, There is no way to lead and create innovation without the employees having complete understanding of how to be innovative.
Leading people is directing and motivating employees. Some people need to be pulled and pushed into the right direction in order to stimulate their mind. Leading people into thinking differently is the goal. The leader needs to direct the employees into an atmosphere where they can use innovative thinking to create products and services and solve problems, while at the same time keeping them motivated. This skill leads into the inspiring commitment skill, which is recognizing and rewarding employees. Leavitt (2002) mentions that “The American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) has found that to drive innovation in products and services, an organization needs innovative approaches to rewards and recognition. Given that employees have valid needs for achievement, status, and affiliation, organizations are tasked with providing structure and consistency that will motivate employees to pursue creative and effective ideas”.
Every business has some sort of goal or purpose and in order to keep employees focused and excited to work towards that purpose, employees need to be recognized for doing well and it will continue to encourage them and others around them to do well. For example, my current employer rewards and recognizes employees for meeting productivity goals. This encourages me to work hard every month in hopes of reaching that goal so that I can receive recognition for my own gratification as well as amongst my peers.
The final skill that I felt was important was the strategic planning skill. This skill is translating vision into realistic business strategies, including long-term objectives. In the Proctor & Gamble (Rao, 2006) article P&G preferred closed innovation, where they developed their own products and did not adapt information from outside of their own R&D labs. This was successful until other companies began using open innovation and P&G had no choice to convert over due to declining sales. This showed how important strategic planning is in support of innovation. P&G noticed that in order to continue to succeed long –term they would have to change over to “open innovation”. Strategic planning helps prepare business for change and future development.

The Role of Discovery and Delivery Skills
Discovery skills and delivery skills have a significant role in the support of innovation. Discovery skills role in innovation is simply to explore, whereas delivery skills role is to execute. The four discovery skill are: associating, questioning, observing, experimenting and networking. Associating is being able to relate unrelated situations, problems, and ideas from different areas. For example, in (cite book) discusses Steve Jobs associating a college calligraphy class with creating typography and letter spacing on Mac computers.
Questioning is asking “why?” and “why not?” questions that challenge the status quo. Similar to how Steve jobs questioned the loudness of the fan on the computer. He challenged the status quo that all computers needed a fan, which they did, by figuring out a different way to prevent overheating. Asking these questions led to the innovative idea of smaller computers and new power supplies that generated less heat. This was innovation at its best. Without asking these questions he would not have been able to stimulate his thinking to come up with those ideas.
Observing is being able to observe competitors, trends, how people act and operate, and different people in different places. By observing these different situations it presents opportunity to come up with ideas for improvements. Sometimes there is nothing wrong with a situation and it doesn’t need to be improved and this is when the opportunity to make it more efficient presents itself. He more observing that is done the more opportunities will arise.
Experimenting calls for trying new things or ideas to see if it proves somethings false or to learn something. It is necessary when attempting anything new in order to determine if the results are worth it. According to Philips (2012), “Experimenting doesn’t increase risk and inefficiency, it lowers failure rates and increases insight and learning.” Experimenting is more valuable than wasting time and money on a huge failure.
According to Dryer (2011) networking helps meet different people with different ideas in order to expand on your own knowledge and test new ideas. Networking is just another way of thinking out the box. People are meeting to find new contacts that ca give new perspectives or insights on different ways to do things. These 5 skills describe the role of discovery skills which are the primary starting points of innovation.
The secondary point of innovation are the delivery skills. The four delivery skills are: analyzing, planning, detail-oriented implementing, and disciplined executing. These skills are the actual action behind the idea that was formed by the discovery skills. Delivery skills are used as the idea grows from stage to stage.

Personal Strengths and Weaknesses in Discovery and Delivery Skills
When we first began this class I was pretty sure of what type of innovative behavior I possessed. It’s hard for me to come up with ideas sometimes on my own without something to stimulate my mind into thinking that way. After that it becomes easier for me to brainstorm ideas and branch off of those ideas to form more ideas. On the skills assessment quiz I scored moderate to low on the discovery skills and moderate to high on delivery skills.
The results of this assessment seemed accurate to me after I understood what exactly the role of discovery and delivery skills were in reference to innovation. When looking at the weak areas of my assessment I found that one of my weakest points was networking. I tend to stay within my own circle of friends when discussing new ideas. But whenever I am at a social gathering and see an opportunity to discuss networking I do act on it, but it is very rare that I am in that situation. I think that I need to be more outgoing and make myself available to attend more networking events. Networking is important in every career choice.
After reading, I realized that scoring higher on the delivery skills area is a strength and shouldn’t be looked at as not being innovative. Dryer (2011) mentions that a lot of senior executives score higher in this area because they are so prone to completing and getting the job done. They are talented at delivering results but not generating the original innovative ideas. He mentions how Walt Disney didn’t necessarily draw Mickey Mouse or create the jokes but he sparks up ideas for others to draw and create the jokes.
Overall I am highly enthused to continue learning about innovation in this course. As the course moves forward I learn more and more about myself and the steps I need to take in order to be a better leader of innovation. I also learned the leadership skills necessary to provide me with a base when faced with the task of leading innovation.

References

Dyer, J., Gregersen, H., & Christensen, C. M. (2011). The innovator's DNA: Mastering the five skills of disruptive innovators. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Publishing.
Leavitt, P. (2002, January 1). Rewarding Innovation. Retrieved April 26, 2015, from http://www.providersedge.com/docs/km_articles/rewarding_innovation.pdf
Leslie, J. (2009). Part One: Identifying the Need. In The Leadership Gap: What you need, and don’t have, when it comes to leadership talent (p. 6-12). Center for Creative Leadership.
Phillips, J. (2012, November 23). There’s No Innovation Without Experimentation. Retrieved
April 27, 2015, from http://www.innovationexcellence.com/blog/2012/11/23/theres-no-innovation-without-experimentation/
Rao, M.; Venkatesh,T.; Devi, B. (2006) Connect and Develop Model in P&G." Case No. 506- 188-1.The Case Centre (ECCH).
Spender, J., & Strong, B. (2010, August 23). Who Has Innovative Ideas? Employees. Retrieved
April 26, 2015, from http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704100604575146083310500518