• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Simple-PDH

Study. Learn. Earn. Simple.

  • Login
  • Register
  • My Account
  • Cart
  • Home
  • Catalog-All Courses
  • Blog
  • About
    • FAQs
    • Privacy Policy
  • Contact

learning

Innovation Leaders are NOT Teachers

Posted on 01.09.20

I’m a disaster in the kitchen.  Beyond microwave popcorn, you are probably taking serious risks to eat something I have cooked.  Curiously, my mother was considered a good cook, so I don’t think there is a gene or DNA sequence that I missed to make me a terrible cook.  Instead, I blame my mother’s leadership style in the kitchen.  Leaders are not teachers. 

Every night, one of my chores was to set the table for dinner.  As my mother prepared dinner, she would tell me to watch her cook and she often told me to read the recipe.  Occasionally, she would have me help to gather ingredients and hand them to her.  “When you are older,” she would say, “then you can try cooking.” 

Leaders Mentor, Not Teach

Good leaders are mentors.  This means that after a short period of observation (and learning the safety rules), a leader lets the team member try out the tasks.  Starting small to minimize risk, leaders switch from doing and explaining (teaching) to watching and counseling.  A good mentor allows people to make a few mistakes so they can learn because tactile learning (learning by doing) is the most valuable lesson. 

Leaders as mentors can offer advice and share their own stories as learning tools.  Yet lecturing and teaching often falls short.  Innovation leaders, in particular, need to set boundaries for the team but then let creativity flow.  Flexibility is a hallmark of a strong leader. 

Too Much Coaching Fails Leadership

Today’s workers are lucky that coaching is a standard practice in most organizations.  Many leaders have been trained in the basics of coaching.  Unfortunately, many managers tend to overdo it.  Constant coaching is more like micromanaging and also hurts the innovation process. 

In certain situations, managers have learned that coaching is important but have not necessarily been given the right tools.  While coaching involves asking “why” a new product development (NPD) team made certain decisions or “what” the design pathway is, a constant barrage of questions destroys trust and autonomy.  Successful innovation leaders understand that a few well-placed why, what , and how questions can better guide and direct the team, ultimately increasing customer satisfaction. 

Innovation Leaders Acknowledge Failure

Failure is a part of learning.  Teaching – by itself – does not allow someone to learn failure.  Watching my mother cook and add a pinch of salt or test baked goods with a toothpick only allowed me to observe her skills.  Without adding too much or too little salt to a stew and not finding out for myself what a “clean” toothpick means for bread, I never failed. 

Successful innovation leaders tolerate failure as an element of the learning process.  Of course, boundaries and constraints must limit the risk and cost of failure, yet mistakes and errors provide hands-on learning that is invaluable for a team.  Innovation should be expected to leave a trail of lessons learned to build the inevitable successes. 

Innovation Teachers

While I’m still not a good cook by any stretch of the imagination, I cautiously and continually try recipes and new tools to improve my cooking skills.  I understand the cost of failing in the kitchen is learning – and pizza delivery for dinner.  Without trying my own hand at adding spices to a soup or baking a birthday cake, I could never improve and learn new skills.

Likewise, great innovation leaders go beyond teaching and learning.  Being a mentor to serve as a guide and to govern the NPD process makes innovation leaders approachable and builds team skills internally.  Coaching your team includes a few well-intentioned “what” and “why” questions, but not peppering them with advice (pun intended).

Build Your Innovation Leadership Skills

To be a successful innovation leader, you must allow your team members to learn by doing and accept failure.  Join me for 20 Days of Innovation in 2020 to grow and develop as an innovation leader.  Starting on 6 January 2020, you will receive a short daily email tip, tool, or technique for 20 days.  You’ll learn about applying strategy for more success with time-to-market and how to improve your NPD processes.  It’s free!  Register here for 20 Days of Innovation in 2020. 

About Me

I am passionate about innovation and inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching.  I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith.   It brings me great joy to help you build innovation leadership.  I am an experienced innovation professional with a thirst for lifelong learning.  My degrees are in Chemical Engineering (BS and PhD) and in Computer and Information Decision Making (MBA).  My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator.  Contact Teresa Jurgens-Kowal at [email protected] or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Changing Innovation Performance

Posted on 12.19.19

Innovation has a dark side.  While everyone wants to be “more innovative”, new products fail at alarming rates.  When your business is to create new ideas, new technologies, and new markets, failing more than half the time is troubling indeed. 

On the bright side, however, innovation is more accessible today than ever.  Industries share their product development processes openly and companies partner with suppliers, distributors, and even competitors.  We have learned to integrate customers into the development cycle with open innovation and Design Thinking.  How do organizations continue to move forward, making progress with speed-to-market and changing internal performance?

The Purpose for Change

Read on or watch the 20-second summary to learn how you can change your innovation performance.

As senior managers present an argument to increase innovation performance, we have to explain the need for change.  Many people in the organization see only a narrow slice of the business.  R&D professionals, for instance, view their daily work and can see frequent, small gains in knowledge.  Marketers identify new insights from customer focus groups when they are held.  Project management professionals view small successes in meeting deadlines and milestones.  From each individual or functional perspective, things appear okay. 

Leaders inspire innovation and significant performance improvements must first demonstrate that a change is needed.  Teams build cohesion around a common purpose in the threat of competition.  New product development (NPD) teams can accelerate performance in time-to-market by uniting behind a common goal with a tight deadline.  This is especially important for virtual teams. 

Simplify Work Processes

A friend was recently telling me a story of bureaucracy.  She didn’t call it bureaucracy, but her frustration was obvious.  To implement a change that sped up the process and was a change that operations desired, she had to obtain approvals from her boss’ boss, the operator’s boss, and a person in the IT department.  To submit the change order, she needed to get access to an antiquated computer system for which the organization had no internal training. 

If you want to improve innovation performance, you need to simplify your processes and procedures.  Agile processes, like Scrum, offer the advantage of focused teamwork and quick feedback from customers.  The Agile Manifesto, commands us to emphasize people and interactions over paperwork and bureaucracy.  Let your NPD teams work on what they do best – designing and developing new features and technologies. 

Measure What Matters

Human beings are programmed to perform our best against the metrics by which our behavior is measured.  If your dad gave you a dollar for every hour you were quiet on a road trip, you could manage to be silent for hours on end.  If your boss measures efficiency to award your bonus, you will strive to eliminate waste. 

Innovations take time to pay off.  Short-term metrics drive short-term performance resulting in mundane, incremental products.  Developing new technologies and new markets are long-term investments and innovation rewards must recognize learning and growth as a purpose of new product development research, as well as product profitability.  Building effective, cross-functional teams is a stepping stone in the journey of improving innovation performance. 

Improving Innovation Performance

Innovation is important in every organization.  They say if businesses don’t innovate, they die.  Customers demand new and better products and services, and companies no longer have the advantage of geographical or technological monopolies.  To improve innovation performance, we must share the driving purpose and strategy.  Innovation requires change and as flagship innovation leaders, we must communicate the need for change. 

Next, innovation succeeds when creativity is unhindered.  Simplify your processes and procedures and let the NPD teams be free to do their work without complicated bureaucracy or reporting authority.  Finally, measure what matters.  Innovation is a long-term adventure where learning is paramount.  Experimentation often results in short-term failure yet innovation leaders value knowledge above short-term stock prices. 

Do You Want to Improve Your Innovation Performance?

If so, what are you waiting for?  Check out our 20 Days of Innovation in 2020 to receive a fresh innovation tip in your inbox daily during the month of January.  It’s not spammy and it’s free – sign up here.

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching.    I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith.    It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders.    I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making.    My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator.    Contact me at [email protected] or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

© Simple-PDH.com

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.            Learn.            Earn.            Simple.

If Steph Curry has a Coach, Why Don’t You?

Posted on 08.22.19

I like to watch sports on TV especially college football and pro basketball.  I like it best when my team wins but that doesn’t always happen.  Regardless of whether teams are perpetual winners or are growing in their capabilities, coaches play an important role in sports. 

I’m sometimes amazed at the number of coaches that famous and elite athletes have.  Consider Steph Curry or LeBron James, both superstar NBA players.  There is the team’s head coach, a half dozen or more assistant coaches, strength coaches, shooting coaches, and nutritional consultants.  The question is that if a superstar athlete uses and learns from multiple coaches, why do we think we can make it as innovators and entrepreneurs on our own?

Read on or watch the 30-second video summary.

What is a Coach?

Just like Chris Peterson (the coach of my beloved UW Huskies) guides players, individual business owners and innovation entrepreneurs need guidance and governance.  Of course, Peterson has assistant coaches that specialize in defense, offense, and special teams, but his role is to guide the overall effort of the team and to be a role model. 

Entrepreneurs and innovators need coaches that can offer an overall view of the work.  Coaches help individuals to identify challenges and to create action plans to close gaps.  There are executive coaches, technical coaches, and life coaches available to help entrepreneurs.  The key to coaching is accountability. 

Executive Coach

An executive coach will help you refine skills and performance to get to the next level.  Often senior management recognizes a skill gap and calls in an executive coach to help with a specific performance area.  For example, a coach may help a mid-level manager become more comfortable with sales meetings or with giving earnings presentations. 

Technical Coach

A technical coach plays a role like Steph Curry’s shooting coach.  Technical coaches are focused on helping entrepreneurs and innovators close specific skill gaps.  The area for improvement is narrowly defined and the engagement might be brief to transfer measurable knowledge and skills.  Your technical coach might be a senior staff member who also serves as a mentor.

Life Coaches

Life coaches help People sort through any array of challenges business or personal.  However, it’s important to note that our business successes impact our personal lives and vice versa.  Learning how to better prioritize work tasks has a positive spillover to being able to better prioritize home chores as well.  When we become more balanced in designing our lives, we are happier and more productive.

Coaches for Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurs and innovators need coaches that cross the spectrum of executive coaching, technical skills development, and life balance.  We also need tools to manage the multitude of activities that make innovation successful – understanding goals and purpose, empathizing with the customer, prioritizing tasks, and designing a product. 

Design thinking is a set of creative and collaborative methods that aid in identifying needs and features of products and services that will satisfy customers and bring joy to the innovator.  Some of my favorite design thinking tools are the customer journey map, the affinity diagram, and the customer empathy map.  You can read about these tools here.  Innovation practitioners and entrepreneurs can use these techniques to ensure we are addressing the right problems at the right time.  Moreover, design thinking tools help innovators identify gaps in skills and performance to meet customer needs. 

Next Step:  Coaching and Design Thinking

Design thinking tools offer a simple and natural way for a person to develop new skills and to achieve balance in their professional and personal life.  Coaching drives accountability.  Join me for the free design thinking Q&A webinar on date to learn more.  Join me for a complimentary webinar to learn more about the Life Design Master Mind group.  Register now!

About Me

I am inspired by writing, teaching, and coaching.  I tackle life with an infusion of rigor, zeal, and faith.  It brings me joy to help you build innovation leaders.  I am an experienced professional with a passion for lifelong learning with a PhD in Chemical Engineering and an MBA in Computer and Information Decision Making.  My credentials include PE (State of Louisiana), NPDP, PMP®, and CPEM, and I am a DiSC® certified facilitator.  Contact me at [email protected] or area code 281 + phone 280-8717 for more information on coaching for entrepreneurs and innovators.

© Simple-PDH.com

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.        Learn.        Earn.        Simple.

Continuous Learning for Innovation Leadership

Posted on 04.25.19

Learning today takes very different forms than it did 10 or 20 years ago.  In the past, learning was primarily delivered in a classroom and was delivered based on a schedule given an employee’s tenure with the firm.  Skills transfer occurred from an expert teaching novices. 

Today, learning materials are delivered in short cell phone video clips, on-line, via webinar, and yes, even in a classroom.  Skills transfer occurs both vertically and horizontally, and training can be driven from an expert teaching a novice technical skills or from a new employee to experienced staff teaching market approaches.  Importantly, training is delivered more on-demand, when the learning is needed and job skills need performance enhancement. 

On-Line Training

There are a lot of benefits to on-line training period participants can access courses anytime and anywhere using practically any device.  (iPhones still have some format limitations to deliver video learning content.)  This means a person can access training during regular work hours or choose to learn new skills at home in evenings for weekends.  On-line training is very flexible. 

Of course, with the prevalence of on-line training, many organizations have observed the disadvantages, too.  A lot of on-line courses for leadership and innovation performance enhancement go unfinished.  Mandatory on-line training courses (e.g. for safety or regulatory requirements) must include constraints on screen advancing because participants tend to skip to the test in order to avoid dry, boring content but the training hours can be audited.  And while people have the best intention to do an on-line training class at night or on the weekend, there are lots of things that can get in the way such as sports, family, friends, yard chores, and so on. 

Classroom Training

A recent Harvard Business Review article (Mar/Apr 2019) notes the classroom training is essentially a thing of the past.  For all the benefits and flexibility of on-line training, classroom learning is not competitive.  And so goes the case against facilitated courses.  The argument is that classroom training is expensive, not only for the instructor and facilities but also because people are pulled away from their “regular” jobs.  Some employees will need to travel to the training center, resulting in added costs due to airfare, hotel, and rental cars. 

Yet, with all the expenses of classroom training, many organizations are missing the key benefit of face-to-face learning.  Networking.  Especially as employees climb career ladders, internal and external networks become a crucial resource for learning as well.  Leadership development and soft skills growth are best delivered in face-to-face format to allow a diverse cohort of young leaders opportunities to network. 

Kenny Smith, former Houston Rocket and ESPN basketball commentator, noted that the team was laser-focused on the game, especially during playoffs, when they traveled.  The team ate meals together, practiced together, and spent their free time together.  Home games always had distractions.  Classroom learning built this same camaraderie for an up-and-coming leadership cohort. 

Master Mind Groups

in the best of both worlds, people will get the training they need when they need it and are given a chance to build a reliance network for learning later on.  A master mind group offers a hybrid for learning and practicing leadership development skills.  Advantages of both on-line learning and the networking effects of classroom training are enhanced.  And because master mind groups are largely self-directed by the cohort, learning is on-demand and delivered just-in-time.  Training is delivered via live webinars, on-line video modules, podcasts, and through collaboration with your cohort advisory board.  In between live webinars, master mind members communicate on private discussion boards and complete required activities to develop and practice their leadership skills. 

Continuous Learning

As the March/April 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review emphasizes, leaders need continuous learning.  Successful innovation leaders don’t limit themselves to required corporate training courses or wait for nomination to an executive training session.  Smart, growing leaders are passionate about trying new skills how to improve their current situation.  They are as excited and proud to place a new certification on their Linked In profile as they are to share the development opportunity with their teams.  This is continuous learning. 

Contact Me

I am passionate about learning, especially for innovation and leadership.  I want to help you and I’m sure I can learn from you, too.  A great opportunity to engage in continuous learning is the Life Design Master Mind group where we apply tools of Design Thinking to career, professional, or personal challenges.  The next open cohort meeting is 21 May 2019.  Click here to register for your six-month transformation and learning journey.  Based on your feedback, this master mind group is extremely affordable.  You’ll also be interested to learn about the Flagship Innovation Leader program.  Join us for a free webinar in June.  Contact me at area code (281) plus 280-8717 or at [email protected] for more information. 

© Simple-PDH.com

A Division of Global NP Solutions, LLC  

Study.  Learn.  Earn.  Simple. a

sidebar

Blog Sidebar

Recent Posts

Team Culture and Hybrid NPD Processes

Why Product Development is Like a Bank Loan

The Culture of NPD Processes

Categories

Archives

Tags

agile business strategy certification CEU continuing education unit creativity customer design thinking disruptive innovation engineering manager innovation innovation health assessment innovation leadership innovation maturity innovation strategy Leadership learning marketing master mind new producct development new product new product development NPD NPDP NPD process PDH PDU PEM PMP portfolio management product development product innovation product management product portfolio management professional credential professional development hour professional development unit project management Scrum strategy team teams training virtual team wagile
  • Subscribe
  • Courses
  • Catalog
  • Blog
  • About

Simple-PDH by Global NP Solutions

Copyright Global NP Solutions, LLC, All Rights Reserved