How can business innovation leaders manage ambiguity and uncertainty?

The challenge here is motivation. Have I got time for this?? The expression 'No plans survives the start line' is one that we used to think a lot about when I served in the NZ Army. We would consider three scenarios. Most favourable, most dangerous and most likely. The only thing we knew for sure was that none of these would pan out. The process of planning and considering alternatives as we would enter the battle was important to make the best use of what was in front of us in that moment. By learning widely, leaders can take inspiration from diverse points to broaden their options in any given moment. Find the motivation to learn and you'll have that learning mindset. Leverage that to win the business battles. Good luck!

I love to spend time with people who don’t have the same background and mindset as me. Using design thinking to constantly evolve a fixed view on how humans feel about something to a range. Constantly learning by trying to build empathy with a diverse range of humans as possible.

El aprendizaje se puede obtener en dos vías que son complementarias: 1) a través de la academia (certificaciones, cursos, pos grados, etc) y 2) a través del acercamiento e interacción con las personas. Tanto el contexto como las personas estamos en constante movimiento por lo que aceptar que el cambio está presente, nos facilita la adaptación y flexibilidad ante las situaciones.

Particularly important when the team is dealing with high uncertainty and ambiguity is psychological safety, a team culture that allows people to speak up and to have interpersonal exchanges without negative repercussions. This doesn't mean over sharing, it doesn't mean that all your ideas will be applauded, it doesn't mean not holding back on something that might be unpleasant. It means that team members are allowed to give their perspective and disagree without jeopardising their personal relationships. Now, psychological safety is necessary but not sufficient, it needs to be coupled with commitment to excellence. If you have both you operate in the learning zone.

In today's volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, business innovation leaders must adopt a learning mindset that acknowledges the continuous need to learn and unlearn. In this dynamic environment, learning becomes a continuous process of exploration, experimentation, and evolution, driving sustained innovation and organizational growth.

In my perceptive, business innovation leaders must be able to clearly define as well as effectively communicate their vision and goals. It promotes alignment, drives action, and builds trust among teams, stakeholders, and customers, resulting in success and long-term growth in today's changing business environment.

Additionally, business innovation leaders can leverage storytelling techniques to bring their vision to life and inspire others. By weaving compelling narratives that illustrate the impact and significance of the envisioned future state, leaders create emotional connections and foster a sense of purpose among stakeholders. Storytelling transcends traditional goal-setting approaches, tapping into the human psyche and igniting passion and commitment towards shared aspirations. Through the art of storytelling, leaders transform abstract goals into tangible realities, navigating ambiguity and uncertainty with clarity and conviction.

In my experience, defining your company’s vision and goals is not just a step towards fostering and achieving innovation, but a pathway to potential growth and success. Start by envisioning your organization’s future state, focusing on the impact you want to make in your industry. This vision should be ambitious yet attainable, serving as a compass for your and your team’s innovative efforts. It is key to clearly articulate your vision, making it inspiring and humanly relatable to ensure team buy-in. Next, translate this vision into specific and obtainable actionable goals. They should be measurable, relevant, and time-bound.

Clear and concise communication with all stakeholders is vital to ensure misunderstanding and ambiguity is addressed throughout the process. This needs to be an ongoing exercise as a project or collaboration unfolds. Welcome feedback and input to identify possible ambiguity.

There is no such thing as ambiguity to a visionary leader... take the time to clearly articulate your vision. This is unambiguous. Take the time to articulate your strategic plan. This is unambiguous. Take the time to articulate what it takes to accomplish the goals of the strategic plan. This is unambiguous. Stay true to your vision... but when flexibility is necessary, be willing to update your plans and goals accordingly. There is no substitution for clarity!

Utilize established innovation frameworks such as design thinking, lean startup, or agile methodologies. Leverage tools like scenario planning, SWOT analysis, or innovation canvases to structure your approach and decision-making process. Adapt frameworks and tools to suit the unique challenges and context of your organization.

Collaborate and network For business innovation leaders, collaboration and networking are essential skills. They enable leaders to tap into diverse perspectives, skills, and resources beyond their immediate team or organization. Effective collaboration involves building partnerships, fostering teamwork, and leveraging the collective intelligence of various stakeholders. Networking, on the other hand, allows leaders to connect with peers, industry experts, and potential partners to exchange ideas, gain insights, and identify opportunities for co-innovation.

Mapping decisions not as a screenshot for your function but as a continuous activity, through Space, time, resources, and solutions applicable and available. a good framework is Wardley Mapping

Corporate innovation leaders optimize and improve their innovation processes by utilizing tools and frameworks. The problem formulation, idea generation, assumption testing, solution validation, and impact measurement processes can all be organized with the help of these resources. Prototyping, experimentation techniques, customer journey mapping, agile methodologies, lean startup, design thinking, and business model canvas are a few examples. By dissecting difficult problems into digestible chunks and applying these frameworks and tools, leaders are able to effectively navigate ambiguity and uncertainty. In order to support well-informed and empirically supported innovation strategies, they collect and evaluate data.

I can't look much further than lean startup, I want to see people with a relentless use of build, test and pivot. Building a flywheel of tests that edges us closer to matching what people think about us, what we can deliver with things they value.

Look at the work done by Dr Lee Flemming, of Harvard Business school on innovation and diverse thinking. He assessed 17,000 pieces of IP and found that adding expertise would incrementally improve IP, but couldn't make a break through. Heading the other way, Flemming found that diversity would incrementally reduce value in IP, but only a diverse team could make a break through. You need to do both. Start with what your customers are looking for in terms of regular utility of your service (your 'expertise') and then get a diverse group to tackle fresh thinking. Be patient with both. Change is a necessity for success, but success is the enemy of change. Good luck!!

Leaders in business innovation thrive at building inclusive, cooperative teams that foster creativity. Through bringing together people with different backgrounds, experiences, and skill sets, leaders can tap into a wealth of information and creativity. These teams are skilled at navigating ambiguity and uncertainty and use a variety of perspectives to solve problems. Encouraging a culture of mutual respect, trust, and encouragement enables team members to freely exchange ideas and criticism. This setting reduces blind spots, groupthink, and biases while promoting constructive criticism and idea improvement. Diverse teams work together to advance innovation and produce ground-breaking solutions that boost corporate success.

I want a team of people who opt in, who don't work for us, but want to work with us to do something unique. Creating fresh thinking and new possibilities because they see the opportunity from a suppliers, customer, academic, student, investors, regulators, design thinkers viewpoint. Where we value the experience from each of the humans standpoint. Psychological safety is the belief that you won't be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, challenges to the culture, concerns, or mistakes. I HAVE TO PROVIDE THE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY OR THE DIVERSITY CANT COME THROUGH.

Cultivate a team with diverse backgrounds, skills, and perspectives to better navigate ambiguity and generate creative solutions. Foster a collaborative environment where team members feel empowered to share ideas, challenge assumptions, and collaborate across disciplines. Encourage cross-functional collaboration to leverage different expertise and insights.

Foster resilience and adaptability A crucial skill for business innovation leaders is fostering resilience and adaptability within their teams and organizations. This involves creating an environment where employees feel safe to take risks, experiment, and learn from failures without fear of reprisal. Resilience enables teams to persevere through setbacks and challenges, while adaptability allows them to pivot and adjust strategies in response to new information or changing market conditions. By cultivating these qualities, leaders can ensure their organizations are agile enough to capitalize on emerging opportunities and robust enough to withstand the inevitable uncertainties of the innovation process

We always have to add customers to the team, they should be in the room, telling us how they feel. helping us prioritise in the scrum sessions, hearing our trade offs (you still can't buy audio books in amazons app), but as a customer I can see they have invested elsewhere to give me better content, experience or pricing. So as my feelings are heard, I can appreciate their difficult choices.

Regularly solicit feedback from stakeholders, customers, and experts to validate assumptions and gather insights. Establish channels for open communication and constructive feedback within the team. Seek support from mentors, advisors, or external networks to gain additional perspectives and guidance.

Seeking feedback and support is a vital skill for business innovation leaders, enabling them to navigate the complexities of ambiguity and uncertainty effectively. By actively soliciting input from a diverse range of sources—customers, stakeholders, mentors, peers, and industry experts—leaders can gain a broader perspective, uncovering invaluable insights and advice that can refine and enhance their innovation initiatives. This practice not only aids in validating and adjusting strategies based on real-world feedback but also facilitates learning from the collective experiences and knowledge of others, thereby avoiding common pitfalls and leveraging proven successes.

Cuando el campo de acción de la innovación ocurre bajo un entorno regulado por autoridades, patentes, leyes, acuerdos internacionales de comercio, hay que buscar el apoyo calificado para estar seguros de no comprometer el éxito del proyecto, ante una restricción existente desconocida, o que se esté promoviendo o tenga la probabilidad de ocurrir.

Feedback is vital in reducing ambiguity and uncertainty because it helps with insight from other people's perspective. Feedback allows openness and growth while support helps you through the challenges. Having mentors to learn from and a team you can rely on helps manage stress and anxiety build up from ambiguity and uncertainty

Set a regular cadence to review and reflect. Start with the Horizon 3 horizon that you can't quite see. Is it 18 months away? Divide that by at least 4, probably 6 to then get the right cadence of reviewing and plan iteration (based on that review) implemented. If you reflect too often, you'll get paralysed by analysis and options. With not enough real world experience of initiatives. If you don't reflect often enough, you'll develop in a direction that isn't valuable to your customers who will change based on what they experience from you and your competition. Striking that balance is the crucial challenge for leadership and innovation. Good luck!

Engaging in regular review and reflection is a critical skill for business innovation leaders, fostering a deeper understanding and continuous improvement of their innovation practices. This process involves scrutinizing the entirety of the innovation journey—assessing the strategies employed, the outcomes achieved, and the lessons learned. By doing so, leaders can discern the effectiveness of their approaches, celebrate successes, and pinpoint areas needing enhancement. Such introspection not only clarifies what methodologies or ideas yielded results and which fell short but also cultivates a culture of learning and adaptability within the organization.

Emphasize the value of peer coaching and mentorship. Peer coaching involves team members providing support, guidance, and feedback to each other in a collaborative manner. Leaders can facilitate peer coaching by establishing formal peer coaching programs or creating opportunities for informal knowledge sharing and support networks. Additionally, mentorship allows individuals to learn from more experienced colleagues who can offer insights, advice, and perspective on navigating ambiguity and uncertainty. By fostering a culture of peer coaching and mentorship, leaders create a supportive ecosystem where team members can learn from each other and grow together.

Review and reflect helps with experience and learning. This allows you practice out ideas and review and reflect from those experiences. Learning from your failures and successes helps reduce uncertainty and ambiguity in business innovation.

By using technology and tools we can manage ambiguity and uncertainty in the process of business innovation, in this progressive environment both the factors are quite common and to tackle them we must have another plan

Leadership should strive to be clear and decisive, even when the path ahead is not, as this approach instills confidence in the broader team. Transparent communication, including acknowledging information gaps, even past missteps, builds trust and keeps teams aligned. This decisiveness with flexibility allows leaders to steer organizations with confidence knowing their team is capable of meeting the challenge, and reinforcing to the team the leader’s belief in them.

I like solving big business problems with technology. Prove the problem with data and data literacy. Proof Of Value (POV) always show the value to C-Level. Prove your business case. Strategy Thinking - your value has help company strategy.

"I often use the phrase 'Let's celebrate failures!' to emphasize the importance of accepting mistakes during any process. The pressure of aiming for perfection can limit opportunities to apply innovative solutions and enforce a "status quo" mindset. However, acknowledging mistakes and learning from them can be a significant challenge for any company culture."

Business innovation leaders should prioritize celebration and recognition. Celebrating successes, no matter how small, reinforces positive behaviors and motivates teams to continue innovating despite challenges. Leaders can implement rituals or ceremonies to acknowledge achievements and express gratitude for team members' contributions. By celebrating progress and milestones, leaders foster a culture of appreciation and resilience, where individuals feel valued and motivated to persevere in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty.