The Sev(7)en Types Of Flawed Innovative Leaders

Everyone's a leader.

A 2-year-old in charge of her play group or playmates is a leader in her own way.

Business Analysts are leaders too and Breakthrough innovations naturally involve some major risk, and part of being an innovative leader in general is honing your risk tolerance so that you know when to wait and when to bet big.

Great innovative leaders are all alike; failed ones all fall in their own way. Great leaders achieve novelty, recognition, and adoption, while the unoriginal copycat fail in one or more of these aspects. Rather than create a list of “Don’ts” when it comes to sharing breakthrough ideas, it’s more vital to recognize the patterns that many of us fall into that makes us ineffective at doing this.

Underneath are 7 popular behavioral patterns that almost everyone might fall into or used to exhibit:

1) The Workaholic

Many of us start our careers as workaholics. We are working so tirelessly on the job at hand that we don’t even bother to dream up novel and brand-new ideas. This leader hopes that their hard work alone will shoot them to the stars, and it does at first. People admire your hard work, and your ideas tend to be gradual. Yet in healthy organizations, workaholics who don’t demonstrate wider analytical and thinking skills eventually disqualify themselves for certain real leadership roles because others view their conduct as a characteristic of a lack of confidence, as though you're always working so hard to prove yourself worthy.

2) The Shy human

They look like a workaholic from afar, but unlike the workaholic they actually do have substantial ideas bounding around in his or her mind. Unfortunately, they are too timid to present their ideas and risk possible embarrassment. He or she might share their thoughts in private or during one-on-one meetings when the stakes are low, but they don’t work at getting “airtime” for their creativity and so they never take hold. We haven't been given a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, and of self-discipline. People ought to be bold. Timidity has killed more dreams than failure.

3) The Quiet Disruptor

There isn’t a company in our vast universe that doesn’t have at least a few of these roaming the building. Do you know this type? They spot all sorts of inefficiencies or faults on how the business operates, but they never take it upon themselves to correct it. When the problems are either tackled or turn into even serious problems, the Disruptor is always there to say, “I’ve been saying we need to do this forever.” Yet they didn't or could at least have intervened.

4) The Once

We all have sometimes let ourselves fall into this role and the result is almost always the same. The Once has what they think is a unique idea, iterates on it for a while, mentions it to someone only once or twice, and then never follows it up again. This was me yet it's still possible to sometimes procrastinate or postpone executing our ideas.

5) The Negligent Idea man

This person gets a little further than 'The Once' but doesn’t want to do the work involved in transforming their idea into a reality. If the idea is so good that others immediately grab the benefit for themselves, you might get lucky, and they’ll see it through (though you’ll get less credit for the idea). Usually though, if you’re not directly involved in seeing your idea through to the end, it won’t get there. In this context, being called an “Idea Man” is most definitely not a compliment.

6) The Otiose

This person just doesn’t understand how to lead an idea through the acceptance and adoption stages. Whether they’re talking to the wrong people, laying out unconvincing arguments, or failing to consider other people’s suggestions, this poor person just can’t get things off the ground even when they might be on to something great.

7) The Utopian

Not every idea would be a breakthrough, and no one nails it every time. The Utopian just doesn’t know when to let an idea go or put it back on the shelf for a little bit. He's the Sunk Cost Fallacy Genius. This is a particularly tough label to assign because championing novel ideas that imply significant changes for others feels like toiling in ineffectiveness when you’re trying to create acceptance and adoption. Still, some ideas just deserve to be buried. The more ideas you create, the less likely you are to find yourself in this state, because you won’t over-invest in ideas that are either undeniably flawed or otherwise unworkable in the present.

If you find traces of yourself in any of the above, then make a decision to approach your work differently. The only things more treasurable than your time are your ideas, and you can’t afford to let them go to waste. None of us knows how many breakthrough ones we’ll have in a lifetime.

- Harry Madusha (The BA Priest)

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