Businesses today operate in an unprecedented environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). Things have become too complex and change too quickly for organizations to effectively deal with challenges of the day—yet they still train leaders in traditional leadership competencies. The wisdom that made organizations successful in the past now jeopardizes their survival. Innovation is the only way to survive in today’s fast-moving environment, and success demands new leadership skills. Let’s contrast outdated rules of thumb with updated reality.
1. “Failure is not an option.”
Failure is a necessary input to radical innovation. Errors accumulate from feedback loops in a self-sustaining manner, similar to A + 1 = A’ where A’ becomes A in the next iteration (this phenomenon is called autocatalysis). The result of one experiment becomes the input for the next iteration, so errors grow exponentially, like a snowball rolling down the hill. Radical innovation occurs when cumulative errors from imperfect iterations cross a critical inflection point. Instead of driving for perfection, leaders must encourage fast, safe failures, facilitate learning from those failures, and disseminate the learning quickly.
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