Be Less Zombie

47You Are a User Experience

The cause and effect of you, and its impact on innovation.

‘When he bangs his fist on the table it sends ripples right through the organisation. Really fast.’

This is how a top 30 leader inside one of Europe's biggest technology companies describes his CEO to me. ‘He's a good guy though,’ he quickly qualifies. ‘So long as we're hitting the numbers.’ He double-qualifies.

We can all create ripple effects, but some pebbles are bigger than others.

When an organisation is in pursuit of bolder ideas, a sense of safety amongst its employees is paramount. Low safety leads to low vulnerability. And low vulnerability leads to a harvest of low-hanging ideas.

Diagram © Elvin Turner.

Leaders need to be acutely aware of how their words and actions can create ripple effects that compromise the sense of safety.

Not to put too finer point on it, the leadership's ‘user experience’ has a direct impact on the fortunes of the company.

So how do leaders upgrade their user experience and encourage bolder innovation around themselves? Alongside creating the broader environment that innovation needs to succeed, there is one question that I encourage leaders to continually reflect upon:

‘To what extent am I a safe place to fail around?’

Based on my work with hundreds of teams, you likely won't be surprised that many leaders overestimate their Trustpilot score.

Bolder innovation ...