For multiple decades Patrick Lencioni has been a popular author, motivational speaker, consultant, and now podcaster, focusing largely on personal and professional improvement and the ways those two arenas interact in the world of sales. He has evolved, also it seems, to focus more widely on teams and organizational issues. I confess I haven’t always been a big fan. Apologies to him and his legion fans. We all have our faves.
I have, as even periodic readers of these feeble attempts at insight in this monthly column know well, been a somewhat relentless, sometimes tiresome, advocate for innovation, especially the need for serious innovation in our wonderful workplace profession and the high price we pay for not achieving that aspiration. There is every justification to require someone like me who advocates for innovation to provide at least a few more detailed insights into how that innovation might emerge and what people and organizations can do to make it happen. That’s where I have crossed paths again with Mr. Lencioni.
He published a book in 2022, The 6 Types of Working Genius, that identifies a half-dozen activities that he claims will help people “find more joy, fulfillment and success in your work and your life.” He has spun out from this book more speaking gigs, more consulting engagements, and even an online assessment to gauge how you are doing on these six activities, downloadable for a fee from his website. I’m not plugging his book or his work or his assessment, but I confess that glancing over the six activities, actually key concepts, suggested to me that they are a fitting starting point for pursuing innovation, especially within the workplace profession.
Here are the six activities Lencioni advances and his brief description of each: Wonder — the ability to ask big-picture questions and explore possibilities; Invention — the ability to create new ideas and solve problems; Discernment — the ability to make sound decisions and evaluate options; Galvanizing — the ability to rally and motivate others around a shared mission; Enablement — the ability to provide the resources and support needed to execute a plan; and Tenacity — the ability to persevere through challenges and see projects through to completion.
I’ve spent nearly 40 years in the workplace profession (yes, I’m that old) and my dominant experience is that the most innovative people and organizations implement these concepts, and the most innovative thinking can emerge from practicing these six activities. Let’s spin each of them with a decided focus on work and the workplace.
Wonder — some of the most creative people in our profession are the ones with a relentless sense of curiosity and wonder; they have cultivated the gift of seeing full, broad pictures, not narrow viewpoints, of seeing the world of work from new and revealing angles; they ask provocative questions and are open to stretching their own awareness beyond the conventional; a sense of wonder is part gift but also part nurtured and applied outlook; our profession needs to prize these people, to emulate them, and most importantly to give them the opportunity within our organizations to generate new ideas about work and the workplace.
Invention — a sense of wonder is the first step toward the act of inventing, the creation of new thinking that, in turn, yields new products; the workplace has witnessed the birth of an amazing array of innovatively conceived, wonderfully designed, and carefully manufactured furniture; there are any number of lists that document that fact and those products; check them out; do we really believe we are done? No more innovative products are possible for the workplace? I’m not buying it.
Discernment — Steve Jobs was fond of saying that the most important skill for innovation was knowing what to say NO to; that sense of discernment, what projects or directions to stop and which ones to green-light is both an individual and an organizational capability; the famous designer, Dieter Rams, asserted that design was a reductive process, not an additive one; you had to be disciplined enough to know what to take out and leave out; I would suggest that our industry has been marked by a hesitancy to tackle this level of discernment, usually rooted in fear of failure; innovation will depend on summoning the courage to become more discerning, as individuals and as organizations.
Galvanizing — this activity is rooted in the fundamental truth that innovation is a team sport, not an individual achievement; there can and will be stellar individua contributors, and our professional sector has seen some exceptionally talented innovators, again the lists are plentiful; yet, each of these superstars would be the first to assert that their success was enabled by teammates who contributed mightily and significantly to their success; innovation will happen when individuals form communities of practice, diversely talented teams to pursue the wonder and creativity that will spur a genuine spirit of invention for the workplace sector.
Enablement — the organizational will and robust resourcing that power enablement may be the greatest weakness of our profession toward achieving breakthrough innovation; too many firms and corporations are too focused on short-term financial targets and too often unwilling to fund the longer-term ROI on the pursuit of innovative products; perhaps a source of motivation for that level of enablement is to review the proven results that have come to companies who brought new ideas, thinking, and furniture products to the workplace; it has paid off before, so let’s do it again.
Tenacity — finally, this concept in many ways encompasses all that proceeds it; innovation is totally dependent on persistence and endurance; some of the most innovative products emerged only following some prolonged toil, considerable frustration, and the temptation to give up; remember, the iPhone started as an attempt to design and produce a tablet computer, and required a major shift in thinking to give us one of the most innovative products of all time; there are examples from our own industry too; the will and commitment to power through roadblocks and seeming dead ends is the crowning achievement of true innovation; keeping at it.
In the end, Patrick Lencioni has provided a selection of concepts that, with a bit of adaptation for our workplace issues, offer a powerful set of guideposts for cultivating innovation in our firms and organizations and companies. Let’s get after it.