Episode #168: The Why and How of Innovative Disruption with Maggie Nichols

Why do we need innovative disruption? Mike Sipple Jr.’s guest on the Talent Magnet Leadership Podcast, Maggie Nichols, will tell you. Maggie is the CEO and President of Eureka! Ranch. She also leads the team at The Innovation Engineering Institute and helps C-level executives around the world guide their employees through innovation. This is a must listen conversation where Maggie explains the need for innovative disruption in our organizations, and creating a culture of trust where leaders allow employees to lead their own projects.

• Disruptive innovation is anything that wreaks havoc in a place - especially in a new market - and changes the current way of operating. It shakes things up, and that may either excite or terrify you. Disruptive innovation is what’s needed to make a change in today’s society. [2:19]
• What are we doing as leaders to bring value to our customers and impact their lives? What are we doing that has never been done before? Disruption in innovation has to be purposeful disruption. [3:33]
• The real challenge of disruption is making it happen. The work that is going to make a maximum impact is fixing the system in which you work. To allow for disruption, leaders need to create the energy source for change. Maggie shares the secret trick to making this happen. [6:02]
• Maggie dives deep into the three ingredients for cultivating a culture that’s both learning and innovation based. [7:41]
• In order to create change, we need a reason for change. We need cool ideas to give us a reason to ‘walk the talk’. [10:33]
• Give some direction about where you want the conversation to go in a brainstorming event with your team. Open the floodgates but channel it correctly, and you’ll get many amazing ideas. [11:55]
• When an employee says they have an idea, do they know what to do next? If you can’t answer that question, or five different employees give five different answers, you don’t have a system for ideas. You may be unintentionally squashing innovation that could really help your business. [15:26]
• The best job of a leader is to identify “death threats”. These are the hindrances to company projects, and the issues that will “kill” the projects so to speak. Rather than solving these issues for their employees, leaders should be good at identifying these issues and giving the reins to employees to come up with ways to resolve those issues themselves. [18:40]
• Maggie helps Mike understand the six types of employee stimuli. [23:35]
• To make a real idea happen, we need collaboration. Collaboration through diversity is an exponential lift for the business because it allows for a multitude of different perspectives. The more diverse, the better. [29:46]

Resources

Mike Sipple Jr. | LinkedIn | Twitter

Maggie Nichols | LinkedIn | Twitter 

Eureka! Ranch