The best innovators have very strong cognitive abilities, including excellent analytic skills. They zero in on the most important points and waste no time on peripheral issues. This is significant, given the sheer quantity of data, ideas, and often conflicting customer preferences that they (and all other high-potential managers) must face. Once they have isolated the key factors, they can quickly see how all the pieces might fit together in an integrated whole. They have the ability to think strategically even in highly ambiguous situations.
But a host of additional attributes distinguish potential innovators. First, they never rest on their laurels. David Small, corporate vice president of the Leadership Institute at McDonald’s, asserts that innovators always say to themselves, “Just because this has worked in the past doesn’t mean it will work going forward.” He adds, “They are driven by a certain underlying insecurity to not rely on past success, and they evaluate each new challenge with a clean slate.” They can frame and reframe challenges from multiple vantage points and identify which solutions are likeliest to be embraced by the influential people in their organization. By contrast, many high-potential managers become overconfident after a string of successes and begin to believe their own performance reviews, hallway chatter, and other evidence of their brilliance. They are reluctant to reinvent the wheel when a specific approach has worked so well in the past.
Second, potential innovators are, as Small puts it, “ridiculously socially aware of their surroundings at all times.” At McDonald’s innovators must be able to walk into a conference room full of diverse constituents, including colleagues, customers, subordinates, bosses, vendors, and partners, and quickly discern the underlying motivation of each one. They leverage that information to craft and communicate a message that resonates with every constituent. This is the art of bringing a diverse group onto the same page—and it is absolutely essential to transforming an interesting idea into a companywide innovation. “If a high-potential manager doesn’t have this skill,” Small says, “there is little chance that he can push a new idea, no matter how promising, through our sprawling global infrastructure. It takes a lot of social intuition, savvy, and tenacity.”
