The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:21 - 00:00:30:14
Kevin Eikenberry
We talk about wanting more innovation. Yet the level of our innovation office leaves us wanting more of it. Why is it that we don't get the levels of innovation that we claim we want? It's an important question that we will answer today. We'll help you see what the barriers to that why that gap occurs and more importantly, how to overcome them.

00:00:30:16 - 00:01:02:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we're helping leaders and organizations like you and yours be more effective, more confident, and get better results. That's why we're here. That's why I hope that you're here. And so I hope that if you are listening to this, you'll say, this is something I'd like more of, which means you might want to get it earlier, which I need to tell you that these episodes are initially live streamed, in this case, about five, about seven weeks before you're getting the chance to hear it.

00:01:02:22 - 00:01:19:22
Kevin Eikenberry
So if you want to be on the inside, if you want to get the inside track, if you want to get this information sooner and sort of be a part of the show in a different sort of way, just make sure you connect with us on LinkedIn or, or Facebook, two of the places where we do these live streams.

00:01:20:00 - 00:01:43:22
Kevin Eikenberry
And so you can learn more and get connected there by going to remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linked in. Pretty straight forward. If you like what you're hearing today and you want help developing the leaders in your organization, we should definitely talk. And the best way to do that is to reach out to us to info at Kevin eikenberry.com.

00:01:43:22 - 00:02:03:18
Kevin Eikenberry
And when you do that, we'll schedule a time to learn more about what your needs are and how we might be able to help. So with that, I'm going to bring in our guest. And you'll have way more enjoyment by not just having Kevin. Lorraine Marchand is my guest today. She's a consultant, author, and educator on innovation.

00:02:03:20 - 00:02:37:04
Kevin Eikenberry
She has extensive experience in new product development. She's co-founded several startups, held leadership positions at companies including Bristol-Myers Squibb, Coblentz, LabCorp, and IBM. And she served as an advisor to both Johnson and Johnson and Hewlett Packard. Her. She is an author with John Hans of The Innovation Mindset eight Essential Steps to Transform Any Industry and Their latest and the conversation will revolve today around their book No Fear, No Failure Five Principles for Sustaining Growth Through Innovation.

00:02:37:08 - 00:02:51:20
Kevin Eikenberry
She serves on boards of privately held companies and the health care and pharmaceutical Advisory Board at Columbia Business School. She teaches at the Wharton School and Yeshiva University. Welcome to the show, Lorraine. I'm so glad that you're here.

00:02:51:22 - 00:02:57:13
Lorraine Marchand
Well, thank you for having me, Kevin. I'm honored. Really looking forward to our conversation.

00:02:57:15 - 00:03:08:03
Kevin Eikenberry
So let's start here since we're talking about a book, a really good book. I really enjoy the book, but let's start here. From your perspective, what's the big idea.

00:03:08:05 - 00:03:35:23
Lorraine Marchand
Of the book? Well, the big idea, Kevin, is that despite the fact that, as you mentioned in your opening, so many people, so many organizations say that innovation is the lifeblood of the company or of its growth, of its success. 95% of CEOs surveyed said they do a lousy job of it. And I decided that that was a question worth pursuing.

00:03:36:01 - 00:04:08:09
Lorraine Marchand
Particularly since I had some colleagues ask me, what can I do in my organization to help foster more innovation, more growth? We're not doing a very good job. How can I help? And so that led me to study the topic further to tap into my own experience and to interview 120 senior executives across industries and across the globe to see what I could learn in kind of a crowdsourcing format that I could share with you and your listeners.

00:04:08:11 - 00:04:35:00
Kevin Eikenberry
An innovative way to come up with a book, everybody. So she writes a book called The Innovation Mindset. That's why people are asking her this other question, this really important question, about like, why? What's why the gap? Right. So let's talk about in the big picture. Why is there why does this I mean, we're going to get into some of the details in the book, of course, but in the from a, from a big picture perspective, why is it that there is this disconnect where everyone says we want it?

00:04:35:00 - 00:04:39:00
Kevin Eikenberry
And yet 95% of CEOs say we and we're not doing it?

00:04:39:01 - 00:05:10:14
Lorraine Marchand
Well, Kevin, we can tackle that question at an individual, a team, at an organizational level. So you're asking for the macro picture. I would say, yeah, I would say what happens more often than not in large organizations is that they want the benefit of innovation to drive growth, but they're not willing to do the hard work to create a culture and operating system values, behaviors, a whole system with which innovation can flourish.

00:05:10:16 - 00:05:35:11
Lorraine Marchand
And the main problem is that they create an environment where it's not okay to fail, to experiment, to learn. And in my research, that is what it all boils down to. If we don't have an environment where it's okay to fail because we view fail failing as experimentation and learning, that's the kiss of death for innovation.

00:05:35:13 - 00:05:52:02
Kevin Eikenberry
So, so two things about what Lorraine just said. Everybody, number one is it's so some of you were saying, yeah, the organizations, they should figure this out. They want it and they should do all the hard work. I would just say to all of us, there's a lot of things we all want that we're not willing to do the hard work on either.

00:05:52:04 - 00:06:16:02
Kevin Eikenberry
So I think it's worth noting that. And the second thing I want to note here is that, everybody, Lorraine, my observation is that everybody like. And that's a lot of people, right? Everybody will say, man, we learn from our mistakes, and yet we don't want people to actually make mistakes. Like, we know it's profoundly true.

00:06:16:04 - 00:06:39:19
Kevin Eikenberry
And yet we we label mistakes and failure as bad, which is all of begins to unfurl. All the stuff I'm going to talk about today. And I think and I also love that you said that we could talk about the disconnect at the organizational level, as well as at the individual or team level. And for those of you listening, that's a sort of a piece of what I'm trying to bring you.

00:06:39:19 - 00:07:00:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Every episode is, is a look at at leadership for yourself, some episodes much more about that than others, but also like what's the organizational story here? What do we need to be thinking organizationally? So it's sort of sort of the big picture as well as the individual picture. So I love that. And I know we're going to get to some of the individual stuff as well.

00:07:00:09 - 00:07:21:12
Kevin Eikenberry
But I want to stay at the organizational level for another segue, because one of the things in the book that I think is extremely insightful is the fact that you say from an innovation perspective, there's basically four kinds of organizations. So I'd like you to, to, to outline them. I'll put them on the screen for those that are watching.

00:07:21:14 - 00:07:32:09
Kevin Eikenberry
But I'd like you to outline them because and as every one of you are listening, I want you to like, what are like, which one is us? Like, where? Where are we among these four things? You want to do that, let's start there.

00:07:32:10 - 00:07:57:18
Lorraine Marchand
Oh, I love that. People have a lot of energy around what I call these innovation organizational archetypes. A lot of syllables, just to say these are the personas or the profiles that a lot of organizations fit into. So, as you can imagine, we start with the startup mindset at an early stage company trying to get their selves, up and running with the new product.

00:07:57:23 - 00:08:20:19
Lorraine Marchand
And we think of them as very, very innovative. The second one is going to be more of an emerging or the adolescent stage where maybe we're coming out of the startup gates, but we really haven't figured out how to systematize and develop processes and make innovation part of our DNA, if you will. The third one is the sweet spot.

00:08:20:19 - 00:08:49:00
Lorraine Marchand
So we might call that the emerging or the growth oriented company. That's right at the heart of being innovative, small and nimble enough to make great decisions, but also just enough scale and process and consistency that they can repeat the experience. And then finally, the one we all have probably had some experience with, the corporate behemoth. The bureaucracy can't get out of its own way.

00:08:49:05 - 00:08:55:23
Lorraine Marchand
Quarterly earnings seem to shut down a lot of creative thinking, and that's our fourth archetype.

00:08:56:01 - 00:09:19:07
Kevin Eikenberry
So as I was reading through those, I had two thoughts. And so I'll share them. And you can comment or say I'm wrong, which happens a lot for me. But the first, the first one is that the adolescent, doesn't necessarily mean they're a teenager in terms. And certainly you're using sort of the, the idea of, you know, we're just we're really starting to grow up.

00:09:19:09 - 00:09:39:00
Kevin Eikenberry
I think there's a lot of organizations have been around a very long time that are really here. They really kind of want to, but they can't really get out of their own way, which is different than the behemoth that you described. But the thing about this stodgy old bureaucracy, as you call it in the book, that doesn't have to be a huge company either.

00:09:39:00 - 00:09:58:08
Kevin Eikenberry
So my two observations were, one is stodgy, old and periodic bureaucratic doesn't have to mean huge. Could be us in much smaller form. And this idea of being that up and comer doesn't only mean we've been at this business for two years, four years, five years. Thoughts about either of those comments?

00:09:58:08 - 00:10:27:12
Lorraine Marchand
Well-Put. Kevin, my research showed that those categories are not chronologically related to age from an innovation standpoint. And so what I mean by that is, in that stodgy bureaucracy type of bucket, you might place a 150 year old company like an Ecolab, like a Veolia, that actually has a lot of the spirit in the innovation drive and DNA of more of your startup.

00:10:27:14 - 00:10:53:06
Lorraine Marchand
You could see a startup that, you know, I come out of the farm industry, and so you might have a startup where the venture capitalists have decided to bring in an X Pharma team. And on day one, because it's filled with corporate executives, you know, they're not doing anything in a startup fashion at all from an innovation mindset, because they're all bringing a lot of of corporate heaviness and process with them.

00:10:53:06 - 00:11:22:23
Lorraine Marchand
So there's no chronological meaning to that. Those different definitions. But it's very true that that emerging mindset, that emerging company, that third one, that growth oriented one, even though it's devoid of chronological age, that's the sweet spot that everybody is aspiring to. Again, that intersection of innovation, creativity, it's safe to experiment. We encourage learning. In fact, we value continuous learning.

00:11:23:01 - 00:11:40:18
Lorraine Marchand
But at the same time, we have enough scale processes. Our operating system is developed enough that we know how to make sure that innovation is something that we do on a repeated basis, and it's inculcated in the culture. So that's the place most companies want to be.

00:11:40:20 - 00:12:02:12
Kevin Eikenberry
And so we're going to spend the rest of our conversation about how we can move in that direction. And so let's let's go back to something you said earlier, about we can think about this organizationally. And I really hope as an audience that your, as a listening, listening audience that you're thinking about that. But you also may say, hey, Lorraine, I'm a front line leader.

00:12:02:13 - 00:12:16:07
Kevin Eikenberry
I've got a team of nine people. Well, how does this fit for my team? So can you just say a little bit about that? As before, we sort of get into what the barriers are and how can we move past them at any level?

00:12:16:09 - 00:12:44:15
Lorraine Marchand
Well, so as a team leader, one of your obligations is to create an environment that brings out the most in your folks. You want high performing teams, you want creativity. You want people to feel comfortable bringing new ideas to the fore. And so for a leader, it's important that you come up with the rituals, the practices, the incentives around behaviors that work for your team.

00:12:44:16 - 00:13:17:18
Lorraine Marchand
So let me give you an example. When I was at IBM Watson in the big behemoth category of companies, as a leader within that organization, I had what I called fail free Fridays. I convened my senior team, and we would have a 30 minute conversation about what wasn't working. Not with an aim to solve any problems, but just to make it okay for colleagues to come around the table, talk about what wasn't working so that we could have honest discussions.

00:13:17:19 - 00:13:41:09
Lorraine Marchand
And that was one of those rituals that I put into place so that it was very clear and obvious to folks that I valued conversations about failure. We view them as experimentation, and we wanted to talk about them as a team. And I hoped that the leaders would inculcate that spirit in their own team meetings and in their own ways of dealing with their teams.

00:13:41:13 - 00:13:52:08
Lorraine Marchand
So there are small things like that. No matter what kind of organization you're in, that you can start to create as rituals, practices, as a leader on your team.

00:13:52:10 - 00:14:09:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Okay, so I love that on so many levels, but I need to dive into that specific example for a second. So I have two thoughts. Number one is how hard was it to keep people from wanting to go to solution? And did you really keep them from going there? Like talk a little because I'm, I'm sitting here thinking about that as a leader.

00:14:09:21 - 00:14:14:23
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm sure others are too. Like, how did you keep them from going to trying to go to solving.

00:14:15:01 - 00:14:34:14
Lorraine Marchand
Yeah. Great question. Well, one thing was because we only have 30 minutes, we didn't have a lot of time for solving it. So, you know, to some extent you've got to constrain it with the question and the time. And so yes, I was very, keen on saying we got 30 minutes. So-and-so has volunteered that they're going to share a problem with us.

00:14:34:19 - 00:14:53:01
Lorraine Marchand
We can ask questions around the problem. We can find out why it's occurring. We'll explore everything that we can about it, but we're not here to solve it. Now, that doesn't mean that the team isn't going to get together separately to have a conversation with Sue about solving it, but our goal was not to try to solve it there.

00:14:53:05 - 00:15:16:17
Lorraine Marchand
It's just to try to uncover the fact that we have this problem. And the reason it was so important just to really shed the light on the problem and all of its facets and stakeholders that were involved and get into all the messiness is because in large companies, it's so much the proclivity to take messy things and shove them under the carpet.

00:15:16:17 - 00:15:32:11
Lorraine Marchand
Right. Pretend like they'll go away. Can do thinking, you know, we're too big to fail. And so I needed to pull all that stuff out of under the carpet, bring it into the light, and just get people into the habit of talking about it.

00:15:32:13 - 00:15:53:06
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that. So the other thing that came up for me, as you were talking about fail your, your 30 minute fail free Friday meeting, which I have a hard time saying, but I love the idea of, is what if or so did it ever happen? Or if if someone implements it and they don't get anyone to share something.

00:15:53:06 - 00:16:05:18
Kevin Eikenberry
In other words, if there's really if if there's really a fear they may not want to share the failure, what would you say if that happens or if people are worried about that happening?

00:16:05:23 - 00:16:25:05
Lorraine Marchand
Well, that's a really good point. And when you start something like this, clearly you have to make it safe for the leaders that are going to come forward. You know, they have to have what we call that psychological safety zone. So we had to have some ground rules and a little bit of governance around this. It's a safe zone.

00:16:25:07 - 00:16:32:00
Lorraine Marchand
Nothing that we talk about under this cone of silence goes outside of you know, the room. Unless we have Las Vegas.

00:16:32:00 - 00:16:33:15
Kevin Eikenberry
What happened here stays here, right?

00:16:33:20 - 00:16:57:04
Lorraine Marchand
So, I mean, obviously, we didn't try to hide it, but, you know, we tried to say, look, this is a safe zone. We're going to keep what we discuss among us. We'll, you know, we'll have other opportunities to talk about action plans and solutions and where we go with this. But it's got to be a safe place. And at the beginning, I did need to reach out to people on my team saying, you know what?

00:16:57:04 - 00:17:20:09
Lorraine Marchand
We just struggled with, let's say it was a customer delivery problem or, you know, it was something with a data or a solution or software, something in the business unit. We're going to talk about this. I want you to just share what happened with everybody for the benefit of learning. So once I got people to feel comfortable with that, I called them and we discussed it.

00:17:20:09 - 00:17:43:15
Lorraine Marchand
Everybody found that it was a safe zone. Then people were more much more willing. And actually they started looking forward. I would get people writing to me saying, can I please have the 30 minutes? Yeah, because I just had something that happened with my sales team and I'm like still scratching my head over it and it would really help me to process in a safe space what happened, especially since we're not going to try to solve it.

00:17:43:15 - 00:17:46:10
Lorraine Marchand
I'd like to share this with my colleagues.

00:17:46:12 - 00:18:07:14
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that because I often say Lorraine, that thoughts are fuzzy. Words bring clarity. So the fact that someone gets to talk about it to other people starts to solve it already, because they get clearer about what really is going on. The I love that you're preaching the idea of sort of I'm preceding it like I'm setting it up so that we don't walk in the room and no one's going to say anything.

00:18:07:20 - 00:18:19:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And the other, the only thing I would add to this is that, you know, if if we as the leader, are willing to share our failures, others are going to be way more likely to share theirs.

00:18:19:17 - 00:18:46:15
Lorraine Marchand
Yes. Yes. Great point, Kevin. And I will say that the I think the first two at least, in this particular situation that I'm thinking about because I still do it. But the first two sessions, I did bring my failures to the group and showed them how this was going to work. So you're right, you've got to be willing to model it in order to really be authentic about having people feel comfortable sharing their their thoughts and their experiences.

00:18:46:17 - 00:19:07:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So it's the start of the the start of the show, the start at the camp. Before the conversation, I promised that we were going to talk about, okay, what are the barriers? What are the reasons why, we we have this disconnect between our stated goal of innovation and actually getting innovation out the door. And, and it comes down to the core of the book.

00:19:07:19 - 00:19:25:03
Kevin Eikenberry
And I want to spend the rest of our time in this conversation about what you call the five C's that these five things, like a good consultant, Lorraine, they all start with the same letter. And I can say that because I do that all the time. But the five C's, let's talk about those in terms of what they are.

00:19:25:05 - 00:19:29:21
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm going to ask about a we'll dive into a couple of them, but just give people an overview of the five real quick.

00:19:30:02 - 00:19:58:01
Lorraine Marchand
Sure, sure. So the first one has to start with culture. And culture is all about setting up an environment where we experiment. We replace failure with experimentation and learning. Our second one is going to be customer first because really difficult to be an innovative forward leading company if you're not putting the customer first. Too many companies talk about the customer, but then they go into the echo chamber.

00:19:58:04 - 00:20:24:19
Lorraine Marchand
They practice inside out, thinking guilty as charged. We think we know what's best for the customer. The third one is one of my favorites. I call it chance, but it's focused on how much we invest in risk and this goes back to the golden ratio of kind of that magic 10% that we need to be investing in breakthroughs, innovation, transformation, things that we don't know how they're going to turn out.

00:20:24:21 - 00:20:51:17
Lorraine Marchand
Because a lot of times that's what's driving 70% of new growth five years later. There's also an important corollary to invest in your team and give them the latitude to try. We, certainly have a C around collaboration, and I like to say that collaboration is no more no longer a behavior that we incent. That's about getting along with your peers and being likable.

00:20:51:19 - 00:21:21:14
Lorraine Marchand
It's a strategic business imperative. And business grows when functions and departments, services, and stakeholders all come together around a common objective and around the customer all aligned, moving in the same direction, breaking through their silos, and then finally change. Because all of this is underpinning the fact that if we're going to create this positive culture, we've got to be willing to lead the team through change.

00:21:21:20 - 00:21:47:16
Lorraine Marchand
And so I've got some tips and techniques on how you can make change much more amenable and easy for the team. One of them is delete something first, right? People get overwhelmed when all you do is pile up the bright, shiny objects on their desk. Tell them how excited they're supposed to be, that they've got one more project for innovation, and yet they're trying to see through what are my priorities?

00:21:47:16 - 00:22:04:09
Lorraine Marchand
How am I going to get this big list done? So take something off of the plate and help your teams reprioritize so everybody can focus on that. One thing you want to do really well that's new and cool and very exciting. So those are the five C's in a very brief overview.

00:22:04:11 - 00:22:27:15
Kevin Eikenberry
And well done. So I want I want to talk about several of them. But that last thing is so important, that I mean, I suppose someone could be listening and saying, oh, we got 20 minutes in before we talked about change. Innovation has to be related to change. And it does. And that's really not where I want us to spend the few minutes that we have left, because I think people get that at some level.

00:22:27:18 - 00:22:51:04
Kevin Eikenberry
But the point that you just made might be the thing that is what people will take from this conversation, which is we can't just keep adding. I recently had a conversation with someone who said, in a in a similar conversation was saying, it's like the picture of the plate at Thanksgiving. And if you're not from the United States, it's, it's the plate, when you're having a feast.

00:22:51:05 - 00:23:04:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Right? And the plate is so full and there's something else you want. Where are you going to put it if there's no place to put it? The only way you can do that is if you have less mashed potatoes. Like, unless you take off some mashed potatoes in that room for the brownie or whatever it doesn't matter what it is.

00:23:04:21 - 00:23:27:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Right? So like that is a critical thing. And, and I'm guilty with my team of that, and I am guilty with myself of that. It's incredibly important. And I'm so glad that you mentioned that. I want to go back to the to the customer first one, and I'm going to read you something you said in the book because I thought it was profoundly true.

00:23:27:03 - 00:23:50:17
Kevin Eikenberry
And you can comment on it as you, as you choose. You said on page 49, I'm not going to it's not a test. On page 49, you said customer first doesn't mean asking the customer to tell you what you should do, because I think sometimes that's what we like. That seems like the magic bullet. Like they would just tell us and we will figure that out, and we won't be able to tell them that.

00:23:50:19 - 00:24:12:21
Lorraine Marchand
Yeah, exactly. And the customer really has no clue about your business or your competition or what your offering is. And so it's putting a heavy weight on them to tell you what to do. And so I like to say that the first and most fundamental question in customer research is, first of all, to know who your customer is.

00:24:12:21 - 00:24:35:23
Lorraine Marchand
And I know that sounds very counterintuitive, but I can't tell you how many times I sit down with the team and I ask that fundamental question, and we're still discussing it four hours later. Okay. Because you might have various stakeholders, various customers, a decision maker who doesn't manage the purse strings. And so it's really important to understand who the customer is.

00:24:36:01 - 00:25:00:02
Lorraine Marchand
And then you also need to break down what is it they're currently doing. What is their work that is not going well. That's not satisfying where I think I can intervene and offer them some kind of a change or solution, but I have to observe the customer. I have to have evidence of what they're doing before I can know where I might be able to intervene and change something for them.

00:25:00:05 - 00:25:13:03
Lorraine Marchand
So I have six fundamental questions that are all about understanding the customer. The before you ever ask them what they need or what they think of your idea. Those are like questions seven and eight. Kevin.

00:25:13:05 - 00:25:35:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, and those are those questions are all on page 32. So when you order your book, see right there, the right there. And so when you order your copy, you can just make a mental note. You want to go to page 32. So. When I think about your five C's, you know, I know I am told by my team often that Kevin, you're not normal.

00:25:35:08 - 00:26:04:10
Kevin Eikenberry
But they also say, Kevin, you're not a normal reader. Because 537 episodes, about 520 of those ish have been interviews with people like you, which means 540 books, not counting all the others. And so my point is that if you read much of anything in the business press, you're going to hear words like culture. You can read a whole, you can see a whole bunch of episodes here about culture, about collaboration, about change, about customer.

00:26:04:12 - 00:26:27:15
Kevin Eikenberry
But that other C of chance might be a. And that isn't meant, by the way, Lorraine, to discount any of those other four in the context of creating the innovation we want need. I don't mean that at all. And the interconnections between them are super important, but the thing that people won't have read as much about is this idea of chance.

00:26:27:15 - 00:26:41:01
Kevin Eikenberry
I mean, take us into that as it relates to risk taking and as it relates to how do we really start to think about how we invest that time, what does that look like, etc.?

00:26:41:03 - 00:27:00:23
Lorraine Marchand
Yeah. Well, you know, Kevin, I like to say think about your own personal finances. If you are so fortunate enough that you're able to invest your own money in the market, you don't put all of your A, you don't put all of your, funds into one stock or maybe even into the public market. You have a diversified portfolio.

00:27:01:03 - 00:27:23:09
Lorraine Marchand
You have things that are going to pay dividends immediately. You have things that are for the medium term, and you might even have things that are very high risk that you don't expect to get a return for maybe 10 or 15 years. And corporations need to think about investing in the same way. And so what the golden ratio says is that you invest about 70% in core.

00:27:23:11 - 00:27:48:08
Lorraine Marchand
That's to keep your basic business moving forward. You invest another 20% in adjacencies, market expansion, maybe some new customers, and then you save 10% where you invest in net new stuff. Right. This is the area where we're not exactly sure what it's going to pan out, but we know we need to look around corners, get ahead of the game and make some investments.

00:27:48:10 - 00:28:21:05
Lorraine Marchand
And Sergey Brin said it beautifully because this was the the algorithm that he used at Google. And he showed that that 10% that he invested in innovation five years later was where 70% of the company's new growth was coming from. And in my research, I found and I actually interviewed 120 executives on this question, that the companies that sustain growth, that have breakout growth, follow some kind of similar algorithm, maybe not precisely.

00:28:21:05 - 00:28:49:05
Lorraine Marchand
If you're in software, your algorithm might be a little different than your in retail, but they think about it in a similar type of way, and that that algorithm really does play through. And I like to say that the corollary for that is also investing in your teams. So we have to make sure that the teams are staffed, resourced, given some latitude and have some incentive because that's where you're going to get the new ideas from.

00:28:49:05 - 00:29:13:08
Lorraine Marchand
They're not going to just fall from the sky. We've got to take that chance of investing. We've got to marry that up with investing in the team and then creating that environment where they can bring the new ideas forward and then investing in them. And some of the best companies that I met with, showed how they brought the, the, employees into that algorithm.

00:29:13:14 - 00:29:41:00
Lorraine Marchand
So, you know, they might stage contests, you could, you know, represent an idea. And then at the end of the year, certain of those different ideas or solutions would make their way through into new products. So there's a way that you bring these two together, the financial investment, the resources, and create a really nice ecosystem where people can work and flourish and see that their ideas contribute to the company's top line.

00:29:41:02 - 00:30:01:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Which takes us back to culture and collaboration. And honestly, sometimes your line folks are the ones who really understand the customer better, than the people sitting in that room and for three hours trying to tell us who the customer is. That's a whole nother conversation, isn't it? Lorraine? Hey, before we go, I've got a couple things I want to ask you.

00:30:01:07 - 00:30:08:22
Kevin Eikenberry
And one of them. Is there anything, by the way, that I didn't ask, that you really wish I would have, or that you'd like us to talk about for a minute or two?

00:30:09:00 - 00:30:40:08
Lorraine Marchand
I just want to encourage your audience if anything is holding you back at an individual level, you feel intimidated to innovate. You feel afraid of bringing a new idea forward. I hope that you've heard something here between Kevin and myself, that will inspire you to just step out of your comfort zone, put a new idea forward, and as I tell my students, if you're in an organization that doesn't value innovation and doesn't want to hear your new ideas, that's something that you should know.

00:30:40:13 - 00:31:02:05
Lorraine Marchand
And maybe it's something that you need to act on. Do you want to be in the company that doesn't encourage innovation, that doesn't want to hear your ideas, that doesn't want you to develop and doesn't want you to help the company to develop? So spend a little time reflecting on that. But please make a change. If something is holding you back, try in some small way for yourself and for your team.

00:31:02:05 - 00:31:09:02
Lorraine Marchand
Start something like a fail. Fail free Fridays if you if you would be so, so willing to do so.

00:31:09:04 - 00:31:17:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So before we go, Lorraine, I have two more questions for you. One. Is this the only one you knew for sure I was going to ask you, like, what are you reading these days?

00:31:18:01 - 00:31:49:20
Lorraine Marchand
Well, one of the books that I'm reading, Kevin, is called Invisible Women, and the reason that I'm reading it is because we're definitely square in an era of data and AI. And the book's premise is that a lot of what AI is operating off of, obviously, is published data, and that in many situations, data, if we look over time, is absent, of of a female perspective or information on women.

00:31:50:01 - 00:32:15:17
Lorraine Marchand
So not to overindex on it, but I found it really interesting to think about what is absent in data that AI is now programed to report on, which could be the next bastion for innovation and change that we need to think about. Because if we're this reliant on AI and the information that it's giving us, but it's only as good as its data sources, what do we want to do to kind of reconcile that?

00:32:15:17 - 00:32:22:03
Lorraine Marchand
So I think that's an interesting thing, to probe the data sources that AI sits upon.

00:32:22:04 - 00:32:42:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Will have invisible women and no fear, no failure linked in the show notes. So you can get into your copy. No problem. And I have to say, this might be a record in the last six months that we went 30 minutes before the letters AI were said, so, before we go, the other question, what where do you want to point people?

00:32:42:11 - 00:32:51:09
Kevin Eikenberry
If people want to get connected with you and learn more, obviously we'll put we'll we'll link people to the book. But where do you want to point people or send people? How can people connect with you?

00:32:51:11 - 00:33:13:18
Lorraine Marchand
Well, I'd love to hear from you on LinkedIn. So Lorraine Marchand, on LinkedIn and, love to have debate and discussion there. I have a website and it's Lorraine Marshall cnn.com. So please get in touch in those couple places. And I'd love to hear some of your ideas and thoughts and other ways that I can encourage and inspire you to, to get out there and innovate.

00:33:13:20 - 00:33:31:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Both of those two places are two other places where you can find links to you can get your copy. We had we've had people here on the live saying, hey, I'm going to order my copy. I hope that you do the same. So everybody, the question and Lorraine really got at this a second ago already. But the the question that I always ask you, I must ask you again.

00:33:31:19 - 00:33:51:16
Kevin Eikenberry
And that is now what you spent 30 minutes with Lorraine and I, as we talked about innovation and why we don't always get what we want in innovation in our organizations or our teams. The question is, what did you take? Can you take from this that you will do something with? Because if you don't take action, what's the point?

00:33:51:18 - 00:34:06:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Right. Knowledge is only powerful if we act on it. And so it's my hope that you will do that today. And it's my hope that you, of course, will come back again. But before we say goodbye, Lorraine, thank you for being here. Such a pleasure to have you.

00:34:06:02 - 00:34:13:13
Lorraine Marchand
Well, Kevin, you promised that we were going to have a fun, lively conversation. And we did. So my thanks to you.

00:34:13:15 - 00:34:30:20
Kevin Eikenberry
I always like to live up to my promises. I'll. So I'll say you're welcome. And thank you, Lorraine as well. So, everybody, if you found this useful, number one, take action on what you learned at number two, make sure you subscribed so you'll come back next week to join us again for another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.

00:34:30:20 - 00:34:31:10
Kevin Eikenberry
We'll see you then.