Decision-Making in the Zone of Innovation

The Zone of Innovation is a concept that was first introduced by Michael Raynor, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He defines it as "the place where uncertainty and opportunity meet."?

In the FranklinCovey Change Model, we adopt this concept of the Zone of Innovation to describe the exciting stage your organization enters once a change has been adopted and stabilized. It’s where you can use your success and what you’ve learned to explore what else can be done, what your changes made possible, and where else you can go.

In other words, the Zone of Innovation is an ideas factory – where you have the chance to explore potential opportunities that can lead to new insights and breakthroughs. But as with any other type of innovation, there’s trial and error involved.?

While some companies are more successful than others when it comes to being innovative, there are certain things you can do to improve your chances of success – including curbing your well-earned enthusiasm when you seem to be getting it right.

The Role of The Change Model

?The Zone of Innovation is the stage all leaders dream of reaching when a new change- chosen or imposed- begins to reveal even more possibilities than anticipated.? The change has settled, requiring less effort to maintain, and freeing up time to refine the results. People are more confident- motivated by the change even- and ready to seize the opportunity out of uncertainty...

However, the model is not only designed for forward movement, but discernment. By providing a holistic representation of the universal stages of change, it allows you to pinpoint where you are, where you want to go, track the progress...and also assess the ROI of your action.? We have identified four key stages:

The Zone of Status Quo - where we assess where we are, what's happening, what's working, what's not, and what needs to change.

The Zone of Disruption - where we shake things up. Announce the change and start making things happen.

The Zone of Adoption - where people choose to adapt and we decide the hows.? Discover what matters and figure out the strategies that will take us where we need to be. And where we persist to get there.

The Zone of Innovation - where we explore. Where has the change taken us? Do we enter a new status quo? Or do we assess what's possible now?

By facilitating the development of four skills- to prepare, to clarify, to persist, to explore- each state builds the awareness needed to keep making sound decisions on an ongoing basis.? When the framework isn’t followed and the time not giving to develop each skill, leaders fall into the trap of mistaking intuition for perspective and being reactive when it’s time to be reflective.

Success comes with a stealth tax

We all crave success, and clearly, success is never a bad thing. But success can come with a stealth tax- one which can be dangerous to your company’s long-term health.

Leaders eager to continue enjoying the successful change often skip right on past the Zone of Innovation and instead enter a stage of unbridled, premature action. Why does this happen?

Inexperience. The reality is transforming organizations at scale and at pace isn’t something senior leadership has frequent experience with. Interestingly, McKinsey found that even top C-level executives and senior managers report greater exposure to smaller, interconnected decisions than ‘big-bet decisions’ which have the potential to shape the company’s future.

Overconfidence. A 2018 study showed that over 65% of Americans think they have above-average intelligence. “The more successful we are, the more we think we’re right. The endowment effect suggests we overvalue items, ideas, and initiatives we own,” MindEquity CEO and Behavioral Scientist Nuala Walsh says.

When overconfidence takes over, best practices go out the window, leading to a failure to make the cost/benefit analysis of decisions, resulting in new ideas that are expensive and ineffective.

Often, leaders take the early rewards of change as validation, as a sign it’s safe to continue an upward trajectory. But the change model includes curves for a reason. If the surge of innovation doesn’t eventually slow, stabilize and internalize as the new normal, then we’re left with a vertical line ─ one that is impossible to climb.????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Change- every change- is a pattern

Using successful change as the impetus to fuel further change is everything the Zone of Innovation stands for. However, the danger of stopping before entering the Zone of Innovation or entering whilst high on success is that you fail to give new change and decisions the same level of attention and scrutiny. This can lead to impulsive communicating, impulsive spending, impulsive hiring - everything that can undo the progress you and your people have made.

It’s true that successful change leaders must think bigger than their current systems in order to reach new heights of performance. They need to empower their teams to actively look for new solutions and possibilities. However, this doesn’t mean acting without planning. Each evolution, process change and idea requires the pre-work of creating a compelling vision that helps you engage your team. You must complete that pre-work to avoid losing the results you gained and alienating the people who make it happen.

Executive teams must avoid the mindset of “we are so brilliant and good at what we do” after implementing a successful change. Following and leveraging the predictable pattern of change instead of raw intuition made you wise. Managing the human responses to that change empowered the best in your people.? Engaging those closest to the work in the innovation made you successful!

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Allow the change to stabilize before trying to soar higher

Effective decision-making in change requires an emotional neutrality which can be difficult to achieve- without an objective framework. Giving the same level of effort, conscious thought, and self-awareness to all opportunities that arise whilst in the Zone of Status Quo and the Zone of Innovation is what unlocks the magic of the Change Model.

Let me be clear: I am not saying that you should not celebrate your successes, or even disallow them from influencing future decision-making. Rather, you must know how success can impact your ability to think critically about change.

Let success fuel your innovation. Let it guide you. But don't let success blind you.