Five Rules Smart Disruptors Live By

First, I want to take a moment to thank all of you for your kind words and notes of congratulations on my upcoming retirement. Over the past 40 years, I have met and worked with some of the most talented, driven individuals who have shaped where the Aerospace and Defense industry is today – and for that I am truly grateful.

That kind of commitment to the mission and problem solving is what inspired me to share this post. The work that we all do can have a huge impact – but it also doesn’t always happen in one singular moment. Innovation isn't always about new groundbreaking discovery—it's often the compilation of a million little steps that result in incremental yet important change. We all know the story that it took Thomas Edison nearly 1,000 times before inventing the light bulb…and that motivation and discipline is what can get us to accomplishing innovation.

Here are five ideas to consider to be the next great innovator and some relevant questions to reflect on.

1.????Remember that People Innovate, not just companies

People, by our very nature, are innovative – whether we realize it or not, our innate curiosity means we are all working to find ways to make things better, complete something faster, or explore something new. Regardless of what you are trying to improve, it all starts with the right mindset. An innovative mindset means thinking about what you are doing each day and feeling that pressure or pinch to do it better. At Lockheed Martin Space, we help inspire our employees to tackle this through an internal competition called “Innovation Spotlight” where employees showcase their efforts that changed our programs, helped add value to our processes or even a project that may have failed – but they learned from it. I am always inspired by what our teams come up with – from all experience levels and functions across Space.

Innovation comes in many forms and how we celebrate it is also how we encourage it. Here are a couple things to think about:

• How would you do your job or function differently?
• How would you achieve that goal twice as fast at half the cost?

When should you be asking yourself these questions? In short, every single day.

2.????Stay Curious and Ask Questions

Diverse teams are what keep the creative pump primed. Different backgrounds, viewpoints and skills can spark innovation by offering and produce the best solutions through a continuous flow of fresh thinking and healthy debate. Throughout my career, I have helped spur my own curiosity by surrounding myself with mentors and teammates that have a different opinion or different way of thinking to help me see things in a new light.

To develop an innovative thought process, it’s imperative to ask questions and remain open to other perspectives. I also recommend you pause to evaluate someone’s comments before sharing your response – this will help you develop the skill of truly being present to process information. I encourage you to ask yourself:

• Are you truly listening to understand?
• Are you looking past your own knowledge and appreciating other viewpoints?

Digesting diverse perspectives can provide new, creative approaches to old problems or processes you may never have otherwise considered. The undercurrent of all this is staying curious.

3.????Develop and Maintain a Growth Mindset

My philosophy over my career has been to learn continuously. I'm always trying to find smarter, better ways to not only improve our business but also improve myself. Back in 1998, there was a book written by Ram Charan called?Every Business Is a Growth Business . Charan addressed how we look beyond what we know today, how we learn and keep developing ourselves and our teams. The crux of the approach he wrote about was the following:

• Do you have the courage to say “I don’t know something?” and do you take action to learn a new skill or process?
• When you approach a problem are you looking at it through a variety of different perspectives or lens?

When it comes to “lensing,” a relevant example is how at Lockheed Martin, we look at industries outside of aerospace and defense like automotive and gaming to see if there are better ways to serve the missions we support.

4.????Fail Fast and Fail Forward

Let’s talk about technical innovation. In this arena, teams take on the opportunity to fail fast and fail forward, and it’s not really that these teams “failed,” in the traditional sense of the word -- it’s about what they learned. An example of this is Lockheed Martin’s?5G Hivestar? ?demonstration – an internal partnership that has unlocked breakthroughs for our teams and our customers by staying agile and leveraging commonality across our entire business. Knowledge sharing and good collaboration across teams can accomplish anything – and that is how you reinvest learnings. You can consider the following: ?

• When sharing best practices, are you fine tuning what another team gives you and taking that extra step to refine an approach?
• Are you asking others if they have worked a similar problem before to avoid reinventing the wheel??

Humility and vulnerability contribute to a successful approach of harvesting success from any perceived failure.

5.????Disruptors Embrace Change – Everywhere

The benefits of disruption know no bounds in an organization. Customers need things faster and we must continue to deliver high-quality capabilities. One example of this is a change from fit-for-purpose to rapid upgrades, and?5G ?for our business. We have worked on every generation of this technology, but we are committed to continually evolving and focusing on the speed of this technology. 5G connectivity is already powering smart cities, homes, and commerce around the world—and will soon give our military the access to reliable data in communications contested and denied environments. Every changing environment is a catalyst for innovation – and that is why we are embracing change through both digital and business transformation. Some ways to embrace this change are asking yourself:

• Are you bringing solutions forward with new ways to leverage emerging technologies?
• Do you know what digital tools are available and are you an advocate for change to make your entire team’s job easier?

We all need to “walk the walk” and that is how disruptors can embrace change to drive innovation – for themselves and across their entire organization.

Building a Team of Innovators

The work we do saves lives – our work matters because the missions we support matter. And it’s from this purpose that we derive not only the urge to innovate, but also the necessity. As you build your team of innovators, make sure to remind them that innovation isn’t one big grand slam over the fence, rather it’s the little things that make us better than we were yesterday.

How do you engage with your teams to drive innovation in all its forms? ?