Preparing for Innovation

Richard Sharp
Project Nexus believes that all successful leaders and enterprises innovate.

Too often we find leaders and organisations overwhelmed by the busyness and noise of maintaining their existing activities. This is understandable as we need to keep our existing activities running well, but if this takes up all of our capacity as leaders, innovation will never take place.
As leaders who prioritise the need for innovation, it is critical that we intentionally make the space and time to work ON our ideas and projects. To take a step back and see the big picture. To explore the future that we must prepare for.

‘Many leaders are too busy working IN their projects or organisations to prioritise working ON them’
Innovation needs space, it needs air and it needs time. We understand that we need to invest in new ventures and ideas but sometimes we don’t realise that this also means an investment of our time, energy, and brain space, not just finances.
You can’t innovate at speed!

You can implement and scale at speed, but without the space to innovate, you will never have anything to implement in the first place.

We believe creating margin is intentional, so we have put together a few simple suggestions below to try and help you create the margin you will need as you innovate.

Some things to try
  • Life and leadership are noisy. Find a regular time to be without electronic devices, music, podcasts, or whatever your noise of choice is. This is an intentional time for slowing down the noise and the constant input you deal with as a leader. Take this time to collect what you are thinking, what you are dreaming, and what you are learning.

  • Make time for people outside of your organisation. Try checking your emails or doing an administrative task each day at a regular time and in a regular public place, eg. cafes, community centers, libraries, parks, or coworking spaces. Allow longer than necessary to do this task, to create margin, to be intentionally present within these spaces. Look for opportunities to build relationships and connections with the people in these spaces. Imagine who you might meet, and imagine what you might learn.

  • Permission to Chunk your time. Leaders often work flat out for long periods of time without coming up for air. Could you consider how you might give yourself permission to work in chunks? Balancing intense periods of work with intentional chunks of rest, refreshment, and reflection. Building these periods of downtime into our leadership rhythms will become essential if you want to lead innovation.

  • Inspired by new places and spaces. Consider setting aside regular periods of time to visit, learn, listen, watch, talk, and ask questions in spaces that you do not usually operate. Maybe even places and spaces where you don’t feel instantly comfortable. As leaders, our capacity to engage and understand culture is directly connected to how much time we spend doing this.

These are just ideas and ultimately you will need to work out the specific practices that are uniquely yours, to create margin.

But know this, your capacity to innovate and lead will be determined by how much margin you create.

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