FountainBlue's June 2024 Newsletter
This month’s newsletter is dedicated to my brother, Jason San Wong. Jason was a quiet, unassuming hero who always put others first and brought us all together. He was a hero to many and his quiet confidence, his gentle smile and sharp wit will be greatly missed by many.
For almost two decades, FountainBlue has been facilitating leadership and innovation for the FountainBlue community and beyond. Through this work, we’ve found that many companies are ostensibly saying that they are investing in innovation, but are actually doing so.
For example, delivering incremental improvements to make their products and solutions more efficient, more effective, more thorough, more connected, more versatile, more distributed, or less buggy. I believe that allocating funds for incremental innovation is a necessary part of doing business, but ideally, leaders and managers are also investing in innovation projects.
Many companies are expanding their products, services, technologies and applications to across markets, industries, platforms, users, geographies, use cases, etc. Allocating funds for these orthogonal extensions is a strategic part of expanding the business, but innovation is arguably just as critical.
The hypothesis for my upcoming white paper on innovation is that there are two different types of innovation: intentional and transformational and unintentional yet transformational.
As unintentional transformations aren’t planned by definition, the emphasis on the white paper is on intentional innovations. There are three types of intentional innovations:
Problem-based innovations: based on markets, customer demands, unmet needs and societal developments
Technology-based innovations: driven by the creation and expansion of foundational technologies with a wide range of adaptations/use cases
Business-driven innovations: an organization recruits the innovators, buys the organizations, or manages and integrates the processes which lead to an innovation at scale
The white paper will showcase the recent and transformational problem-based innovations and technology-based innovations of the past two decades plus the innovation opportunities ahead. With a target release of Fall 2024, use case submissions are welcomed and appreciated.
It is our hope that the white paper will connect the leaders and innovators of today with the best practices to fuel the innovations of tomorrow.
Notes from last month’s When She Speaks Online Program
FountainBlue's May 9 When She Speaks program, on the topic of 'Expand Your Circle of Influence'. Please join me in thanking our esteemed panelists.
This month's panelists represented a wide range of organizations, roles, backgrounds and perspectives, but they had much in common.
They developed the relationships, connections and knowledge necessary to consistently deliver business results.
As they advanced in their careers, they gained broader influence and provided wider impact, working with larger groups of people collaboratively to consistently deliver on requirements.
Below is a summary of their remarks and advice.
Be leaderly.
Be courageous and bold and curious enough to keep learning and growing.
Influence with intention by looking at the bigger picture and seeing how the pieces fit together so you can influence the individual pieces while impacting the greater whole ... and vice versa.
Find your voice, your own strategy for processing information and being heard.
Remain resilient and aligned on the corporate, product, and team goals, and empower and enable your people to work for that common purpose, within prescribed parameters and guardrails to ensure compliance with requirements.
Build Deep Relationships
Work with a wide range of people with different backgrounds and program-manage across groups so that all can successfully collaborate to deliver results.
Build broad and deep relationships of trust, enabling a network of interdependent stakeholders to succeed.
Manage and Lead Well
Be clear about why and when and how things need to be done, and speak in a way which resonates with the target audience.
Invite input and participation from a diverse range of invested stakeholders.
Be open to a wide range of options for delivering intended results. With that said, don't let the 'armchair quarterbacks' too heavily influence an approved plan.
Be clear on the guardrails required for successful implementation and use your influence to help ensure everyone works within those parameters.
There are times when coercive influence is necessary, but it's rarely a good long term solution.
Adopt a listening mode so that you understand what is needed. The direct requests are often not what they seem to be.
Factor in how someone or something is perceived by specific audiences if you want to shift their perspective, their actions, etc.,
Invite escalation protocols when they are warranted, especially if quality or customer satisfaction may be at risk.
The bottom line is that the ability to influence is only granted to those who keep wielding that power well, to deliver results that matter to the stakeholders involved. We are in debt to our influential panel for sharing their wisdom at this afternoon's panel.
Notes from this month’s Front Line Managers Online Program
FountainBlue's May 2 Front Line Managers Online program was on the topic of 'Embrace a Growth Mindset'. Please join me in thanking our panelists.
Our panelists shared highlights from their impressive backgrounds so that we had context on their strategies for embracing a growth mindset. They defined a growth mindset in several ways:
It's about having an open mind about what you know you don't know, and also what you don't know you don't know.
It's a strategy for seeing an opportunity with every challenge.
It's an approach for facing changes and challenges with courage and confidence, despite the fear.
It's a mindset of always building and growing.
It's an intellectual quality which helps to manage the emotional responses to difficult circumstances.
It's a strategy for making plans, and then agilely navigating with the circumstances, within clearly defined guardrails.
Below is a compilation of their advice and best practices.
Plan Strategically
Take a big-picture view, strategically managing interdependencies and partnerships to optimize results.
Align people across the organization around the growth imperative and focus on collaboratively delivering results.
Be passionate about what you do and resourceful and collaborative about how it gets done. Help those around you to do the same.
Listen closely to the voice of the customer, the evolution of the market so that you can grow strategically to meet their needs.
Inspire, Enable, Empower and Connect
Inspire, empower and enable people around you to participate and contribute, celebrating shared accomplishments along the way.
Be empathetic, meeting people where they are.
Build deep, broad, and trust-based relationships which align with individual, team and corporate needs.
Develop muscles and skillset around growth, so that the Growth Mindset becomes part of the culture.
Connect people across products, geographies, groups, silos, etc., so that the company can act as one team to address opportunities and challenges.
Communicate Clearly and Transparently
Communicate the business case with data to help you get the resources and support and engagement necessary for success.
Strategically communicate the WIIFM (what's in it for me) to all stakeholders so that all parties understand how they personally impact the organization.
With all this said, our panelists also commented that there are times when a company should *not* adopt a growth mindset. For example:
when there's too much risk involved
when the market and customer needs start shifting
when human or organizational capacity cannot meet the anticipated growth needs
when market uncertainties impact the projected growth path, etc.,
The bottom line is that change is a given, and growth keeps companies relevant and solvent, perhaps even helping leaders plan for a future they can't see.
Perhaps we can all be more comfortable being uncomfortable if we adopt a Growth Mindset...
Notes from last month’s VIP Roundtable Online Program
FountainBlue's May 10 VIP roundtable was on the topic of 'Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions'. Below is a summary of the conversation.
Carbon neutral energy solutions might range of from Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage to Green Hydrogen and Distributed Energy Resources, and Data Analytics, from Grid Edge, Electric Transportation, and Energy Efficiency to Waste Heat Utilization, from Advanced Materials and Electrochemical Systems to Fuel Cell and Energy Storage Technologies and Renewable Hydrogen Production. But the emphasis on our conversation was around the technology, the hardware and software which help drive these wide range of carbon neutral energy solutions.
We started the conversation with some very big questions:
How do we minimize power usage while maximizing performance and flexibility?
How do we leverage GenAI to optimize climate tech solutions which benefit us all?
How do we keep our energy solutions safe and secure when bad actors are so motivated by the prospect of financial returns from successful cyber attacks?
How do we decarbonize while also energizing a power-hungry, processing-heavy expectations of a growing customer base?
We found that there were no pat, one-size-fits-all solutions for everyone, yet were fascinated that the questions were raised by all around the virtual table. We did mention some potential opportunities for carbon-neutral energy solutions:
consider solutions for providing micro-grids in remote areas
consider how we can more broadly adopt electrification options
consider how we can use EVs as mobile storage units
consider more options for leveraging our current grid
consider how we can better fuel transportation - on the air, on the ground, under water
consider how we can better store, distribute, and optimize the renewable energy we are already generating, but at scale
And ended by talking about some larger questions:
How do we develop policies and provide incentives which would encourage infrastructure upgrades at the corporate and local levels?
How do we connected across a fractured and disjointed ecosystem of stakeholders so that we can more efficiently and more collaboratively innovate and create carbon-neutral energy solutions?
How do we shape and influence the policies which fund research, support collaborations, and facilitate implementation of carbon neutral energy solutions?
How can we fund the decades of research necessary to fund the innovations which are truly transformational?
It's dizzying to consider these very big questions, yet I also know that innovation and leadership will be the heart of the solution. And I'm glad that I'm doing my part by bringing key leaders and innovators together to contemplate these opportunities and challenges ahead.