How managers drive innovation by focusing on people

Jens: So, you take a team, you build them up, you help them to understand the direction. Normal leadership topics, build the vision, build the why, build an understanding where you want to go. But then as well empower them, and that's the biggest difference I've seen, depending on the company culture you work in.
Jimmy: Hello and welcome back to this week's episode of The Ways of Working podcast, your weekly dose of practical tips for leaders who are trying to gain that high performance edge without burning themselves or their teams out. Now, before you put down your phone or click away from this window, make sure you hit follow or subscribe on your preferred platform of choice to make sure you don't miss any future episodes of The Ways of Working podcast with our incredible experts and guests.
Welcome back to this week's episode of The Ways of Working podcast, and I'm absolutely thrilled this week to be joined by a good friend, and somebody I really admire in the world of innovation and we'll find out more. Jens Heitland. Jens is the CEO of Succeed, and has just the most amazing catalogue of wins, companies, and consulting ventures that he's going to share a little bit about today with us. Jens, welcome to the show.
Jens: Jimmy, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure recording together with you.
Jimmy: [laughter] It's, I try to not say this every episode, but I genuinely am excited to have our conversation today, because I, you know, we're both nerds when it comes to the world of leadership and change, and human behaviour. And so, I think this episode is going to be really useful for those people who are thinking, well, how can I get the best out of my team and how can we do something a little bit different as my team. But before we get into that, tell us a little bit about the journey that you have gone on through your corporate career and how you've ended up where you are today?
Jens: Yeah, the journey started in good old Germany in 1997 when I started um, I left school and started on a construction site, because school sucked. That was the starting point of my career. And then, over time, I developed myself inside of the industry of construction, then went into professional services, and then I found out that, somehow, that's not the thing I want to retire. And then I got more into a manager role, did a couple of courses, studied then next to working in evening school and then got into the leadership path, and got um the chance to work in one of the best companies in the world, which is the furniture company IKEA, and did quite a huge career from a store level to a global level in about 11 years. And then stepped out to find out how do we change the way companies innovate and how to help them in a better way. And that's, basically, the journey I'm on since 2019. Have built several companies, tested a couple of things, built a start-up that didn't work out, and have just started a new start-up in the end of last year. So, but it's all under the umbrella of innovation and the human aspect of innovation. That's in a nutshell.
Jimmy: [laughter] I love it, and we'll get into the human innovation piece in a second, but I'm fascinated by that, "I went from store level to global level in 11 years." That must have been a roller coaster ride. Tal- talk us through, how did you achieve that? What were you doing, because there's many managers on the uh li- who are listening who are probably thinking, "I need to get that next promotion. I need I want to get that next level role." What were you doing that got those promotions?
Jens: I I was I was telling part of that story yesterday in in a discussion. I think the the number one thing that made me successful was the onboarding process of IKEA at that time. So, inside of that store, I have an HR coach that helped me to onboard into, we called it at that time, the IKEA universe, like the corporate setting of IKEA, but in a way that I'm adapting the style of leadership to the culture of IKEA. And this was incredibly helpful for me coming from, let's say, more an engineering industry where you have slightly different tone of voice with each other than in a retail setting, obviously. [laughter] So, I think that was the the number one onboarding piece and through that I've had the chance to work with amazing people over time, and had quite some mentors inside of the ecosystem of IKEA. And IKEA is very much about how do you lead and empower people as part of your journey? So, you, as a manager, are evaluated, for example, to develop your successor. It's part of your measurement of your success, not just the business topics, and then as well how do your team members evaluate you. And I've had the chance to work with different teams over time. So, started in the store, then got the chance after one and a half years to be regional manager for 11 IKEA stores, and then was brought into the German headquarter, which is the was just for the German country, and through that, then got a little bit more exposure into different parts of IKEA. Um, because it was in Germany, obviously, everything was in German. I've never spoken English before, and then one of my mentors said, "Hey Jens, you should consider speaking English." [laughter] It was like, "Yeah, I've I haven't had English classes since, I don't know, 10 years at that time, so haven't really spoken a word." And then I started English and got the chance um cold water approach, um being the global project manager for one of the most exciting projects at that time, which was all about how do you build a sustainable store? So, sustainability throughout in a store environment from A to Z, and, of course, that gave me even more exposure, and then moving into different countries, and taking my steps inside of that ecosystem. But one red thread is really about the leadership approach I've had and bringing other people, making other people successful, and that was always seen from my managers, from my mentors, who then put even more challenging tasks on me where I needed to bring people together or drive shifts into the organisation. And that's, for example, why I was Head of Sustainability for the Russian market, which was very, very difficult at that time, because sustainability was not the first thought when you think about IKEA in that environment. And um yeah, managing a couple of things like that with which in the end went quite well. Let's say it like this.
Jimmy: [laughter] I love the the sort of the downplaying of some of the challenges that you might have faced there. And I think you picked up on a really interesting insight, though, that as you were developing through your career, your manager kept on putting more and more challenging opportunities, projects, and milestones for you to start achieving. And I know that we've talked many times about the idea of that stretch of employees, and and I think we'll you know, as we head into that world of human innovation, one of the things that we keep talking about is the idea of setting a a slightly stretch goal for people, and let them learn, and grow, and step outside their comfort zones, because it makes them think differently, and it makes them grow. What's What are those ones where you were thrown a real curve ball and you really, really had to step outside your comfort zone, grow your capability, do more research, and and that you felt was one of those moments, those transcendent moments in your career?
Jens: Yeah, one big one, if if we stay in the IKEA universe, was I got the chance to be responsible for a legal delegation project, and it it was as exciting as it sounds. [laughter] So, it was something I've had nothing to do with in the past and it was about how do we delegate securities and different tasks inside of the organisation that we are compliant to the law on specific things? Which meant we need we need to do things in a different way, and then think about the 16,000 employee organisation where you need to tell all of them, "Hey, we need to do things in the different way, and not as we have done the last 20 years." And me being thrown into this, was it still engineering mindset, which is, "Okay, let's build an Excel table, and there's the time plan, and we keep the time plan whatever comes," which, obviously, didn't work. It was more about, how do we bring the right people onto the table, have a discussion, and filter out what is just people who are always against it and utilise the people that have a strong opinion, but have a valid point. And then bring them onto the table and discuss with them, and then look into the organisation how we can make this happen together. So, a lot of stakeholder engagement, that's something I have not done at that extent at all before, specifically in a field where I'm not the expert. I always led with expertise from an engineering perspective before, and, of course, like legal, I think I've still no clue about legal today. So, that was one of the moments where I really needed to step out and focus 100% on leadership engagement and empowerment rather than me being the expert and driving it through the expertise.
Jimmy: Such a moment that a lot of leaders really struggle with, right? There's the [laughter] I've made a career out of being the best at whatever it is that I I grew up doing, or I came up through my career doing, and suddenly, actually, I'm almost in the way if I try and be the expert, or I'm limiting the upside potential of what the team can achieve by being the expert, and it's time for me to lean on other experts, whether I am still the expert, or whether, actually, I'm well outside my area of expertise. And we see with those leaders who move into GM and above roles, is that often they may have a very niche area of expertise, but they don't necessarily have that wide expertise that requires them to then lean on those people around them. And it sounds like that was a a big moment for you and a big moment for many people.
Jens: Yeah, and th- the interesting part I I looking backwards now, I was successful because of that, because I was challenged to go out of my comfort zone where I was not the expert, because I'm also not the sustainability expert, I was not the innovation expert when I was Global Head of Innovation for for that business unit. So, I always needed to adapt and then bring team members together that are the expert in specific things and let them shine, and then step into the background just step into the forefront when the the the air gets a little bit tighter, and they needed to a little bit more support from a political perspective, but I think looking looking backwards, the success of my career was because of the leadership, not because of the expertise. And that's quite interesting, because a lot of people, like you said, come from the expertise, they double down on the expertise, and then they're stuck on a certain level of an organisation, which is not bad. It's more you will you will not be able to grow into a GM or executive role if you're not uh a leader or a little bit broader than your expertise.
Jimmy: And if we think about it from a game of numbers, if we're the only expert in the room, then we've only got one expert. If we're leaning on multiple experts around us who've got different perspectives and different ideas, then we've got lots of experts. It's kind of that like the L. David Marquet story in Turn the Ship Around!, where he said, "Well, it was me, and I'm pretty smart, or there's 134 smart people on this boat. Uh, that's probably a better option, right?" So, I think it's it's a it's a really great analogy. So, you had this illustrious, incredible career doing a whole variety of things in IKEA, but then you decided that you wanted to step out and do something else, and you focused on what I think is a fascinating term, the world of human innovation. So, tell us, first of all, what is human innovation? It sounds fascinating.
Jens: Yes, so human innovation is a combination of innovation, which is everything about processes, how do you set up an organisation to be able to innovate, and the other part is the leadership part, because what I have seen working the last five years inside of IKEA with innovation and customer experience topics was you can have the best process, you can have the best people, we have looked at hiring people from Apple, hiring people from Google, really innovative companies, but what we have as well seen, the constraints of the political system an organisation is in. So, if you if you innovate in an organisation which is built in business units and some organisations would say silos, it's very hard to innovate across, and that's needed if you want to truly innovate. Um, so, I was looking into what is limiting organisations on the innovation piece and found out more and more it's the leadership is the limiting factor, because you have always waves in organisations, especially the big ones, times where new energetic managers, C-suite jump in and want to change the world, drive a change towards a specific direction, use utilise a lot of innovative drive inside of the organisation, and then they're leaving after five, six years, and then new managers come in and start the whole game over again. If you're not building consistency throughout, then you end up developing something that's not utilised afterwards, because some of the innovation pieces, especially when you look into organisational innovation, that's long-term, and that's often not happening. So, I was looking into, how do you solve these challenges, and how do you build an ecosystem of innovation inside a big, large corporate? And, of course, that works as well with a start-up with five people, and that's the brilliant thing with human innovation. It's about leadership and innovation practices, and together, that's human innovation.
Jimmy: I'm resonating strongly with your idea of the reinventing the wheel strategy. They've got the centralise, decentralise, or, "Hey, let's reinvent that thing we did five years ago, but with a different twist on it." And you're right, you know, it chews up resources. [music] Hey there, Jimmy here, and I just wanted to drop in to this episode and let you know we're extremely grateful for all the incredible reviews and feedback that we're getting about The Ways of Working podcast. We've managed to get ourselves, amazingly, into the top 10% globally of all management podcasts, which is an absolute dream for me to be able to share The Ways of Working message across a wider community. I wanted to share a quick review from one of our listeners, because it's absolutely incredible and inspiring to those people that we're trying to reach and communicate with. From pinnacle coach, "Jimmy is a great natural interviewer and his background helps him to ask some really good questions. I've enjoyed a couple of the episodes from here, and always come away feeling inspired for my own work." Pinnacle coach, thank you so much for that incredible review, we really appreciate it, and if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe or follow on your favourite podcast platform of choice to The Ways of Working podcast, and we'll see you soon. Take care. [music]
So, how do you go about creating this sustainable wave of innovation culture versus what I would call initiative-driven innovation?
Jens: For me, it starts with the leadership approach, and that's also the model we have chosen to work with with clients. We work in an interim management setup, so it's not about, "Hey, we're a consultant, we come in and guide you a little bit to towards a certain direction." It's more about, "Okay, we come in, pull up our sleeves, and figure out how we do that." And we start always with the people. That's the number one thing is. One one of the things I have learned for myself and through my mentors over time, that is when you get into new management position, there are certain types of managers that kick out five people to get a direction, and bring their new team in. I'm the opposite. I take the time, and that's longer, it takes longer, sit down with all the different people inside of the organisation as much as you can, depending how big it is, and understand what's wrong, what's working, what's not working, and then there come the things like you said, "We have tested this five years ago, but there was something in the way." And then you try to understand what was in the way, and then you figure out, it was a leader who was blocking it, because it was a political political disagreement or unalignment between different members of the management team. And all of these things are often not discussed inside of of a corporate setting. That's just under the surface all the time. So, when you start with people, and not the process part, which a lot of people do, and it seems to work for for other consultants, but what I've seen is, then it works in the culture forming way. So, you take a team, you build them up, you help them to understand the direction. Normal leadership topics, build the vision, build the why, build an understanding where you want to go. But then as well empower them, and that's the biggest difference I've seen, depending on the company culture you work in. You empower them with responsibility, and give them the resources to execute and decide. And that sounds, when you are into leadership, that sounds very, very simple and basic, but it's very hard, specifically in very large, big organisation, because team members, or people in organisation get trained to de-risk everything, and don't take decisions. And that sounds counter-intuitive, but a lot of time, it's the manager takes the decision and the team members are not, in if you look at the extremes, and that's a limiting factor, and that's what you need to turn around, and that takes time.
Jimmy: So, what I'm hearing is there's a almost like a a human root cause analysis on [laughter] what's stopping us innovating, and then you're really actively finding yourself in the tension of, we want to be innovative, but we're really a ri- risk-averse as an organisation, and I know we've both worked with organisations that have a high compliance culture, or very low risk appetite. Yeah. How do you go about, if I'm a senior leader in an organisation listening to this and I'm thinking, "We are in that, we're a really risk-averse organisation, we have very tight constraints, but I want to be more innovative." What are some really practical conversations, or tools, or ways that I could start to initiate that shift to an innovation culture within the constraints that I have?
Jens: Yeah, if you're the initiator, then you need to understand the ecosystem where you are in. And that's a starting point, I often start with map out the ecosystem, and the ecosystem, in this case, are the humans. How far away are they from you? What are the different relationships between each other? And that's something I do straightaway when I start somewhere, and I map that out for myself, often just in in my head, to understand, if I talk to this person, will the other person hear from that? So, understanding this mechanisms in an organisation is the first step for you as the change driver. And then you need to start on both ends, which means you start on the working, pick a specific team of an organisation which you help to be better in this, and then focus on empowering them, helping them to understand that they can take decisions, that they can take risk, and you help them to go through this circles. And, on the other hand, you need to start with the executive level, as high as you can get of the organisation, and bring them together, give them the understanding how important it is to change the way of thinking when it comes to leadership. And that's the the leadership aspect is the most important thing, because if you're not the good example from the top, it's not going to work long-term. So, I would even go, if you get the chance, depending where you are in the organisation, go to the supervisory board and the chairman. If you get them on board for a really long-term perspective, that will be the biggest helpful thing, because they sign up in the direction, and I would focus on 10 years rather than one year. And that's also something a lot of specifically public organisations are not really doing today.
Jimmy: I think you've picked up on one of the real challenges there. We've We, as organisations, have become fixated on the quarterly result, or the end of year target, or and I think that's probably been driven by a desire to meet shareholder return, if we're a public company, or the the owner's expectations at the end of the year from a profit perspective, but what you're saying is innovation is a long game. And, it sounds almost contrary, right? Because innovation is something that happens fast and is about speeding things up, but I what I'm hearing is you're saying, if you want to be truly innovative, you've got to lay the groundwork first, and build momentum slowly, and get the right people on board.
Jens: Exactly, and start small. That's That's also the counter-intuitive things, because if you look at start-ups, why are start-ups successful in innovating on a daily basis? Because they work in a constrained environment. They work in a way that they don't have money, they can't throw money at the thing, they need to figure out, and they're putting things out there that are maybe just 20% good. Good enough to get out there and then learn through that, and that's, obviously, depending on your brand, depending on the company and what you do is not always possible. So, you need to find ways to develop the organisation or build an extra organisation on the side that you can do these things, and that's that's the tricky thing in, especially like you said, when the incentives are different where you need to deliver profit and shareholder value every three months.
Jimmy: So, what I'm hearing is, start small, play the long game, focus on the people, map the networks, and understand the dynamics, and and then be less ambitious to be actually more successful. That's what we're saying for for [laughter] fostering innovation. Is that right?
Jens: Yeah, that's at least the the the step-by-step approach, the easiest way to get started, because then it's it's truly long-term successful. Not saying that you can't innovate quickly, that's all possible, but if you want to have it long-term as well implemented, that that takes longer time.
Jimmy: And true innovation is is the game of the 1%, right? It's the It's the incremental I call it the difference between a firework and a glacier. The The firework is woo, and everybody is very excited, and then it just kind of fizzles out. The glacier changes the landscape over a period of time, and is almost picking up that much momentum that it's it's unstoppable. Exactly. And I'm also thinking back to, and I'll pop in the show notes, some of Ava Shivar's work around network analysis and understanding the different network dynamics that are in play, and I'm sure you've probably got familiarity with that as well.
Jens: Yeah.
Jimmy: Wonderful. So, in terms of the the work you're doing now, so you said that you've got a new company up and running, and the company is called Succeed, right?
Jens: Yes.
Jimmy: So, tell us a little bit more about that.
Jens: Like I said, one of the things is innovation, one of the things is leadership, and we're combining this, and through working with a lot of start-ups as well from the corporate side in corporate accelerators and so on, what I have seen is that they're missing the piece of leadership early on already, and there's not a real system which helps them to learn leadership on the fly, like I always say, because you're a start-up, you work with five people and then you get a little bit of money and you grow to 10 people, to 20 people, to 50 people if you are lucky, and all of this in a very short amount of time, and you have never had a leadership course, you don't know about coaching, you have zero idea, you're maybe extremely good at programming computers or whatever you're doing, and the leadership part is not not really part of that. And we we are looking into how can we build something that's affordable for the people that go from zero to first base to get into the leadership game, because what I truly believe is, if we get people that are starting businesses early on in the true leadership, as I call it, game, understanding how important people and the human resources of an organisations are, they build different cultures and through the different cultures, they will be different companies, which will be in the long run more successful. That's That's something we want to build out and it's a 100% digital platform, and super early, like you said, um we're testing a lot of things.
Jimmy: So fascinating, and um for those listeners who are interested in that sort of move into management, check out the episode with Eric Girard uh a couple of episodes back, but I think it's really important, as you're saying, that we help those organisations that maybe don't have the budget or the ability to create a large-scale leadership programme by almost bringing leadership to the masses, and let's face it, there is no bad option for developing people as leaders, right? So, you're you're essentially saying, let's make leadership accessible to everyone to create commercial success and innovation in organisations. That was your That was your driving force, right?
Jens: Yes, exactly. Starting as early as possible. I would I I would love to to test something where we start in childhood, but that's maybe a little bit too early right now. [laughter]
Jimmy: Do you know it makes me think back to when I was a kid, I got the opportunity to be an army cadet, which was would essentially basically leadership training for for young kids, so I'm sure you could probably find a a progressive academic organisation that would be interested in that. Jens, this so fascinating and we could talk for hours, and I'm sure people are going to have more questions of you. If people want to get in touch, if they're interested to learn a little bit more about human innovation and how they might make that work in their organisations, what's the best way to reach out?
Jens: I'm everywhere on social media, but I guess the easiest way is go to JensHeitland.com and there you see all the different connection points, my podcast, which is Human Innovation, and yeah, everything I do is somehow present on that website.
Jimmy: Fantastic. And we'll pop that link in the show notes for people to just scroll down and click through to connect with you. Final question, Jens, from me, and it's one I ask everybody now, is what's something you wish you had done, but never got around to doing?
Jens: It's It's a very difficult question. One of the things um I was thinking when wh- when you prompted me that this question will come was sales. [laughter] I wish I would have started with sales and really going the the deep route of learning how sales work from a door-to-door aspect. Because it's it's also, I I would call it also, a leadership educational element where you need to step over your fear of getting rejected and all these things. So, I've never had the chance to do that, and I still struggle with with the sales aspect of the business in a in a true sales way of thinking, at least. I I'm I'm now developing different ways of getting around that, and it's also the sales landscape is changing, but that's definitely something I would have loved to to test, go just door-to-door and try to sell something.
Jimmy: It's like a I think it's a baptism of fire, isn't it, when you have to try and I did telesales as a as a young man, and and I think it's similar, you trying to knock on doors and sell something over the phone. Very interesting [laughter] experience. What a fascinating answer. I'm so thrilled that you shared that with us. Jens, um what a joy to have you on The Ways of Working podcast. Thank you so much for joining us, and really appreciate the insights around the world of your time in IKEA, human innovation, and the future of leadership development. Really appreciate your time.
Jens: Thank you for having me.
Jimmy: [music] That's it for this week's episode of The Ways of Working podcast. If you enjoyed the conversation here, why not head over to jimmy-burroughes.com/book and grab chapter one of our amazing upcoming book, Beat Burnout - Ignite Performance. It's the leader's playbook for building a high performance culture. So, if you're looking for practical tips and to understand why people in your team or yourself are burning out, and what to do about it, so you can all keep working and perform better, this is the place for you. Go to jimmy-burroughes.com/book and grab that first chapter. We'll also keep you posted when the full book is released very soon. Also, if you enjoyed this episode of The Ways of Working podcast, don't forget to follow or subscribe on your preferred podcast platform of choice, and we'll make sure that you get all of the upcoming episodes as they come out every single week. Take care, speak soon. [music]