katherine.william-powlett's blog

I have seen a lot of blog posts lately with titles such as 'The 20 Top Leadership Traits'. It reminds me of magazines at Christmas emblazoned with ‘300 ideas for an easy Christmas’. So I thought it would be simpler to identify the one thing a leader for innovation cannot do without: it’s curiosity.

Curiosity is the key to all things innovative. We have known this for a long time. In Ecclesiastes it says ‘Be curious in unnecessary matters for more things will be revealed to thee than men understand'.  Let me explain why I think curiosity is so important.

A friend of mine was on a Gondola lift travelling up to the top of a mountain. The only other people in the lift were three ladies who were strangers to him. All the way up they had an animated conversation in Hebrew about the most intimate details of their lives. As he left he said ‘Shalom’, being a Hebrew speaker himself. They had of course assumed he could not understand them. Embarrassing but not disastrous.  But sometimes mistaken assumptions can hamper your ability to try new things, solve problems, or achieve better fundraising results.

Do your meetings resemble this Dilbert Cartoon Strip?

In my last post - 'The Innovative Board- An Oxymoron' I suggested that when leading for innovation a board should first look to itself and be sure that its manner of working stimulates creativity and allows innovation. Why should they do this?

A key theme of this year’s Trustee Conference is ‘innovation’.   Is innovation what you need? Some boards decide that they want the charity to stick at doing what it does best and not take any risks with anything new. This head in the sand attitude might work for a while, but in a changing and competitive world, most organisations need to think about some strategic innovations: innovations that help them better meet their purpose and better serve their beneficiaries. 

Can Corporate Social Responsibility be taken to a new level beyond employee volunteering and leadership development: is it possible for businesses to innovate with charities for mutual benefit, creating new products and services?

Are you in search of new ideas?  Do you have some funds to spare? Have you thought of a challenge prize?

I have just returned from my family holiday where I was chased by zombies; hunted for hidden vials; and discovered that a fence is not a fence, it is a tight rope. It got me thinking about the trend for turning your urban environment into a playground; so it was pretty depressing to come home and discover a minority of youth with different ideas on how to treat their city. Let me explain...

Tim Harford has been doing an engaging tour promoting his new book,  Adapt: Why success always starts with failure.  This was of particular interest to me after the NCVO Fail Slam earlier this year. In Waterstones this Sunday Tim talked about the need for trying lots of things and allowing to fail in small ways in order to have bigger successes later, much as I have discussed in earlier blogs on prototyping.  But what really caught my ear was that none of this is any use if you don't know you have failed. How do we know if we have failed?

It sounds obvious doesn't it? My sons have recently been doing public exams and one of my key pieces of (unwanted) advice was 'Always read the question and answer what they are asking, not what you think they are asking'.  It is drilled into us when we are at school so why is it so hard to be sure we are answering the right question when we are innovating?

The most commonly cited barrier to innovation is lack of time. Everyone knows it, but few have the answer on how to carve out that time. One rather trite suggestion I read was ‘Regularly review employees’ workload and ensure they have enough time to innovate’ which doesn’t really cut it. So how do you make time for new ideas?