The Art of Maneuver

When the time comes for you to leave an organization, don't count on the next person owning your ideas and initiatives the way you did. Don't count on them at all - the bureaucracy doesn't rise to the occasion to replace you well. Designate a natural stopping point while you're in the seat. 

So what should you look for? Look to naturally culminate components of what you've created by the time you leave. You have built tools and a brand that they can use in their own way. If you want them to be impactful, you need them to be agile for the way the next person wants to use them - not scripted for them. Use your success to enable the next person to be a founder.

Don't let the bureaucracy over-invest in you. The bureaucracy will want to kill you. Think of Sun Tzu and the Art of War. Don’t let your adversary know you are it's adversary. Don’t skyline yourself as an innovator, or the bureaucracy will train its eyes on you to defeat you. Practically, it also puts too much pressure on the innovator if you are skylined too early. Innovation is about iterative design. Don’t force yourself as the innovator to defend yourself during the iterative process. Wait until your solution is too good to ignore. 

Don’t build programs, find innovators and disruptors. Invest in them. You can manufacture them. You identify them. Pour the support you would have had for the founderless innovation office, into the next disruptor. 

“Innovation” offices cannot survive beyond the founders, they simply become part of the bureaucracy at that point. Think of Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. He only invests in companies that still have their founder. His philosophy is that once a Founder is gone, they never truly innovate again. They might maintain market share and come out with interesting products, but they won’t come up with a revolutionary product. 

Once an exciting new innovation program is handed off from its founder, you can't expect the new leaders to truly own and lead the program. It’s not human nature to inherit something and truly make it one's own. Innovation is meant to disrupt the bureaucracy, but these offices that remain simply bloat the bureaucracy over time.

Don't try to be something other than what you are. Don’t listen to that voice. It's distracting you from being you. You will be a horrible version of someone else. You're an incredible version of you. If you are truly you, if you embrace your skills, your authenticity and fully own that - you will bring the best version of yourself, and no one can compete with that. It's your competitive advantage. Build a world around your strengths. People will respond to that - because it's real, and people crave real. 

An innovator must be a wolf, bucking the security of the system. A wolf must be a risk taker. A dog has chosen the security of an owner. It will never understand or embrace the actions of a wolf. Don’t waste your time.

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” - Maya Angelou. 

You must be able to read people. If they show indicators that they are a bureaucrat, never build a plan that requires them to be innovative, or even just flexible. Listen to your intuition. If that means you must walk away from an opportunity, then do so. Don’t toil endlessly “hoping” they will see the light. There are other opportunities that deserve your attention and time. Remember, prescriptive paths lead to bogs in the bureaucratic swamp.

People are what they are, especially in a bureaucracy. Don’t expect them to change. When you have an opportunity, but you need a person in a critical position to do something to make it happen, you must take stock of them. Are they the type to go on a limb? Is it the environment for them to do so? You can usually tell right away. A Colonel that is retiring within a year, is no longer trying to make his mark on the institution. He may see great merit in your cause and has a desire to help, but you can see from your first interaction whether he has enough self interest in the project for him to step up to that cause. Typically it’s no, despite his best intentions. Don’t build programs or projects that rely on people to fight their own human nature.

Head nods from your audience prove you connected with them over a shared belief, value, or knowledge. Storytelling is all about connecting with your audience. Audience head nods are like the person at Disney Land that boarded a roller coaster. Your story is the roller coaster, their head nod is them sitting on the ride. Now take them on an enjoyable ride of discovery.

We are educated on facts without context. Your brain can't process disconnected facts, it needs a story arc. Don't let decision or meetings be governed by diving in to standalone facts. Storytelling is leadership, because you're creating structure, and giving people a foothold on their place within the structure and the vision. Your audience is only there if you bring them there.