Role of Leaders in Bringing Creativity and

Innovation to the Institutions

V.Thanikachalam, Ph.D

Who is an Innovative Leader ?

Innovative Leadership

• Steering the Ship• Steering the Institutional activities• Guiding the faculty towards planning and

achievement of vision and mission

- Napolian

Troops can’t be managed into battle, but they have to be led.

Who are innovative leaders ?

• Bureaucrats ?• Task masters?

Innovative Leaders

• Passionate leaders• Should chop through

bureaucratic ice bergs created by the bureaucrats• Should courageously charting

a new course

What is bureaucracy ?

• Active management?• Brining dynamic changes?• Accepts initiative ?

Bureaucracy • Substituted leadership with a form of

passive management• Satisfied with maintaining the status

quo• Locked in inertia• Rigidity, structure, and position have

replaced initiative to do what is right.

Who is an innovative leader ?

• Vision ?• Trust ?• Risk taker ?• Teacher ?• Mentor ?

Traits of an Innovative Leaders

• Have a mission• Create a vision through participation• Trust his/her faculty members• Keep his/her head in a crisis• Encourage risk taking• Expert• Knows what is essential• Listens to the faculty• Teacher and mentor

Passionate Leadership

• Innovative leaders span a narrow gap between two key areas:- Passion for action, and- Passion for faculty

• A bold orientation for action matched with compassion for faculty creates an emotional energy transforming bureaucracies into innovative and energetic enterprises.

Passion for Action

• Focus on performance• Focus on mission accomplishment• Facilitate positive change.

Action – Oriented Leader

• See the opportunities that change brings

• Make change happen even though it gives against established rules, regulations and protocol.

Leader’s Actions

• Must focus on removing barriers and obstacles.

• Restrictive rules and regulations become barriers.

• Barriers prevent faculty from doing what is right.

• Many rules and regulations become obsolete and out dated but never seem to go away.

Passion for Faculty

• General William Livsely once said: “You can assign a man to a leadership position but no one will ever really be a leader until his appointment is ratified in the hearts and minds of his/ her faculty”.

Leadership

• Is learned.• Is not based on titles, position or rank.• The business that neglects its faculty

and treats them solely as expendable resources stands to incur a great loss.

A Faculty Oriented Leader • Understands how, why, and what

motivates faculty at work.

Bob Moawab, CEO of the Edge Learning Institute Said

• “Most organizations help people become better employees.

• The best organizations help employees to become better people”.

Dr. Edwards Deming said

• “The aim of leadership is not merely to find and record failures of men,

• But to remove the causes of failures: to help people to do a better job with less effort”.

The Leadership Beautitudes

• Be bold and challenge status quo.• Be a risk taker.• Be authentic and approachable.• Be a role model.• Be out and about.• Be a courageous person.• Be inspirational.

Barriers to Innovation and Creativity

• Regulations are for the wise men to follow wisely and for fools to follow blindly.

- B.G. James Turner.

Creation of Barriers

• Organizations have unintentionally created many barriers and obstacles to innovation and creativity.

Priority for Educational Leaders

• All educational leaders must take deliberate actions to remove these barriers and obstacles.

• Put continuous effort, endurance, and courageous action on the part of the leader.

Resistance to Change

• Many institutions encounter resistance to change and new ideas.

• Resistance to change is often a self protecting mechanism.

• Over the years bureaucratic rules have been put in place to protect jobs and functions that are no longer essential.

Resistance to Change • Some barriers were created because

someone made a mistake twenty years ago.

• There is a rule affecting every one.• The cumulative effect eats up valuable

resources, robs pride of ownership and initiative.

• Prevents people from doing what is right.• It becomes non-stop warfare.

What are Barriers?

• Are actual or perceived hindrances or inhibitors to change.

• Severely limit or prohibit progress.• Must be eliminated or minimized to

move forward.

Removing Barriers • Remove barriers that rob faculty of

ownership.• Remove barrier that keep faculty from

reaching their high potential.• Remove barriers that inhibit trust.• Remove barriers that prevent

exceptional customer / student service.• Remove barriers that prevent faculty

from doing the right things.

The Secret of Success

• The secret of success is “no secret”.• By removing barriers and obstacles

impacting on the frontline, success becomes much more obtainable.

Vampire Functions: Doing Wrong Things Right

• Functions that do not add value• Vampire functions are processes, work

functions and tasks that fail to add value to the education.

• Consume precious resources and have little positive influence on any thing.

Vampire Functions…

• Traditional organizations / institutions expend any where from 20 to 40 percent of their time, effort and resources doing unnecessary or duplicated work.

• There are entire departments performing functions that are no longer adding value and are no longer needed.

Innovations

• Simply means deciding what the institution should eliminate, streamline, or just quit doing all together.

Albert Einstein Said

“The important thing is not to stop questioning”.

Questioning

• Is that report we have filled out for fifty years still necessary?

• Do all these policies and procedures still make sense?

• Continually question what you are doing and what your institution is doing?

• Regularly question the procedures and approaches.

• Think innovation.

Sample Vampire Functions

• Unnecessary reports and administrative requirements.

• Administrative costs and overhead.• Waste and rework.• Steps and tasks not adding value to the

process.• Doing too many audits and inspections.

Sample Vampire Functions…

• Doing the wrong things right.• Too many unnecessary meetings.• Too many people attend the meetings.• Counting things that don’t need counting.• Unnecessary forms and paper work to fill

out.• Overly restrictive rules and regulations.• Over planning for every event.

Eliminating Vampire Functions Improves

• Productivity• Effectiveness• The bottom line (Funds through

internal revenue generation)• Timely response to customers / clients

and students).

Doing the Right Things Right Improves

• Morale of the faculty and the technical support staff.

• Customer / client / participants satisfaction.

• Respect and caring within the workforce.

• Positive attitudes toward management.

Vladimir Kabirt (USSR) Said

“I can’t stand the proliferation of paper work. It’s useless to fight the forms. You’ve go to kill the people producing them”.

B.G. James Turner (American Air Force, 482nd Fighter Wing of US

Army) said

• Regulations are for wise men to follow wisely and for fools to follow blindly.

The Foundation for Innovation Trust Building

• Building trust between faculty and administration is another important element in building the innovative enterprise.

DO

• Lookout for faculty and staff and their best interests.

• Treat faculty and staff with dignity.• Show confidence in their ability.• Listen carefully to what faculty are

saying.• Deliver on the promises you make.

DO…

• Be authentic and share yourself openly.

• Feel free to admit your own mistakes!• Include other faculty members in

decision-making processes.• Always tell the truth.

DON’T

• Jump to conclusions before you have the facts.

• Blame faculty for problems they have no control over.

• Hold back information, including bad news.

• Avoid taking responsibility.

DON’T…

• Feel like you have to have all the answers.

• Make excuses when it doesn’t work the way you wanted.

• Be a perfectionist.

Providing Direction:Mechanics of a Culture Shift

• A powerful vision of the future.• Widespread communication of vision.• Responsibility and accountability.• Management must be seen as something

value-added.• Some faculty may leave.• Takes a lot of time.• Training / Training / Training.

Imagination to Reality

• Developing a vision for the institution.• Vision should align faculty’s dreams with

the mission of the institution.• Vision should be challenging.• Vision should be shared.• Vision should unify.• Vision should point to the path of growth

Be a Creative Leader

Your Questions, Please ?

(vthani2025@gmail.com)

THANK YOU!