What does it take to be an innovator?
The Financial Services Institute offered a keynote speaker Monday at its OneVoice conference in New Orleans to address that very topic. Speaker Jay Shetty lived as a monk for three years and subsequently launched philanthropic ventures, advised corporations and launched a video channel that now has more than 10 million followers. Arianna Huffington brought him to New York to host a show on HuffPostLive that became the Huffington Post’s No. 1 Facebook Live show for audience engagement.
At OneVoice, Shetty began by discussing a Harvard study of 3,000 top executives who had made significant changes in their industries. The executives were asked what their no. 1 skill was for being a leader, and a pattern emerged among them. The top skill? Being a “connected thinker.”
“What they meant by that, was this ability … to find associations between seemingly opposite things. The ability to find connection where other people saw polarity. The ability to spot patterns when other people only saw anomalies,” Shetty said.
There are four mindsets that a connected thinker uses, said Shetty. One is a community mindset: She has a broad network of people with whom she consults. The individuals in the network usually are not connected to each other and hold varying views of the world.
In contrast, most people surround themselves with others who confirm their biases. “We ruin our chances for innovation because we surround ourselves with people who think exactly the same,” Shetty told advisors in the audience. “That has great human benefit when it comes to picking a movie or spending a weekend abroad. But when it comes to innovation, when it comes to curiosity, making an impact, being successful in business, it’s actually a terrible trait.”
Apple founder Steve Jobs is an example of a person who was able to find associations in opposite things, said Shetty, such as when Jobs saw calligraphy as a tool to use in designing computers. In 2009, when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg consulted Jobs on a direction for Facebook, Jobs told him he should go to India and live in a monastery for a month to find personal silence and peace to get his answer, Shetty said. Zuckerberg did live in a monastery and found the direction he wanted to take.
“Meaning the answers for tech don’t always come from tech. The answers for finance don’t always come from finance,” he said. “When we are absorbed in a specific area, it’s actually very difficult to bring new inspiration, fresh eyes to that.”
An innovator also needs a coach mindset, says Shetty. He needs to recognize his innovation style and be able to help others around him make the most of their own styles. People usually have one of these styles:
• Outgoing and task-focused. They are directors and doers. They are demanding, and can even be dictator-like. They like plans and schedules.