According to descriptions across the internet landscape, innovation is typically defined as the process of bringing about new ideas, methods, products, services, or solutions that have a significant positive impact and value; challenging the status quo, thinking outside the box.
Quite simply, I call it twisting the familiar.
And every day, in many different ways, people at all levels of the event and hospitality industry are introducing some forms of macro or micro innovations, whether by design or by necessity. Some are pre-planned; some are by the seat of our pants due to the necessity of the moment.
Innovation sounds exhilarating to some people, yet to others it can sound downright scary. Why? Because it involves change, and that can send a message of danger to our brains. We are wired with an anchoring bias—our brains tend to like to hold on to what we know and what is familiar.
The trick is to get our brain to re-wire itself in light of new information, to feel OK to let go in order to gain something more. That is where leaders come in. As I wrote in my new book, Twist the Familiar, it’s a paramount leadership talent to help people re-wire their thinking in order for them to want to move forward and innovate.
Innovation involves an element of risk-reward
Let’s examine how two huge world-renowned icons took very different paths to innovation, and how it all ties into this industry.
Some innovation is self-initiated. We actually go looking for ways to evolve, grow and accept the risk-reward aspect. We voluntarily take the leap and let go of something familiar for the chance of a greater gain or better result.
The Beatles did that. They took the world by storm in the mid-60s and gained millions of fans across the globe via their groundbreaking music, giving birth to Beatlemania. But they didn’t stop with their early style of pop music, even though it was changing the face of culture and making them a fortune. They voluntarily pushed themselves as recording artists. They weren’t satisfied to just be singing yeah, yeah, yeah.
Rather than stagnate, they preferred to evolve and take rock ‘n’ roll even further. They pushed themselves with new sounds, deeper lyrics and edgier music. They let go of their original (albeit great) early tunes and introduced new sounds and techniques in the recording studio, music no one had ever heard before. No other band forced the Beatles to evolve—it was self-induced. The Beatles became the band that so many others tried to emulate—and still do—more than 50 years after their breakup.
Was their reward worth the risk? Well, to quote them again, yeah, yeah, yeah! Not only did the Fab Four create a whole new musical genre, they exponentially grew their fan base and cultural influence. The Beatles grew up and they took their fans with them. They are still the best-selling recording artists of all time.
Necessity is the mother of invention
Of course, we can’t always be like the Beatles. Often, our innovation comes to us as a matter of necessity, not choice. For example, we can often do amazing things when faced with dire risk-reward situations—in both life and business. If you’ve survived a calamity or in the moment crisis, you know this.
Let’s look at what happened with Coca-Cola during the first years of the pandemic.
The biggest risk was riding that pandemic moment of the lockdowns in the second quarter of 2020, CEO James Quincey said.
He challenged his executive team, knowing that taking bold risks was needed in order to keep the company strong into the future.
Subsequently, Quincey and Coca-Cola made the eye-opening decision to drop one-half of its product portfolio. Yup, 50% of Coca-Cola’s product lines were lopped off the shelves. They were forced into such a move based on the economic realities of the pandemic.
The beverage giant pulled this off because it wasn’t so afraid of change that it froze in place. The leadership embraced innovation to aggressively streamline their ways of doing business. Did it pay off? According to BrandFinance, Coca-Cola is still the most consumed soda in the world, with a staggering 1.9 billion servings each day.
The event industry has been moving forward, too
As with Coca-Cola, the pandemic greatly sped up the innovation process in the event industry, too. Some things were tossed, and others were discovered. The well-worn adage of evolve or die is ingrained in the fabric of the event and hospitality industry. Just think of how many organizations in this business have gone the way of the dodo bird because they did not innovate.
The fact is that we’re either getting better or we’re getting worse—there is no standing still.
Put your sales hat on to help others see innovation’s benefits
How do we give innovation the best oxygen to get started and create momentum? Well, keep this in mind: no one’s idea of what is right is everyone’s idea of what is right. To start your journey to innovate, find allies and advocates to support you. You will also likely encounter people who want to see this fail. They will root against you and your change agents as they fear change and the abyss of the unknown. Work to engage those people in order to help them feel a part of it; explain the benefits—show what it means in real terms for them. This will help to diffuse their anxiety. The recommendation here is to build this from the bottom up, and you’ll find support will be greater than from a top-down edict.
There is no denying that a dose of sales skills will help you enable people to see that what you are proposing is not a fire-breathing dragon after all. Help people see the WII-FM (what’s in it for me?), and your pathway to innovation will be smoother. As Coke’s James Quincey said, Risk-taking and innovation is not to let the fear of what you’re going to lose obscure the possibilities of what you might gain.
‘Improvise, adapt, and overcome’
Whether a planner or a supplier in the events business, the above phrase, popularized by Clint Eastwood in the film Heartbreak Ridge and associated with the U.S. Marine Corps, seems to be in the event industry DNA.
Indeed, we pride ourselves in being resilient in our work, figuring out confusing RFPs, untangling messes, overcoming when shift happens and pulling rabbits out of our hats. We should be looking for opportunities all around us (not just in technology) to innovate even the smallest things, such as better ways of doing our day-to–day business. Innovation should ultimately make us easier to do business with.
Plan your work, and then work your plan
As you think about innovation in your own role or organization, try framing a risk-reward/plus-minus equation. Here are some questions to help you get started and build your playbook for innovation success.
Why are we doing this—what do we hope to accomplish?
What will I (we) be giving up or leaving behind?
What will I (we) be gaining by pursuing this innovation?
What resources, alliance partners, monies, will I (we) need?
What growing pains will this pursuit of innovation/change present?
How will we measure our results/KPIs and determine whether we accomplished our goal and if this move is a success?
In summation, look for opportunities to create what I refer to as voluntary innovation like The Beatles did, by being future-focused, intentionally planning on calculated risk-reward initiatives down the road. And also be ready to make the most out of in the moment innovations, those sudden shift-happens incidents, sometimes born of crisis or accidents, that necessitate quick-thinking and immediate action, such as Coca-Cola experienced. And don’t lose faith in the process. Innovation is often trial-and-error. As Beatle John Lennon allegedly said, Everything will be OK in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
Gary R. HernbrothChief Motivating Officer – Training for Winners+1 925 736 9392Training for Winners
