Connecting the dots with Elvin Turner: Strategy, Innovation, and Delivery

In a recent discussion with edison365 CEO Ivan Llyod, Innovation strategist and ‘Be Less Zombie’ author Elvin Turner shared several powerful lessons to truly drive organizational innovation.

What unfolded was a deep dive into the importance of connecting the right dots to unleash great ideas, from strategy to innovation, and delivery.

Innovation Starts with a Choice ✅

For many organizations, innovation isn’t deliberate. It floats around the office like an opportunity that might arrive when the time’s right. But the gap lies not in having great ideas, but the system organizations build around those ideas.

Ultimately, innovation happens best when strategy, process, and delivery are brought together in end-to-end fashion.

“The great innovators make a choice to innovate. They don’t hope to squeeze it in around the edges.”

Leaders must create an environment that allows innovation to take root. Everything from the infrastructure to expectations must be right.

But that’s not all. One of the biggest barriers most organizations fail to address is time, according to Elvin.

The Time Problem ⌛

Let’s get one thing straight, most people are already operating at 120% in their day-to-day roles. This leaves innovation to become a second-rate job.

And without dedicated time and protected capacity, innovation often leads teams to burnout, not progress.

“If we don’t create dedicated time and capacity, innovation becomes a second job done at night. That’s not sustainable.”

Take Google for example, their innovation model allows employees to focus 20% of their time on personal projects, which has led to some revolutionary ideas!

Elvin’s advice is simple: apply innovation thinking to creating time. Redesign roles, reduce bureaucracy, and challenge the work that offers little value.

Connecting the Dots ⭕

Siloed work creates the biggest friction with innovation, when strategy, innovation, project delivery, and benefit realization all live in different places.

Projects struggle to scale, benefits are lost, and leadership lack the right visibility to see ideas implemented successfully.

Ivan highlights that without accountability, the path to transformation becomes blurred from one team to the next.

The solution? Joining the dots! Leadership must build robust touchpoints from idea to experimentation, and delivery to value.

“You can’t come up with great ideas, throw an MVP into the market, and then hope it scales when none of the back-end processes exist.”

Magic Metrics That Matter 🪄

During the conversation between Ivan and Elvin, the idea of “magic metrics” is introduced as a way for organizations to encourage innovative alignment.

“I love the idea of magic metrics — measures that snap the whole system into alignment.”

The idea here is to create healthy pressure amongst organizations that pulls them into new ideas, making innovation unavoidable.

“3M has a rule: around 20–30% of your revenue should come from products that didn’t exist four years ago.”

The purpose behind 3M’s model is simple:

• It actively pushes ongoing innovation.
• It connects innovation directly with revenue.
• Ensures innovation is a necessity, not cosmetic.
• Leaders can’t hit targets without investing in new ideas.

Helping Leaders Understand Innovation 🔎

Most executives simply aren’t equipped for large-scale innovation, where incremental improvements have been the focus of their work.

This lack of experience and know-how often leads to misinterpretation about risks, time horizons and failure rates.

It’s important organizations support leaders in developing the right skillsets and expertise to nurture and navigate innovation in full force.

Elvin suggests innovation maturity assessments as a means to educate leaders without lecturing them, i.e. mapping out capabilities, gaps, and investment needs.

“Sometimes you have to become an educator for your own executive team — helping them understand what it really takes to innovate well.”

The Role of AI for Innovators 🤖

AI has radically changed how we work. From project management to idea validation, artificial intelligence can automate low-value work and accelerate experimentation.

This helps to free up maybe 30%-40% of people’s time, allowing them to focus on value-driven work that steers change and transformation.

However, some organization may be tempted to reduce headcount instead of reinvesting newfound capacity in imagination, creativity and innovation.

Elvin Turner warns that cutting teams is simply a missed opportunity. The winners are those who use AI to expand on their innovation capability!

“Do we cut teams, or do we finally give people space to do true innovation work? That choice will separate the winners from the rest.”

Innovation As a System, not a Function 💡

Ultimately, innovation succeeds when strategy, culture, leadership, time, metrics, and delivery are aligned. That’s where end-to-end transformation happens!

This is one of the biggest takeaways from our Transformation Talks episode with Elvin Turner. The future belongs to organizations that are deliberate with innovation.

“The future is coming anyway. The organisations that design for innovation will stay ahead.”

Not those that shy away from change and leverage new technologies like artificial intelligence to cut costs and save cash.

Now, more than ever, companies should look to innovate daringly. The tools and opportunities are abundant, and the choice is simple…

Connect the systems or fall behind!

“Innovation is the pursuit of relevance. And we’re always running out of relevance.”

A huge thank you to Elvin Turner, an award-winning advisor to corporations, startups, and government bodies around the world. Elvin is not only a #1 Best Seller with his book ‘Be Less Zombie’, but also delivers valuable keynotes, webinars, workshops and more on entrepreneurship, innovation, and digital transformation.