243. Start Building a Culture of Innovation Now feat. Jeff Gardner, author of Love Your People

A culture of innovation that is tied into your vision and team goals will drive success throughout the organization.

About “Love Your People” by Jeff Gardner
Love over fear is the key to exceptional leadership. 'Love Your People' shatters conventional wisdom by advocating for a love-based approach that sparks unparalleled organizational success. Through gripping narratives, bold insights, and disruptive guidance, this manifesto redefines love as a strategic weapon, unleashing innovation, autonomy, and transparency. It challenges fear-driven leadership paradigms, igniting empowerment and championing personal growth and collaboration.  

Pick up your copy of Love Your People – An Entrepreneurial Leadership System at Amazon

About AVL Growth Partners
AVL Growth Partners, founded in 2009, is the leading fractional Finance and Accounting firm supporting organizations in pivoting from growth to scale. AVL brings an experienced team of CFOs, Controllers, and Accountants to your organization, delivering transparent, strategic actions for short and long-term success. Transform your financial approach affordably with AVL, supporting companies coast to coast - get to know AVL Growth Partners at avlgrowth.com. (Sponsored)

About SpringTime Ventures
SpringTime Ventures seeds high-growth startups in healthcare, fintech & insurtech, and logistics & supply chain. We look for founders with domain expertise, forging a path with a truly transformative technology. We only invest in software-based businesses in the USA. We bring a people-focused approach, work quickly, and reach conviction independently. Our initial check size is $600k. You can learn more about us and our approach.  

Transcript

Jeff Gardner: 0:01

As a early stage company, whether you're pre seed or seed, it is critical that you build an innovation culture within your business. And it starts with the very top of the organization. If you create these environments in these situations where you're constantly innovating and testing, it builds that DNA. These innovations shouldn't be random innovations There's a time and a place where, you have enough profitability where you can do these hackathons and these innovation things that are just random that may be less focused. We are very clear when we set up what we're going to innovate on that it, fits into where we're taking the company and our vision for the company and our focus areas. It just can't be a new idea. It's got to create some kind of value. And that value is something that a customer will buy, or it's an innovation that's internal and can reduce your cost, increase your gross margins, make the business better. There's a lot of different ways that you can do that. One of the best ways that I like is methodology that Google Ventures wrote about called Sprint. And the idea, this is not your typical two week sprints from a engineering development standpoint, but it's product sprint. What it does is you build throughout the week. For example, we want to launch a new mobile app for our customers. And so on Monday, we define the problem. Why are we building this new mobile app? Why do we have to put it out there? And then you do your research and your studies through the week, and you build prototypes for what the new mobile app would be, and then by Friday, you're actually bringing real customers in, and you're having them assess, through your Figma or some kind of prototyping tool, what it's like to engage on this new mobile app. We try to do this quarterly. So every quarter we want to make sure we have a major innovation. We build this DNA process within the organization, so we're constantly building and evolving. When you have a culture like that, you're going to attract the best people. You're going to continue to develop new revenue streams or add on and create more value for your customers. And you just build a stronger business throughout.