How middle leaders can help to avoid 'Zombie Innovation'

​How many change projects or innovations have you seen start with great enthusiasm, but end going nowhere?

Phil Wood’s very recognisable ‘Zombie Innovation” made me laugh out loud. You see it so often.

This is another area where middle leaders have huge impact. They keep the communication channels open so that those on the frontline know what senior managers want, then feedback up from the frontline to the executives.

Workers at every level are continuously informed. Monitoring and evaluation become straightforward because the data is there.

Middle leaders know the language of the C-Suite and the ground floor. This is a powerful tool.

Although not easy, and obviously built on trust in all directions, it is part of a middle leader’s role to make things happen by being the ones driving performance.

 

 

Phil Wood. Overcoming the problem of embedding change in educational organizations: A perspective from Normalization Process Theory.
 

Management in Education 2017, Vol. 31(1) 33–38  2017 British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS) Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk