When faced with a challenge, smart education leaders can find creative solutions to problems. Being innovative involves understanding all the resources at your disposal, adapting by applying your collective experiences, bending the rules from time to time, and never being afraid to take a chance.

Innovation, a rare education leadership skill

Innovativeness is one of those education leadership skills that can’t be taught in a college course. It has to come to you naturally or be birthed in the fire of a defining moment. It is in our defining moments that we find out how resourceful and strategic we can be. We find out who we truly are and what we are made of. Our character, good or bad, comes to the forefront. There is something about having your back to the wall that brings out our hidden talents and skills. As the old adage goes, necessity is the mother of all inventions.

I was listening to an interview that someone was doing with Elon Musk that I found especially interesting. He said that once he starts a new venture, he gives himself a minimum amount of capital to start with. Just enough to provide the company with the essentials. Even though he has billions of dollars, he wouldn’t dare tap into it to help fund a new venture.

Why? Because there is something about having to figure things out with limited resources, and building something from scratch, that brings out the innovation and resourcefulness in us. The pressure from this practice is how Elon Musk was able to build from scratch and then sell PayPal.

Also, keep in mind that innovation requires a good amount of experimentation and risk. Because of this, you want to test the viability of innovation before committing resources to it. This allows you to learn from your mistakes, as it may take several iterations or prototypes before you perfect your innovation.

A little homework

Over the next several months, commit to developing an innovative product, tool, initiative, or product for your school or district. Go through the entire innovation cycle, seeing your innovation through to fruition. What did you learn during this process? How did the final project turn out? I suspect that the responses will be a mixed bag, as attempts at innovation do not always bear fruit. However, your attempts at innovation will never end in failure, as you can use your experiences to help you during your next attempt.