Innovation Means Risk

The decisions that leaders take, frankly, right now, right, what I take, will decide whether we are successful or not. It'll actually decide even something that is deeper. It will decide whether the people who we are sent to do these things, not only are they successful at this job, but at the next job, their leader believed that they were capable and back them up or he or she in my case, he pulled the rug from under their feet when they were right about to launch. So I think we as leaders do this too often.

Sometimes we fail to step back and let others lead.

And we fail to, frankly, trust the people who we should have. So that's sort of where I think and that's one of the biggest things when it comes to innovation. The other, I'm a big fan of Skunkworks. Right. Which came out of Lockheed many, many years back. When you're running an organization of our size, you almost have to think about, you know, two separate, you're running two separate entities, one that has got to with highest quality, highest assurance, highest repeatability. Keep repeating the very, very complex things we do, but make them look easier. So we deliver economic solutions with the poor. So there's one part of the enterprise that's got to keep doing that very, very well. Don't take chances there. Right. Very highly managed. Very tightly managed. On the other side is this little innovation hub, and that's what we call it, innovation hub, where rules don't apply, where you know, if somebody said, I've figured out how to get, you know, to go fly against gravity. All right. We're going to let you try and show me how to do it right. I mean, that's how we did our innovations. That's how we figured out how to deliver, you know, banking services to the poor.

It's like your own version of Google X.

It is. Literally the first mobile bank in Africa, not in Asia, Latin America or a more developed country, the first mobile bank wasn't a digital phone. The first mobile bank was a flatbed truck with an A.T.M. machine and armed guards around it. While some guy somewhere decided that was a way to deliver mobile banking to the poor. So, you know, I couldn't have thought about it in Chicago. So that's what the innovation hubs do.