HARRISON LEWIS, Haggen, Inc. Vice president and chief information officer Lewis joined Haggen, Inc. in September 2005, bringing with him extensive experience in retail operations and IT, as well as a reputation for innovative thinking and creative change.

1. "Aggressive" listening skills. Organizations need to be in a position to listen aggressively to their stakeholders. This kind of listening doesn't mean you necessarily have to have an open-door policy. What I'm referring to is something much more proactive. It's beyond being accessible. It's being completely out there and engaged. It comes down to being in the stakeholders' area, being in their business, understanding that business and being a part of it.

2. Empathy. Organizations need to be empathetic to their most consequential stakeholders. And when dealing with a retail organization, our most consequential stakeholders are our customers. Looking at what the customers value will help us change how we do some of the things we do. For example, why do we have to have customers check out? They go through and they pick up groceries off the shelf and then they have to go stand in line to check out. It's a pretty antiquated system. Aside from the technology, it's important to be able to look at things and say, "Is that something that our guests value, and is it necessary?"

3. Employee focus. Our employees are our representatives out on the front lines, and they see a great deal. They see things we are doing that make no sense—things that are redundant or dated—but they also see changes in trends before anyone else sees them. I think we lose sight of the fact that employees can be such a rich resource for innovation. Many organizations don't have the mechanisms in place to get employee input and are not employee-focused. As a result, there is so much that gets overlooked.

4. Bottom-up versus top-down innovation. We, as leaders, have to understand that the ideas are not going to come from us, and we have to make sure that we don't create a culture where there is the expectation that the ideas are going to come from us. If we create that culture, then innovation completely stops. I've seen it many times where individuals will, in their role, innovate. Then they are put into positions of leadership and looked on as being "the innovator," but what that does is stymie all the other points of innovation that are still out there.

5. Investment in people. This involves taking the next step from listening to employees to empowering them. So often people have good ideas, but those ideas are ahead of their time, or the person who thinks of the idea doesn't have the capacity to implement it. If organizations don't invest in their people—in their exposure and in improving their knowledge—those good ideas will sit out there forever, and the organization will not be able to innovate. T

Photography by Amanda Koster

Teradata Magazine-December 2008