When Aditya Mittal approached his father with the idea of taking over Arcelor, Lakshmi Mittal thought it to be a bizarre idea to be met. But later when Arcelor and Mittal started bidding against each other for various projects he found the need for it, thus leading to the takeover of Arcelor, thereby making Mittal one of the biggest steel manufacturers in the world. Taking up an idea, however far fetched it might seem; provided it leads to immense wealth maximisation is the task of the head of any organisation.

To quote Robert Vanderpoel, “the most successful businessman is the man who holds onto the old just as long as it is good, and grabs the new just as soon as it is better”. An innovative head of an organisation who is willing to take up the risks with a huge potential, whether successful or not, has tremendous powers and has the immense faith of his employees, thus paving the path to success. The employees of a highly innovative and dynamic leader feel the need to think originally without being mere followers. An inventive work culture can be easily developed in the presence of a self-motivated leader.

A good leader recognises the role risks play in the success. As stated by Jena Mcgregor of Business Week, “Everyone fears failure. But breakthroughs depend on it. The best companies embrace their mistakes and learn from them”. The breakthroughs may be in a business process or on a product of the company. For example, the first manually operated copier of Xerox, Model A copier, failed to convince the people the advantages of copier. The company refused to let its initial failure to paralyse its further attempts on innovation. It took ten years for the company to come with its first automated Model 914 which changed the way the business operated. It is the sheer perseverance that forced the company to work for ten years to come up with an automatic system of copying data. Similarly initial set backs like Apple’s first commercial personal computer Lisa, McDonald’s Hula Burger did not stop the leaders at the top from moving ahead.

The new generation leaders have discovered the need for applauding failures so that the people recognise the cause for the failure and learn from it. Intuit Inc is said to have celebrated the failure of a marketing campaign by presenting the award to the team who worked behind the failed product so that the employees will recognise the need to come up with newer ideas that can impact the profitability. GE, on the other hand, held a conference on eight great ideas that failed to breakthrough. GE is a company that is famous for its strict ways of dealing with failures. This great idea helps in analysing the causes for failures and learns from the mistakes to avoid its occurrence in future.

To change one requires a great understanding of the company strategies, the trends and the innovations of the industry, mental attributes, and perseverance. It is only in an organisational culture that applauds great ideas, whether successful or not, that innovation breeds. This requires the backing of a great leader at the top. Hence it is said that ‘CEOs must act for creating changes’.