Quick Start for Leaders
Business Design lives or dies with leadership. Teams can run sprints and explorations on their own — but they can't give themselves a clear vision, a protected budget or the permission to kill their own idea. This page condenses what leaders must do, and must stop doing, into five pairs.
Bernhard Doll
Business Design Maverick
Each point is explained in depth elsewhere: in Leadership, C-Level Manager, Project Sponsor and Governance. Here you get the short version. Use it as a checklist before a strategy meeting, a portfolio review or a conversation with a project team.
1. Lead from a Picture of the Future
Every innovation project needs direction, and goals alone don't provide it. "Stay market leader" defines success — it doesn't tell a team which project to start on Monday.
Do: Define the company's vision, strategy and innovation goals, and update them regularly. Work backwards from a Picture of the Future and translate it into clear statements about future roles, future value creation and future technologies (see Dream Big, Act Small).
Don't: Lead with slogans like "become more digital" or "use AI". And don't keep your distance: C-level managers who are far removed from the innovation management system and from specific projects are one of the key reasons innovation activities fail (see C-Level Manager).
2. Build Psychological Safety and Reward Innovation
Culture is expected behaviour. People watch what gets rewarded and what gets punished — and act accordingly.
Do: Create an environment where people bring you bad news without fear. Give public credit to innovators and to the middle managers who release people for projects. And change what gets rewarded: who gets promoted, which projects keep their budget, what happens to a team whose project was stopped (see Leadership and Work Culture).
Don't: Treat innovation work as a career risk — for example by quietly sending a team back to core-business tasks after it killed its idea because a hypothesis was falsified. And don't expect culture workshops, hoodies or colourful innovation labs to change behaviour.
3. Enable, Don't Control
Governance decides on portfolio, budget and people — not on content. That split is what keeps facts ahead of hierarchy.
Do: Steer the innovation system through clear Governance: one budget decision a year, one quarterly look at the portfolio and stop rules agreed before a project starts. Leave target groups, business models and experiment results to the Project Team.
Don't: Rewrite a team's business model in a steering committee — that replaces facts with hierarchy. And don't build a system in which every innovation project needs your signature.
4. Fund in Stages and Count the Real Cost
Uncertainty shrinks step by step, so money should flow step by step too: many small instalments early, few large ones late. Each instalment buys exactly one step.
Do: Ring-fence the innovation budget in writing and release it in stages at clear decision points (see Financing and Budgets). Count your employees' working time — it is the largest cost of innovation work, even though it never shows up on an invoice. Give middle managers written permission to release people, with names, share of working time and a period.
Don't: Release a full project budget upfront, or ask for a business case before Phase IV. And don't steer by metrics that are easy to game, such as the number of ideas (see Measurement of Success & Progress).
5. Prepare Carefully and Let the Facts Win
Every open decision costs a team time, money and motivation. Leaders who decide quickly — and on the basis of customer facts — keep projects moving.
Do: As Project Sponsor, set clear goals and context in the Project Charter "Sprint" and decide next steps right on the spot. Sit in on a Customer & User Interview yourself. Change your mind in public when the customer data says you were wrong (see Facts Over Opinions). Instead of "What's the status?", ask "Which hypothesis did you falsify this week?"
Don't: Start a project with unclear objectives, a 50% committed sponsor or a team without enough time, resources and the right skills. Don't postpone decisions. And don't sponsor a project you can't give time to — an absent sponsor is worse for a team than no sponsor at all.
Want the long version? Read Leadership for the mindsets behind these points, Project Sponsor for the sponsor's role in each phase and Governance for the full governance cycle. The Guiding Principles explain the method these do's and don'ts protect.