Management leadership consulting for executives and new managers

As the CEO you want to support the C-suite potential and executive presence of some of the up-and-coming leaders in your company. CEO’s have found hiring Kristiina a smart decision as she coaches their protégés to be ready for the prime time through her proven Lead Smart leadership coaching method.

As an executive of a growing company you need your newly-minted managers and team leaders to develop their managerial ability to an impactful leadership capability that optimizes their team performance. Kristiina’s Lead Smart training programs for developing leadership are tailored to your company’s needs.

As a team leader you are expected to produce more with less while creating a culture that retains the best performing people. With Kristiina’s Lead Smart team tools you can measure your team’s productivity and positivity and be equipped with methods to boost your team’s performance. Read more>

Kristiina Hiukka

As a professional leadership consultant, trainer, coach and author, Kristiina advocates for Collaborative Leadership and Innovation through Inclusion and Gender Intelligence. Read more>

Live and Lead Fascinated!

Sometimes curious things happen. Like being interviewed for a fascinating program called “Creative Life”. The award-winning host of Creative Life, co-founder of the American Creativity Association, lawyer and author Philomena (Phyllis) Blees became fascinated about my motto “Live and Lead Fascinated!” – and we had a short conversation about it in her program. Are you curious? Click the picture below and view the interview on YouTube.

ThinkTechHawaii - Creative Life — Phyllis Blees interviews Kristiina HIukka

Let me know how living and leading fascinated has affected your life and leadership!

The 6 Conditions That Drive Innovation

Innovation is not only interesting, it’s crucial for business growth. Peter Drucker said that “Business has only two functions: marketing and innovating.” Teams in companies all around the world are required to be “innovative.” However, this is easier said than done.

While the human element of the innovation process is the most critical, complex, and dynamic part, it’s often overlooked when teams are laser-focused on product development.

Having a lot of ideas does not mean you’re an innovator. Innovating is not an individual effort; innovation is an outcome from a multitude of actors. I define innovation as Continue reading The 6 Conditions That Drive Innovation

3 Leadership Characteristics That Will Drive Your Innovation – Even During The Times of COVID-19

Article published in Real Leaders, written by Kristiina Hiukka

The proverbial wisdom says that “you can have all the riches and success in the world, but if you don’t have your health, you have nothing.” Right now, everything hinges on our health. Our work, our wealth, our future.

As the sickest nation in the world with COVID-19, the United States is heading towards having “nothing.” The U.S. is leading the world in deaths by the coronavirus, and people are left with “nothing” as they lose their jobs. It is heartbreaking and scary. Simultaneously, Continue reading 3 Leadership Characteristics That Will Drive Your Innovation – Even During The Times of COVID-19

Playbook For Life

Getting to college is a big deal. Then, you are in, and you expected to make sense of it all. There are so many choices and decisions. And all of them feel like your life depends on them… or at least that the rest of your life is impacted by them. Stressful. Confusing. Being a first-year college student can be the best of times and the worst of times all in one. This can be your first-year college experience during COVID-19 as well – even if you do not leave your home and roam the campus. During the global pandemic, we are wrapped in our fears and confusion exponentially more than normal but it is not all bad. I’m determined to create a stepping stone experience for this new generation of academics that will inspire them to love their university years. We can do this – even via Zoom – at the University of Washington Bothell where I teach as an adjunct professor. For the students this fall, I’ve created a course I call Playbook for Life to make the first quarter an exploration into “Who am I?” and a design process of “Who do I want to be”. Here is a nice article that was written about it by Douglas J. Esser (click below to go to UW Bothell website):

An experience, not a lecture series

Innovativeness sustains innovation

The emotional rollercoaster of an #entrepreneur – especially that of a #startup leader – can determine whether the venture either flourishes or withers. Last Friday I had an opportunity to present for the #UniversityofWashington #CoMotion #StartUpFundamentals series my “6C model” of #innovativeness – what keeps the flame of #innovation burning, without burning out oneself. Please, take a look (60 min video), and let me know whether you find this perspective useful – or not. My point is how the human element of innovation, the relational and emotional element is overlooked and thus missed when trying to sustain the innovative spirit in companies.

By having the courage to go deeper into the realm of “humanness” creates an innovation force multiplier and can dramatically improve the success of your innovation culture. Innovative results are outcomes of creative thought and collaboration, which are wildly human experiences that consist of emotional and relational elements. It is an innovation leader’s job to optimize the emotional energy of their teams towards great novel solutions. Although many companies offer growth mindset or emotional intelligence training for their employees, the value of these trainings is lost when the key messages are left out of the strategy conversations within the leadership team. Developing ways to make emotional, relational, and social intelligence embedded into the fabric of the culture begins by weaving them into strategic planning conversations.

Fundamentals for Startups: Innovativeness – Flourishing or Withering?

Three hidden inhibitors of innovation (Part 3: Rewards)

(In the last two weeks I’ve written about the hidden inhibitors of innovation culture. First I wrote about how strategy needs to be rooted in the human experience, and my second blog was about human-centered metrics. This article addresses rewards at work.)

Although organizational culture comprises a wide variety of factors, I believe three of them – strategy, metrics, and rewards – warrant closer scrutiny when the goal is to establish a “culture of innovation”. While these three factors are regularly deliberated, discussed and decided upon by the senior leadership teams, critical blind spots remain. Therefore, it is more likely that leadership creates innovation-inhibiting conditions by agreeing to:

1. An innovation strategy that is not rooted in the human experience,

2. Irrelevant or distracting innovation metrics, and

3. A reward system that doesn’t actually reward the deeper human needs.

Having the courage to go deeper into the realm of “humanness” creates an innovation force multiplier and can dramatically improve the successful innovation culture.

Your reward system is effective only when your people feel rewarded

Innovation efforts by their nature are about experimentation without guarantees for their success. In the best-case scenario, innovation efforts can result in new products, services, business models, and business processes. In reality, though, Continue reading Three hidden inhibitors of innovation (Part 3: Rewards)

Three hidden ways your corporate culture inhibits innovation (part 2: Metrics)

Leaders often create innovation-inhibiting conditions by agreeing to:

1. An innovation strategy that is not rooted in human experience, 2. Irrelevant or distracting innovation metrics, and 3. A reward system that doesn’t actually reward the deeper human needs.

By having the courage to go deeper into the realm of “humanness” creates an innovation force multiplier and can dramatically improve the successful innovation culture.

Last week I wrote about how to connect your strategy with the human experience. Here is what you can do about the inhibitor number 2:

2. Connect your innovation metrics to the human experience

Continue reading Three hidden ways your corporate culture inhibits innovation (part 2: Metrics)

Three hidden ways your corporate culture inhibits innovation – (Part 1: Strategy)

Published on February 20, 2020

Virtually all companies now claim to have a culture of innovation, yet they often fail to recognize disconnects between the performance of teams and overall governing corporate culture that may be dampening or even distorting innovation. Seeing these invisible cultural disconnects is similar to seeing the invisible biological disconnects that are revealed in a functional MRI. When the driving action of innovation teams is going on beneath the surface, it remains invisible, unspeakable and therefore unmanaged.

My work with teams aspiring to best-in-class innovation has revealed the nature of these Continue reading Three hidden ways your corporate culture inhibits innovation – (Part 1: Strategy)

Time is Right for Civility Engineering

I was recently invited to speak at a civil engineers’ conference about the hot topic of #Inclusive Leadership. On my way to the conference, I pondered my connection to the world of civil engineering. I realized how the results of civil engineering were all around me. I began marveling at the landmarks – signs of engineering ingenuity on my way to the conference: the viaduct, bridges, skyscrapers, ferries and even the conference center where I was going to be speaking at. I was in awe.

It occurred to me at that moment that while I’m not a civil engineer, I am a “Civility Engineer”, one who works with behavior “engineering”.

Continue reading Time is Right for Civility Engineering