Read the 5-minute summary for this episode and many others at . The OWL (Owner Wisdom Library) turns insights from more than 1,200 Exit Coach Radio interviews into short, practical lessons for business owners on growth, leadership, operations, and exit planning.
Why is innovative thinking such an important leadership skill, and how can business owners apply it to strengthen their companies?
In this episode of Exit Coach Radio, Bill Black talks with Marvin Smith, Owner and Principal of Deliberate Synergy, about how innovative thinking can help leaders improve people, products, and organizations. Marvin explains why innovation is not just about new ideas, but about developing the mindset and leadership approach needed to solve problems, create opportunities, and keep a business moving forward.
This conversation explores why innovative thinking has become an essential leadership competency in today’s business environment. Marvin shares perspective on where innovation can be applied across an organization, from leadership and culture to product development, strategy, and problem-solving. He also discusses what makes his approach unique and how leaders can become more intentional about building innovation into the way they think and operate.
This episode is especially useful for business owners, executives, and leadership teams who want to improve adaptability, encourage stronger thinking inside their organizations, and create a business that can respond more effectively to growth challenges and market change.
If you are looking for ways to sharpen leadership, strengthen organizational thinking, and bring fresh ideas into your business, this conversation offers practical value and long-term relevance.
Topics include:
innovative thinking in business
leadership development
business problem-solving
organizational innovation
strategic growth mindset
Listen for more conversations on leadership, growth, succession, and exit planning through Exit Coach Radio.
Join Bill Black for his weekly humor column at BlackPapers: blackpapers.substack.com
Exit Coach Bill Black interviews Top Advisors for Tips, Ideas & Precautions for Business Owners who want to grow and protect their company value and plan for a successful Business Sale or Transfer. Listen daily so you can be well-planned!
Curators1
People who have contributed edits to this page.
Oct 2026
Zolid AI
+0/−0
Published
February 14, 2024 Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on Exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us. I apologize for that little gap there. Again, we had a guest that could not make it with us. It happens every once in a while. People are busy. We understand Exit Coach Radio is here for you, the private business owner, so that you can get tips, ideas, and precautions from a wide variety of guests. We've interviewed over 600 guests. They are. Authors, advisors, and thought leaders from all over the country, and you can find all of their archive materials at exitoachradio.com in our audio library, which consists of 35 different topic file folders you can go to school on and listen from your smartphone. Just put in ECRmobile.com into your smartphone browser to get our app. My next guest is Marvin Smith. He's with a company called Deliberate Synergy. And he is the owner and principal of that firm. Now we're going to talk about bringing innovative thinking to people, products, and organizations. Marvin, thanks for joining us. Welcome to the show. Yes, Bill, how are you? I'm very good, thank you. How are you today? I'm well. It's a pleasure. I like the name of your company quite a bit. Deliberate Synergy. It sounds like it's very intentional, and I'd love to know more about how you started it and what's behind the name. Oh, sure, certainly. Well, I worked for GE as a task facilitator and then went to Synectix, that's the management of innovation, Stayed there for about 30 years, did it 3 or 4 years with Visage International, which is a CEO roundtable organization and then formed deliberate synergy. And uh we, we're primarily interested in helping people to bring innovation in-house. That is where they want to do it themselves and the it can be products, services, business models, or now I'm really focusing on social innovation, which is how people work together. And uh the deliberate nature of it is, is as such. We plan to do something to collaborate and put muscle into that. It it sounds like it could be the, the ideal uh branding tagline for General Electric, deliberate synergy, um or for any company for that matter. So it's well done. It's very, very succinct. Now, the, the thing about it is is that. Um, when people form relationships these days, they need to think beyond, is this someone that I can work with? They need to think about is 1 and 1 going to equal 3. That's where the synergy comes from, right? And there and there are connections you can form out there that will create those types of arrangements. Um, so is that, is that what your, your social, um. Uh, research is showing you. Yes, it is. And a lot of times people spend an awful lot of time in the recruiting process getting very bright people, and when they're faced with something that is either frustrating or uh unanticipated, they expect the bright people will work together and create something new. Uh, yes, that can happen, but sometimes if they're not conscious of the process they're using, 2 A + people can give you minus 1 or 2 as opposed to uh times 3 or 4. So how they operate is uh is very important. Now the pace, I'm sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say what would cause that to happen. I can imagine why, but tell us why, why that could happen, that 1 and 1 could equal 0. Sure. Well, in a lot of the training that people get, it's an individual training and They are incentive for results and they like to put their name on those results. So there's a competition that uh people develop even as they go through school that goes over into the workplace. And nowadays we're faced with a lot of things that are not directly related to people's expertise. So it's you and I need to come together and create something that neither one of us thought of before in order to solve. A problem the client has presented us with no notice or competition or change in the overall environment. And so getting people to uh listen to each other more deeply and uh be out of the box and manage that in the box, out of the box paradigm that people are faced with these days. In an environment that has picked up in pace. So having some conscious process and ways to treat each other that includes some degree of safety then allows people to make mistakes faster, use their speculative capability, and tap into some of the body of knowledge that I've developed over the last 30 plus years. Marvin, when you say, uh, when you said recruiting before, so we're talking about the beginning of a relationship, you're looking for the right people to bring to your team to bring synergy. Are there telltale signs and what I one thing came to mind is maybe it's the type of sports that they, if they were golfers, they're probably going to be keeping it to themselves, but if they're a football player, they're used to team, you know, team interaction. Are there telltale signs like that that might be a tip off? Uh, very good, yes, there are. And also, um, how often does the person use the I word and do they know their capability? Certainly people rehearse that. Do they know the capability of the people around them and how often have they tapped into that and what's been the end result? So you can ask questions that lead directly to synergistic type answers or not, depending on your uh preparation. Well, I like that. That's, that's really brilliant to, to have the intentional, well, deliberate line of questioning that would, that would uh help you see whether these individuals are going to be saying we or I a lot. Yes. And avoiding behaviors like blaming or finding fault or high territorialism or getting ahead or being so competitive. That it's hard for them to be quiet when they have a right answer, uh, because sometimes the right answer is, is not the one that's gonna be the best answer. Hm. Now what makes having innovative thinking a desired leadership competency? Well, as fast as things are changing these days, um, a lot of clients will say, Basically, don't bring me the same old thing or bring me something that is of higher quality but costs less or that can, that you can deliver in a third of the time that you used to. And uh that can be an immediate frustration unless you can create a new way of seeing something, doing something, or even a new relationship with the client where you can get the kind of time that you need. Cause very often the buyer nowadays is uh incentive to get a lower price no matter what the offering is. And so if you have what I'm now calling a creative relationship or innovative way of working, you can then find out what the real issue is and go after that as opposed to exactly what they tell you from their surface to uh your surface. What you want is a core to core uh connection that allows them to tell you the truth and their frustration and what's really important in the middle of uh creating value. And I would imagine as you're speaking that you're going to want to start that with your leadership has to have the ability to have the vision and communicate the vision and then get the best innovation out of their team. Where, where can innovative thinking be applied? Well, it certainly it can be applied to, uh, products as I've mentioned, uh, it can be applied to services where you end up helping your client think through things if you have the facilitative capability, uh, and that's different than selling if you, uh, can get into a coaching mode, which is different than selling. Then you can get closer to creating what the real value is and and not be so sales oriented. Um, and then internally within the company and among its employees. Uh, I like the strategy of having a top-down, uh, transformation dimension, and that's the leadership, as you mentioned, and having the leader be responsible for setting the climate in the organization, the, the climate of reasonable safety, the climate of incenting the things that are important, having a people strategy and communicating that strategy to others. Is it up and out? Is it, um, develop and uh and retain? Is it, um, Uh, changing people who are not successful very quickly. All of those strategies work, but letting people know what the strategy is will allow them to be able to cooperate better. So having the um top down is important. Having the middle out is important because those are people who need to interpret the vision and the mission, but then have a direct communication with front line or the bottom side, which is very often the people who connect directly with customers or patients. And having those three dimensions aligned and communicating well can create the synergy. And so the top leader knows knows how to do that, but also how to be like a matador and getting out of the way at, at times, as opposed to in the way and holding back the um linear folks who are too early to the bottom line when something is trying to be created. Now I know that you come in and work with a lot of companies and of course you're you're a well sought after visage speaker. So for those of our listeners that are visage chairs or members, um, consider, uh, you know, telling your chair about about Marvin and this this topic. But you mentioned product you could innovate in product, service, process, communication all up and down an organization when you first come into an organization. Do you have something like an innovation index where you can kind of benchmark and say here's where you guys are on the scale of innovation and here's where you need to be and and let's get started. Well, um, I don't have that per se. I can get that from people I work with, but basically, I like to look at their strategy and and find out whether innovation is in that strategy or not that lets me know that they are aware and then start asking questions and face to face relationships where we can find out what they have currently against that, how they're doing and what they need and how important it is to have innovation work in the product area and why. And then, uh, something visage people will recognize is what happens if you do nothing about this and uh what's the, what's the personal impact on you? Because to uh use an innovation strategy correctly, there's going to be some discontinuity, some disruption, discomfort, and it's not an easy process. But if you are not expecting an easy process, then it's not a surprise. So my diagnostic is, is usually uh 1 to 1, face to face and uh getting them to own where they are and then own where they want to be, and then on the commitment to get there, which is the actual plan that's put together with them. So I have a controversial stance of doing little to no proposals. Uh, what I do is business arrangements where we put something together and, and have the leaders of the organization look at it, modify it, uh, redesign it, and we're collaborative right from the beginning so that when we get going, it's our plan and not the outside consultant's plan. You know, it's been said many times that the business's best assets go home every night. It's the key, it's the employees, it's the key employees. Is, is innovation or could you consider in the innovation ability of those key people, of those people in your organization to be another asset on the balance sheet in some way? Oh, absolutely. Um, I think that even when the innovation comes from the outside. Uh, through an acquisition, people on the inside have to do what I'll call creative problem solving in order to make it work, because new fresh things in the conceptual stage and even in the prototype stage, still have some adjustments to be made to it. So having people at the top of their innovation capability when needed is very important. And again, there's that paradox. There's something called the cycling world, where you move from the world of operation, where you need to be routine and procedural and uh take advantage of known solutions and rules. But on the other hand, the innovation world, you need to speculate, develop, experiment, gain commitment, uh, have constructive and developmental reviews, and circulating between those two worlds. Um, if you have a third of your population able to do that, then you could take advantage of, uh, a lot of things that are out there. Many of our listeners are baby boomers. Business owners have been operating for many years, maybe in most cases even several decades, and they may feel that business has become kind of routine and stale. What are some of the first baby steps that they they might explore with someone like you to, to put innovation back into their, their business where it might be feeling stale? Sure, great question, Bill. Uh, one of the techniques that we, we use is a child-like language of wishing and asking people to talk about what they'd like, even though practicality says they can't get it. And I use some, some analogies. One is somebody wished to A repel gravity. Well, the helicopter doesn't repel gravity, but it made Sikorsky a lot of money and so on and so on with Disney and Ed Land and the camera. So having some, uh, wishing sessions that, uh, that listeners can springboard from is a good way to spend periodic time to find out what's around the corner that you're not, you're not able to see when you put your head down, staying close to your knitting, so to speak. So, uh, you know, in the 80s, I remember when we'd say if it works, don't fix it. And now we say if it works, you better analyze it and worry a little bit to find out how long it's going to work as fast as the outside is moving. So in, I think every strategy should have one initiative, say out of 7 or 8 that has innovation as a word in it, but also as a practice. And then to get really clear on what the process of innovation is going to be for you. So it's not just a word and backed by hiring great people, but it is a process that gets supported in all of the segments of the organization. Excellent, excellent. And of course these days you have a wide variety of employees. You might get some really great ideas by opening up your ears to innovation that may come from some of your younger technical oriented workers. Who knows what you'll, what you'll listen to. So let's let's wrap it up, Marvin, with, with what makes you a unique resource. Well, I've, uh, Bill, I've been in the trench of innovation for 30+ years. And so there are things like, uh, anxiety, frustration, um, Uh, discomfort that have to be negotiated by the individual. We try to do that a lot in advance upfront in planning meetings, but right in the middle of the meeting, there, there needs to be some uh coaching and facilitative type activity that, that helped the breakthrough session occur. So I've run about 100 meetings a year for a number of years, so I've seen a lot of situations and people. And uh that's, that's what I've, what I've been able to do. And I'm working now with physicians who have new problems that that come from revenue and changing government regulations and then how to work together and they're not trained as leaders. Uh, and then I've worked with community people including gangs and the police chief and young, young, uh, people, and just came back from South Africa and looking at some of the governance issues that they're having. So I've had a wide variety of uh diverse experiences and uh that's what makes me unique and uh having worked in a prison uh as a facilitator, uh, I can show uh respect for high-level and leadership types, CEOs, presidents, uh, without being overrun. Oh yeah, that's there you go. That's a great point, but your, your tremendous experience and and experiences are obvious as you speak and talk to us about what it is that needs to come to businesses to foster innovation. Uh, the company is called Deliberate Synergy, and my guest again is Marvin Smith, and Marvin, how would our listeners, um, get in touch with you? Oh, you also have a series of articles available. Tell us about that. Yes, well, uh, one of the people I've trained a long time ago has a company called Greyhall Consulting. They're in the HR business, and, uh, he wants to bring innovation into that circle since they do a lot of strategy work with people. And the magazine then is, uh, on that website, and I've written 8 articles so far. Uh, about how to attract, um, HR types and people who read that literature into the innovation space. So using metaphor and analogy and and giving some of the tips in those articles. Wonderful. And so they can our listeners can get in touch with you uh via email at Marvin UnderlineSmith@comcast.net. And they can also visit you, I believe, at your website which is www.deliberatesynergy.com. It's very clear and you're very deliberate and you're bringing a lot of synergy. So now it's clear to me why the name of the company makes so much sense, and I really enjoyed having you on the show today. Thank you so much for your time. Well, thank you for your questions and your time as well, Bill. We're gonna take a short break we'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. Business owners, if you came back from lunch and there was a resignation letter on your desk, which employee would you really, really not want it to be from? What are you doing to prevent this from happening? At Exit and Retirement Strategies, we design plans that attract, motivate, and retain key employees for a free consultation, called Bill Black, the exit coach at 866-370-3774. Call today. Does thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted advisor to create a BEI plan for you, or visit us at exitplanning.com. That's exitplanning.com. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio.
