The innovation leader's week: where the time should go

Most innovation leaders spend their week in status meetings, reporting and event planning, and very little of it where innovation actually moves: with users, with teams stuck on a decision, and with the managers who own operations. A good week has seven protected blocks, set in the calendar before anything else lands. Here they are, with rough proportions for a full-time role and what to do when the week fills up anyway.

The proportions below are a working guide from practice, not a researched standard. Adjust them to your organisation, but if any block reaches zero for a month, something is wrong.

The seven blocks

1. Time with users and front-line staff: about half a day. Leaders lose contact with the problem faster than they lose contact with the strategy. Spend a few hours each week where the service happens: sit with a call centre agent, attend a test session, run one or two stakeholder interviews yourself. You come back with examples that win arguments at the top, and teams see that the leader cares about evidence. If you cannot leave the office, at least read raw notes from this week's research, not the summary.

2. Unblocking teams: about a day, spread across the week. The single most valuable thing a leader does is remove what stops a team: a missing approval, a manager who won't release a person, a data request stuck in IT. Hold two or three short, fixed slots a week where any team can bring a blocker. Ask one question: "What do you need decided or removed this week?" Then act on it before the next slot. This beats any amount of coaching.

3. Decisions on the portfolio: about two hours. Innovation work drifts when nobody decides. Once a week, look at what is running and decide something: fund the next step, change a test, pause, or stop. A simple portfolio map keeps this honest, because it shows when everything is clustered in safe, small bets. If you make no decisions for three weeks, you are monitoring, not leading. See innovation portfolio management for how to run the review.

4. Time with middle managers who own operations: about half a day. Pilots die in the handover to the people who must run them. Meet one or two operational managers each week, not about a specific project, but about what is hard in their area and what is coming. This is where future challenges come from and where future blockers are defused. Our piece on middle managers and innovation explains why this matters more than sponsor time.

5. Time with the sponsor: one hour, prepared. One focused hour a week with your senior sponsor is enough if you prepare it. Bring three things: one decision you need from them, one piece of evidence from users, and one risk they should hear from you first. Do not use this hour for status updates; send those in writing. A stakeholder communication plan helps you decide who gets what, so the sponsor hour stays for decisions.

6. Learning from what happened: about an hour. Once a week, run or join a short retrospective on one piece of work: what we expected, what happened, what we will change. Rotate between projects. This is how a team gets better at innovating, not just busier. It also gives the leader a regular, low-stakes way to talk about what did not work.

7. Thinking time: half a day, protected. Leaders who never think alone end up running whatever lands on their desk. Block a half day, ideally the same one each week, to read, look at patterns across projects and write. Use it to answer one question: "What are we not working on that we should be?" Keep it away from your inbox. Treat it as a meeting with the person who decides your priorities, which is what it is.

That totals roughly three and a half days, leaving one and a half for everything else: administration, reporting, events and the unexpected. If "everything else" is taking four days, the next section is for you.

What to cut

A leader's week fills up with work that feels responsible but moves little. Run a short stop-doing list review on your own calendar every quarter. Common candidates:

• Status meetings that repeat written reports. Replace them with a one-page weekly note and cancel the meeting.
• Steering committees with no decisions on the agenda. Merge or cancel any committee that has not decided anything in two meetings.
• Event production. Delegate logistics for launches, awards and showcases. The leader's job is the content and the follow-through, not the venue.
• Attending every workshop. Attend the opening and the decision. Skip the middle, unless the team asks.
• Answering every idea submission personally. Set up a clear path for ideas instead; reply to the person, not just the idea.

Worked example (Illustrative)

The head of innovation at a city council in northern England noticed she had not spoken to a resident or front-line officer in two months. Her calendar showed four steering committees, a weekly status call with each of six projects, and the planning group for an annual innovation awards evening.

She made three changes. The six project status calls became one written update each Thursday, read before a single thirty-minute blocker session on Friday. Two of the four committees were merged after she found neither had taken a decision in the previous quarter. The awards logistics went to the events team. She used the time she gained for a Tuesday morning at a different council service each week and a Wednesday afternoon with no meetings.

Within a quarter, two projects that had been "on track" for months were paused after she saw the services they were meant to change. A third got more funding because she had watched residents struggle with the exact problem it addressed. None of this required more hours. It required different ones.

Do's and don'ts

Do

• Put the seven blocks in the calendar before the quarter starts.
• Keep a short, fixed slot for teams to bring blockers.
• Prepare every sponsor meeting around one decision.
• Review your own calendar with a stop-doing list each quarter.
• Protect thinking time as firmly as a meeting with your chief executive.

Don't

• Don't let reporting replace contact with users and teams.
• Don't attend every session to show support. Your presence can change what people say.
• Don't spend sponsor time on status. Send it in writing.
• Don't let a month go by without deciding something on the portfolio.
• Don't measure your week by hours in meetings. Measure it by blockers removed and decisions made.

Questions people ask

What does a head of innovation actually do? They keep innovation work moving: removing blockers, making portfolio decisions, connecting teams with the managers who will run what they build, and keeping the leadership close to real evidence. Event planning and reporting are part of the job, but the smallest part.

How much time should an innovation leader spend in meetings? There is no standard figure. A useful test: if most of your meetings are about status rather than decisions or blockers, you have too many of the wrong kind. Cut those first.

How do I make time for innovation when I have a day job? Start with three of the seven blocks: a weekly blocker slot, a short portfolio decision, and one hour with users or front-line staff. They take about half a day and give you most of the value.

Where to go next

The guides behind this week are stakeholder interviews, portfolio mapping, retrospective and the stop-doing list. For the bigger picture, read innovation culture: what it is, and how leaders actually build it and 5 things great innovation leaders do that nobody talks about.