Author Archives: Braden Kelley

About Braden Kelley

Braden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, and creator of the FutureHacking™ and Human-Centered Change™ methodologies. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change (Second Edition) from Palgrave Macmillan. Braden is a US Navy veteran and earned his MBA from top-rated London Business School. Follow him on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

What is the best way to create successful change? – EPISODE FOUR – Ask the Consultant

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Live from the Innovation Studio comes EPISODE FOUR of a new ‘Ask the Consultant’ series of short form videos. EPISODE FOUR tackles a question I’m asked so frequently that I wrote a book to answer it:

“What is the best way to create successful change?”

Hint: It starts with getting a copy of Charting Change because I introduce in the book several key frameworks that lay the groundwork for successful change that are built upon in the Change Planning Toolkit™.

The pace of change is accelerating and organizations need to become more agile and more capable of continuous change. This presents a huge challenge for most organizations.

Together in this episode we’ll explore some of the core building blocks to creating successful change in your organization, and a discuss what else is in Charting Change and the Change Planning Toolkit™, and how this particular book can make a great course book for change management courses at universities, executive education, and corporate training programs.

Many of the tools in the optional Change Planning Toolkit™ will look familiar to change management professionals because they have been informed by the ACMP’s Standard for Change Management and the PMI’s PMBOK.

Five Keys to Successful Change 550

“Does the change you’re proposing inspire fear or curiosity? Fear steals energy from change; curiosity fuels it.”— Braden Kelley

Grab your copy of Charting Change on Amazon while they last!

What question should I tackle in the next video episode of “Ask the Consultant” live from my innovation studio?

Contact me with your question

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Below are the previous episodes of ‘Ask the Consultant’:

  1. EPISODE ONE – What is innovation?
  2. EPISODE TWO – How do I create continuous innovation in my organization?
  3. EPISODE THREE – What is digital transformation?
  4. All other episodes of Ask the Consultant


Accelerate your change and transformation success

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New Tool for Leveraging the Eight Change Mindsets

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Charting Change - Order NowDespite already investing more than one million dollars in the new intellectual property included in the Change Planning Toolkit™, I will continue to take your feedback and invest in creating new tools that make the toolkit even more valuable for everyone.

Today I’m excited to announce the Change Planning Toolkit™ v10 which includes a new tool for:

  • Leveraging the Eight Change Mindsets in your Communications Strategy Planning (including messaging, symbols, and artifacts)

The Change Planning Canvas™ and the more than 60 tools in the toolkit will help make your change planning efforts more visual and collaborative, and enable you to get everyone literally all on the same page for change. The toolkit has been created to help organizations:

  1. Beat the 70% failure rate for change programs
  2. Quickly visualize, plan and execute change efforts
  3. Deliver projects and change efforts on time
  4. Accelerate implementation and adoption
  5. Get valuable tools for a low investment

The tools easily integrate with other change methodologies like ProSci’s ADKAR, the Association of Change Management Professionals’ (ACMP) Standard, and the PMBOK used by Project Management Professionals (PMP).

Get your Change Planning Toolkit™ licenses now at a special price.

If you purchased a Change Planning Toolkit™ license over a year ago, you will want to renew your license so you can:

  • Download the latest version
  • Help shape future updates to the toolkit by contacting us to request new tools
  • Get access to any further updates over the next year

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IMPORTANT: If you already purchased the book and are looking to access the supporting material, please contact me with your proof of purchase and I’ll send you the file.
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Learning how to use the Change Planning Toolkit™ will create great opportunities for:

  1. Organizations to build a continuous change capability
  2. Consulting companies to increase revenue while achieving better client outcomes
  3. Education companies to build new organizational change course offerings

So, what are you waiting for?

Don’t endure even one more change or project failure.

Get the Change Planning Toolkit™ v10 today!

Don’t remember what the Eight Change Mindsets are?

Check them out below and then get the Change Planning Toolkit™ to take advantage of them in your communications planning!

Eight Change Mindsets to Harness for Success

Get the PDF version of the Eight Change Mindsets framework:

Eight Change Mindsets to Harness for Success PDF

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50 Cognitive Biases Reference – Free Download

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by Braden Kelley

I came across this cognitive biases infographic from TitleMax and it has a lot of great information in it, but…

The problem with long, information-rich infographics like this is that they’re hard to consume on the screen in their entirety, you can’t print them in a legible way, and they’re hard to leverage in your work. The creators of this infographic did a nice job of capturing a wide range of cognitive biases, which makes this a quite useful tool for design thinking, but not in this format.

To help everyone out, I’ve taken the original infographic and reformatted it into a five page PDF for easy reading and printing on 8.5″ x 11″ letter size paper.

Click here to download the 50 Cognitive Biases PDF (8.5″x11″)

See the original infographic below (click to access the source image):

Cognitive Biases Infographic

Click here to download the 50 Cognitive Biases PDF (8.5″x11″)

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What is digital transformation? – EPISODE THREE – Ask the Consultant

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Live from the Innovation Studio comes EPISODE THREE of a new ‘Ask the Consultant’ series of short form videos. EPISODE THREE aims to answer a question that many people struggle to answer or accurately discuss:

“What is digital transformation?”

Digital transformation is a complicated topic for people to speak intelligently about and to explore in depth because there is so much misinformation and confusion about what a digital transformation actually is – a lot of it espoused by technology vendors.

Together in this episode we’ll explore what digital transformation is by looking at two definitions that show what digital transformation is not.

1. Wikipedia’s bad definition of Digital Transformation

“Digital Transformation (DT or DX) is the adoption of digital technology to transform services or businesses, through replacing non-digital or manual processes with digital processes or replacing older digital technology with newer digital technology. Digital solutions may enable – in addition to efficiency via automation – new types of innovation and creativity, rather than simply enhancing and supporting traditional methods.”

— Wikipedia

2. This Definition of Digital Transformation Gets Closer But Still Isn’t Right

“Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers. It’s also a cultural change that requires organizations to continually challenge the status quo, experiment, and get comfortable with failure.”

— EnterprisersProject

So, let’s dig into what Digital Transformation really is …

A digital transformation is the journey between a company’s current business operations to a reimagined version of itself from the perspective of how a digital native would build the same business operations leveraging the latest technology and scientific understandings of management science, leadership, decision science, business and process architecture, design, customer experience, etc.

A digital transformation can only be successfully achieved if you put customers and employees at the center to create a human-centered data model and explore the intersection between what’s needed and what’s possible to simplify processes, reduce complexity, and to design elegant experiences.

The key thing to remember is that technology comes at the end, not the beginning, starts by making strategic choices, and focuses on identifying and building the needed capabilities to execute the new strategy.

Here is a quick review list of ten things to keep in mind for a successful digital transformation:

  1. Reimagine your business from a digital native perspective
  2. A Human-Centered Data Model (customers & employees)
  3. Put your customers and employees at the center
  4. Identify intersection of what’s needed & what’s possible
  5. Simplify processes
  6. Reduce complexity
  7. Design elegant experiences
  8. Technology comes at the END – not the beginning
  9. Start by making strategic choices
  10. Build capabilities needed to achieve your transformation

}} Click here to watch the video {{

Help Shape the Next ‘Ask the Consultant’ Episode

  1. Grab a great deal on Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire on Amazon while they last!

  2. Get a copy of my latest book Charting Change on Amazon

  3. Contact me with your question for the next video episode of “Ask the Consultant” live from my innovation studio

Below are the previous episodes of ‘Ask the Consultant’:

  1. EPISODE ONE – What is innovation?
  2. EPISODE TWO – How do I create continuous innovation in my organization?
  3. All other episodes of Ask the Consultant


Accelerate your change and transformation success

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Accelerating Complexity vs. Accelerating Change

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Accelerating Complexity vs. Accelerating Change

Does the quickening pace of change or the accelerating pace of complexity pose a greater threat for humans and organizations?

Change can be incredibly disruptive to both humans and organizations.

So much so that I decided to create a more modern, visual, collaborative and effective set of methods and tools to help organizations beat the 70% change failure rate and better keep pace with the accelerating pace of change – the Change Planning Toolkit™ – introduced in my latest book Charting Change.

In the book I highlight that the pace of change is accelerating, and use the increasing rate of change in the S&P 500’s membership as a proof point:

Innosight Average Company Lifespan

Another proof point is the fact that all of our high technology has been developed in roughly the last 100 years.

There can be no doubt that the pace of change and disruption is quickening.

But how much of the accelerating disruption that we see can be attributed to what I see as an increasing pace of complexity?

If anyone doubts that we live in a time of accelerating complexity, I encourage you to check out the book The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites, or this TED talk given by Thomas:

I find this video quite frightening because it highlights how fragile our high-technology society is, and how much we need each other.

If a single person can’t make the simplest of electrical appliances by themselves, even over the course of a year, then imagine the complexity that organizations must manage to make even more complicated products.

Imagine the challenge of making changes to our organizations after we’ve optimized things to successfully manage this complexity.

If both complexity and change are accelerating, how can we cope?

Here are four key ways to better manage complexity and change:

  1. Choose carefully which complexity to inflict upon the organization

  2. Learn how to architect the organization for continuous change

  3. Continuously evaluate your organization’s trade-offs between flexibility and fixedness

  4. Leverage the modern, visual, and collaborative tools from the Change Planning Toolkit™ that are easily adapted to our new virtual work environment

Grab the ten free tools from the Change Planning Toolkit™ before purchasing a license so you can keep these three key frameworks front and center as you plan a more modular and conscious approach to managing the growing complexity in your organization:

  • PCC Change Readiness Framework
  • Organizational Agility Framework
  • Architecting the Organization for Continuous Change

Download the 10 Free Tools

Keep innovating!


Accelerate your change and transformation success

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A Conversation with PepsiCo’s Chief Design Officer – Mauro Porcini

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Recently I sat down with Mauro Porcini, PepsiCo’s first-ever Chief Design Officer for an Innovation Leader conversation across different topics and themes, from culture to design, from people to innovation, from strategy to failure, starting with these six questions:

  1. Why is it more important to design meaning than products?

  2. What are your favorite methods for getting to the heart of people’s wants and needs?

  3. How are you trying to spread design thinking throughout PepsiCo?

  4. Can you walk us through the creation of PepsiCo’s design website? Why was it important for your team to have an external site?

  5. If you had it all to do over again, what would you do differently?

  6. What is your approach to failure?

Click here to see Mauro’s answers on Innovation Leader


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Friday Funny – Unexpected Blackberry and Apple Problems

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Thanks to Bettina von Stamm for bringing this comedic gem to my attention:

It does a great job of highlighting how technology companies come along and completely change parts of our common language.

For my non-European friends, Orange is a French mobile telecommunications provider (aka France Telecom).

I hope everyone has a funny Friday and a great weekend!


Accelerate your change and transformation success

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How can I create continuous innovation in my organization? – EPISODE TWO – Ask the Consultant

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Live from the Innovation Studio comes EPISODE TWO of a new ‘Ask the Consultant’ series of short form videos. EPISODE TWO tackles the second most commonly asked question of me:

“How can I create continuous innovation in my organization?”

Hint: It starts with getting a copy of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire because I detail in the book how to overcome the key barriers to innovation.

Together in this episode we’ll explore how to create continuous innovation in your organization, why I wrote Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire, and how it can make a great course book for innovation courses at universities, executive education, and corporate training programs.

“Innovation is never easy — and not always welcome. This book is dedicated to the men and women who dedicate their lives to pushing our organizations to make more efficient use of our human capital and natural resources and to make the world a better place.”

Grab a great deal on Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire on Amazon while they last!

What question should I tackle in the next video episode of “Ask the Consultant” live from my innovation studio?

Contact me with your question

}} Click here to watch the video {{

Below are the previous episodes of ‘Ask the Consultant’:

  1. EPISODE ONE – What is innovation?
  2. All other episodes of Ask the Consultant


Accelerate your change and transformation success

Subscribe to Human-Centered Change & Innovation WeeklySign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Using Intuition to Drive Innovation Success

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Using Intuition to Drive Innovation Success

Americans are in love with data, big data, analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning.

… and the rest of the world is catching the same disease.

Data is important, don’t get me wrong, but it is only one side of the coin driving innovation and operational success.

On the other side of the coin is intuition.

As smart organizations try and make greater use of human-centered design, empathy and intuition can and must play an increasingly important role.

Bruce Kasanoff states that “Intuition is the Highest Form of Intelligence” in his article on Forbes.

Intuition is incredibly important to human-centered design from the standpoint that an “intuitive” design taps into our shared understanding as humans of how things should operate.

Intuition is the secret sauce of the quantum human computer, and as the pace of change AND complexity both accelerate, we must change our brain function to develop not just our intellectual capabilities but our instinctual capabilities as well.

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman wrote about these two ways of thinking in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Let’s look at a short video looking at intuition, science and dreams:

Science Intuition and Dreams – Dean Radin

Dreams can be an incredibly powerful tool for innovation, in fact the Nine Innovation Roles that play an important role in the best-selling book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire came to me in a dream. Many experts recommend that you keep a pen and a notebook next to your bed to capture these flashes of brilliance.

Dreams and shared understanding are but two manifestations of intuition, of our interconnectedness with each other and energies greater than ourselves. But how do we leverage our intuition for innovation?

One way is to use your innovation as an input to use with a tool like The Experiment Canvas™:

The Experiment Canvas

Which is available as a free tool here on my web site from the forthcoming Disruptive Innovation Toolkit™.

You can use it to craft a hypothesis based on your intuition that you want to test, it keeps you focused on what you hope to learn during the experiment, and to consider the setup, operation, and wrapup of your experiment – among other things.

Too often people ignore their intuition because it doesn’t seem scientific. But, turning intuitive insights into hypotheses to test will help you overcome your hesitancy until you train your intuition and to learn to trust it as the potential human quantum computer that it could be. The other reason that people ignore their intuition is that well, they just can’t hear it. For many people, their intellectual mind is so busy that they can’t receive and react to what their intuitive mind is telling them.

Here is an interesting video that highlights these two points and how humans communicate behind the scenes:

Are you drowning out your intuitive mind? Are you failing to consider what is saying, and to test its assertions?

If so, please stop it, and learn new ways to keep innovating!

SPECIAL BONUS:

If you’d like to watch and learn even more about intuition…

Here is a video on Nikola Tesla and the Power of Intuition:


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What is innovation? – EPISODE ONE – Ask the Consultant

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Live from the Innovation Studio comes EPISODE ONE of a new ‘Ask the Consultant’ series of short form videos. EPISODE ONE tackles the question people ask me more than any other:

“What is innovation?”

If you’d like to see additional potential definitions of innovation you can find 60+ additional innovation definitions here (sorry, link expired).

My definition of innovation, refined over the years, is the following:

“Innovation transforms the useful seeds of invention into widely adopted solutions valued above every existing alternative.” – Braden Kelley

The video above covers why I have defined innovation in this way, and why it is so important for every organization to have a clear definition of innovation that they disseminate WIDELY across the organization.

What question should I tackle in the next video episode of “Ask the Consultant” live from my innovation studio?

Contact me with your question

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Click to access the other episodes of Ask the Consultant


Accelerate your change and transformation success

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