Category Archives: Change

Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of August 2024

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of August 2024Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are August’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. SpaceX is a Masterclass in Innovation Simplification — by Pete Foley
  2. Secrets to Overcoming Resistance to Change — by David Burkus
  3. Five Things Most Managers Don’t Know About Innovation — by Greg Satell
  4. Are We Doing Social Innovation Wrong? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  5. Only One Type of Innovation Will Win the Future — by Greg Satell
  6. What Your Website Reveals About Your Brand — by Howard Tiersky
  7. The Coming Leadership Confidence Crisis — by Robyn Bolton
  8. Adjacent Innovation is the Key to Growth and Risk — by Robyn Bolton
  9. Bringing Emotional Energy and Creative Thinking to AI — by Janet Sernack
  10. Delivering Customer Value is the Key to Success — by Mike Shipulski

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in July that continue to resonate with people:

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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Who Are the Most Important People in Your Company?

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Who Are the Most Important People in Your Company?

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When the fate of your company rests on a single project, who are the three people you’d tap to drag that pivotal project over the finish line? And to sharpen it further, ask yourself “Who do I want to lead the project that will save the company?” You now have a list of the three most important people in your company. Or, if you answered the second question, you now have the name of the most important person in your company.

The most important person in your company is the person that drags the most important projects over the finish line. Full stop.

When the project is on the line, the CEO doesn’t matter; the General Manager doesn’t matter; the Business Leader doesn’t matter. The person that matters most is the Project Manager. And the second and third most important people are the two people that the Project Manager relies on.

Don’t believe that? Well, take a bite of this. If the project fails, the product doesn’t sell. And if the product doesn’t sell, the revenue doesn’t come. And if the revenue doesn’t come, it’s game over. Regardless of how hard the CEO pulls, the product doesn’t launch, the revenue doesn’t come, and the company dies. Regardless of how angry the GM gets, without a product launch, there’s no revenue, and it’s lights out. And regardless of the Business Leader’s cajoling, the project doesn’t cross the finish line unless the Project Manager makes it happen.

The CEO can’t launch the product. The GM can’t launch the product. The Business Leader can’t launch the product. Stop for a minute and let that sink in. Now, go back to those three sentences and read them out loud. No, really, read them out loud. I’ll wait.

When the wheels fall off a project, the CEO can’t put them back on. Only a special Project Manager can do that.

There are tools for project management, there are degrees in project management, and there are certifications for project management. But all that is meaningless because project management is alchemy.

Degrees don’t matter. What matters is that you’ve taken over a poorly run project, turned it on its head, and dragged it across the line. What matters is you’ve run a project that was poorly defined, poorly staffed, and poorly funded and brought it home kicking and screaming. What matters is you’ve landed a project successfully when two of three engines were on fire. (Belly landings count.) What matters is that you vehemently dismiss the continuous improvement community on the grounds there can be no best practice for a project that creates something that’s new to the world. What matters is that you can feel the critical path in your chest. What matters is that you’ve sprinted toward the scariest projects and people followed you. And what matters most is they’ll follow you again.

Project Managers have won the hearts and minds of the project team.

The Project manager knows what the team needs and provides it before the team needs it. And when an unplanned need arises, like it always does, the project manager begs, borrows, and steals to secure what the team needs. And when they can’t get what’s needed, they apologize to the team, re-plan the project, reset the completion date, and deliver the bad news to those that don’t want to hear it.

If the General Manager says the project will be done in three months and the Project Manager thinks otherwise, put your money on the Project Manager.

Project Managers aren’t at the top of the org chart, but we punch above our weight. We’ve earned the trust and respect of most everyone. We aren’t liked by everyone, but we’re trusted by all. And we’re not always understood, but everyone knows our intentions are good. And when we ask for help, people drop what they’re doing and pitch in. In fact, they line up to help. They line up because we’ve gone out of our way to help them over the last decade. And they line up to help because we’ve put it on the table.

Whether it’s IoT, Digital Strategy, Industry 4.0, top-line growth, recurring revenue, new business models, or happier customers, it’s all about the projects. None of this is possible without projects. And the keystone of successful projects? You guessed it. Project Managers.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Bringing Emotional Energy and Creative Thinking to AI

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Bringing Emotional Energy and Creative Thinking to AI

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

The impact of disruption, hyper-connectivity, and uncertainty, coupled with the pace of change, is causing many people to feel fearful and anxious. They become defensive and reactive and ‘go under’ emotionally and ‘go inwards’ cognitively by ruminating about their past and what bad things may happen in the future.  Dwelling on past mistakes, failures, and poor performance also causes them to disengage emotionally, take flight and move away, avoid taking action, fight, or freeze and become inert, paralyzed, and immobilized. The outcome is resistance to the possibilities and creative changes using Generative AI might bring. Because they lack the vital creative and emotional energy to generate creative thinking in partnership with AI, they will resist innovation-led change and stay ‘stuck’ in their habitual, safe and conventional roles, capabilities and identities.

Emotional energy is the catalyst that fuels the creative process. Understanding and harnessing this energy inspires and motivates individuals to explore and embrace creative thinking strategies in partnership with AI.

When a person’s emotional energy has contracted, it results in constrained, negative, pessimistic, and even catastrophic thinking habits.

Where there is no space, doorway, or threshold to take on anything new, novel, or different or to imagine what might be possible in an uncertain future to evolve, advance, or transform their personal or professional lives.

Emotional energy catalyzes people’s hope, positivity and optimism to approach their worlds differently.

When people are constrained from becoming hopeful, positive, and optimistic, they cannot apply foresight to explore future possibilities and opportunities at the accelerating pace that Generative AI tools offer in unleashing the human ingenuity and generating creative thinking required to solve challenges and increasingly complex problems.

Augmenting human creativity

Generative AI, as highlighted in a recent Harvard Business Review article, How Generative AI can Augment Human Creativity, has the potential to assist humans in creating innovative solutions. Its role is not to replace humans but to augment their creativity, helping them generate and identify novel ideas and improve the quality of raw ideas.

To empower individuals to make intelligent decisions and solve complex problems, it is crucial to notice, disrupt, dispute and deviate from their unresourceful default patterns or habitual ways of doing things.

Because emotional energy is the catalyst that fuels the creative process, it is crucial to help people find ways to re-ignite their emotional energy.

Empowering, enabling, and equipping them to embody and take on new, more resourceful emotional states and traits that allow them to break free from the constraints by identifying and letting go of old, irrelevant roles, capabilities, and identities. To take on new ones to facilitate positive changes, solve challenges, and deliver highly valued innovative solutions in partnership with Generative AI to generate creative thinking.

Generating the power of questions in problem-solving

I applied and implemented three key strategies to partner with Generative AI during the six-month coaching partnership. I used creative thinking strategies to develop a comprehensive life-coaching plan for a coaching client that serendipitously co-created a range of transformational outcomes.

Identify the key challenges, strengths, and systemic nature of the core problem and set a goal for change.

Encouraged to experiment with coaching in partnership with Generative AI, I created a comprehensive summary of what my client and I agreed her core problem was.  We defined a goal for effecting positive and constructive change and outlined evidence of achieving a successful outcome. I incorporated these elements into a descriptive paragraph and uploaded it into the Generative AI platform.

Develop a range of catalytic questions.

I focused on designing four key catalytic questions, to evoke and provoke creative thinking strategies. I requested the platform to design and develop a life-coaching plan to achieve our goal and solve her unique problem:   

Integration involves showing that two things which appear to be different are actually the same:

  • What might be some key existing transformational coaching elements that can be integrated into the new life-coaching plan I am trying to create to solve this problem?
  • Splitting involves seeing how two things that look the same might actually be different and can be divided into useful parts, like an assembly line:
  • What might be some key components of transformational coaching plans that can be combined to connect with a life-coaching plan to help solve this problem?
  • Figure-ground reversal involves realizing that what is crucial is in the background and not in the foreground, like the invention of Slack.
  • What might be some of the missing parts in the transformational and life coaching processes that might be included to help solve this problem?
  • Distal thinking involves imagining things different from the present, like the Tesla electric car.
  • What could be possible without boundaries, rules or limitations in harnessing the emotional energy required to partner with my client in our coaching relationship?
  • How might I create value for my client? What key constraints in her whole system relate to life coaching, and how might I leverage these to solve the problem differently?

It took less than a minute and consisted of a comprehensive, step-by-step, detailed plan that would have taken me at least half a day to consider and construct.

I was delighted to have an evidence-based example of successfully augmenting human creativity, partnering with Generative AI to generate creative thinking to advance my coaching partnership.

Partner with applying a transformational process.

It took less than a minute and consisted of a comprehensive, step-by-step, detailed plan that would have taken me at least half a day of using my pause-power to construct. I was delighted to have an evidence-based example of successfully augmenting human creativity to experiment with when partnering with Generative AI to generate creative thinking in my coaching partnership:

  • Generating and identifying a range of novel ideas towards improving her well-being.
  • Exploring and improving the range and quality of the initial raw ideas by applying pause power to incubate, illuminate, and generate creative thinking.
  • Identifying and developing a range of options for my client to choose from, allowing her to let go of what was depleting her emotional energy and retain her hopefulness, positivity, and optimism.
  • Identifying and developing a range of options for my client to choose from, to take on to manifest the desired future state of well-being and re-energize her emotional energy.

What was the outcome?

By co-creating a safe and collective holding space with my client, we supported her in re-energizing emotionally and applying future-oriented creative thinking strategies. We partnered with Generative AI to innovate my coaching approach and maximize our intelligence.

The outcome was personally transformative and sustained by:

  • Ensuring she re-ignited and identified strategies and new habits to sustain her emotional energy and make the necessary changes and future choices.
  • Applying circuit breakers and divergent thinking strategies to disrupt and dispute unresourceful beliefs, biases and behavior patterns.
  • Creating a safe space allowed her to deviate from her feelings, thoughts, and mindset to identify what new roles, capabilities, and identities to take on in the future and how they could benefit her and add value to the quality of her life.
  • Assisting in creating various ideas and options to refine when making significant lifestyle change choices.

It was a powerful learning experience for both my client and myself, reinforcing and validating that “Generative AI’s greatest potential is not replacing humans; it is to assist humans in their individual and collective efforts to create hitherto unimaginable solutions. It can truly democratize innovation.”

Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.

Check out our learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack. It is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalised innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over nine weeks and can be customised as a bespoke corporate learning program. Please find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Secrets to Overcoming Resistance to Change

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Secrets to Overcoming Resistance To Change

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Employee resistance to change is one of the most perplexing and challenging issues that business executives encounter. Senior leaders have mapped out a change initiative and, in the process, gotten themselves excited about the future only to find the rest of the organization doesn’t share their enthusiasm.

This resistance manifests in various ways, such as decreased productivity, higher rates of employee turnover and transfer requests, attitudes, unauthorized strikes, or work slowdowns. And in trying to overcome resistance to change, leaders often make structured, logical arguments for why the change is needed.

Arguments that fail to persuade.

What’s often overlooked is that employee resistance to change is most likely due to the emotions behind the change, not the change itself. And in examining those emotions, the late Carl Frost offered four key questions that people ask themselves when they’re being asked to change. The answers to these questions determine their excitement, or resistance, to change.

In this article, we will explore how to overcome resistance to change by addressing the emotions behind it and we’ll offer advice on how leaders can answer those four questions.

Question 1: Do we know where we’re going?

A clear and compelling vision of the future is necessary to overcome resistance to change. It is important to paint a clear picture of what the future of the organization looks like and include the individual being asked to make the change in that vision. When employees can see themselves as a part of the future, they are more likely to embrace the change. Additionally, it is crucial to ensure that the vision is shared at every level of the organization. This helps create a sense of unity and purpose, making it easier for employees to align themselves with the change.

By providing a clear direction and involving employees in the vision, leaders can address the uncertainty and fear that often accompany change. When employees have a clear understanding of where the organization is heading, they are less likely to resist and more likely to actively participate in the change process.

Question 2: Do we know why we’re going there?

Communicating the reasons for the change effectively is essential in overcoming resistance. Employees need to understand the changes in regulation, competition, or the economy that necessitate the change. It is important to avoid nostalgia for the old times before the change, as this can hinder progress. Instead, leaders should focus on selling people on why the change is necessary and beneficial.

By clearly explaining the rationale behind the change, leaders can address any doubts or concerns employees may have. When employees understand the need for change and how it will positively impact the organization, they are more likely to embrace it and actively contribute to its success.

Question 3: Do we know we can get there?

Confidence in the organization’s ability to achieve the vision is crucial for overcoming resistance to change. Leaders must build belief in the organization’s capacity to reach the new future. This can be done by addressing concerns about skills, resources, and capabilities. It is important to create a plan to acquire necessary skills and resources, ensuring that employees have the support and tools they need to succeed.

By addressing concerns and providing the necessary resources, leaders can instill confidence in employees and alleviate their fears about the change. When employees believe that the organization has the capability to achieve the vision, they are more likely to embrace the change and actively work towards its realization.

Question 4: Do we know that there is better than here?

Individuals need to believe that the change will benefit them personally in order to lessen their resistance. Leaders should paint a compelling picture of the change in their role and how it will be better. It is important to show how the change will result in personal growth and improvement. Additionally, leaders should address concerns about sacrifices, extra time, and learning new skills.

By addressing the personal benefits of the change and addressing personal concerns, leaders can help employees see the value in embracing the change. When employees understand how the change will positively impact their own lives, they are more likely to overcome resistance and actively engage in the change process.

Overcoming resistance to change is crucial for successful change initiatives. By addressing the emotions behind the change and answering the four questions, leaders can increase excitement, self-efficacy, and confidence in the change. That helps the organizational change itself find success and (hopefully) that success empowers every employee to do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pexels

Originally published on DavidBurkus.com on August 7, 2023

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Time to Make a Difference

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Time to Make a Difference

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When it’s time to make meaningful change, there’s no time for consensus.

When the worn path of success must be violated, use a small team.

When it’s time for new thinking, create an unreasonable deadline, and get out of the way.

The best people don’t want the credit, they want to be stretched just short of their breaking point.

When company leadership wants you to build consensus before moving forward, they don’t think the problem is all that important or they don’t trust you.

When it’s time to make unrealistic progress, it’s time for fierce decision making.

When there’s no time for consensus, people’s feelings will be hurt. But there’s no time for that either.

When you’re pissed off because there’s been no progress for three years, do it yourself.

When it’s time to make a difference, permission is not required. Make a difference.

The best people must be given the responsibility to use their judgment.

When it’s time to break the rules, break them.

When the wheels fall off, regardless of the consequences, put them back on.

When you turn no into yes and catch hell for violating protocol, you’re working for the wrong company.

When everyone else has failed, it’s time to use your discretion and do as you see fit.

When you ask the team to make rain and they balk, you didn’t build the right team.

When it’s important and everyone’s afraid of getting it wrong, do it yourself and give them the credit.

The best people crave ridiculous challenges.

When the work must be different, create an environment that demands the team acts differently.

When it’s time for magic, keep the scope tight and the timeline tighter.

When the situation is dire and you use your discretion, to hell with anyone who has a problem with it.

When it’s time to pull a rabbit out of the hat, you get to decide what gets done and your special team member gets to decide how to go about it. Oh, and you also get to set an unreasonable time constraint.

When it’s important, to hell with efficiency. All that matters is effectiveness.

The best people want you to push them to the limit.

When you think you might get fired for making a difference, why the hell would you want to work for a company like that?

When it’s time to disrespect the successful business model, it’s time to create harsh conditions that leave the team no alternative.

The best people want to live where they want to live and do impossible work.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Nine Actions for Building a Great Team

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Which Resonates with You?

Nine Actions for Building a Great Team

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

Building a strong team is a multifaceted journey, and there are several key actions that can contribute to the growth and success of a team.

Reflecting on the nine actions for building a great team, which ones do you find your team focuses on the most?

Would you say it is:

1. Cultivating a growth mindset?

2. Enhancing psychological safety?

3. Mapping and engaging stakeholders?

4. Mastering difficult conversations?

5. Improving feedback processes?

6. Addressing individual motivations?

7. Injecting fun into your work environment?

8. Developing networking and learning opportunities?

9. Identifying trust drivers and barriers?

Share your experiences and let’s inspire each other on actions that can shape the dynamics and achievements of your team!

Team Building Stefan Lindegaard

Image Credit: Pexels, Stefan Lindegaard

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Breaking Free From Stagnation

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Breaking Free From Stagnation

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

As a leader in your organization, you’re under tremendous stress. Not only do you need to deliver against a “growth strategy” that demands constant increases in revenue and profit, but you also need to cut costs and support employees who are more disengaged and burned out than ever before.  If it feels like you’re working harder and running faster than ever to maintain the status quo, then I have good and bad news for you.

Bad news: You’re right. 

The feeling of working harder or moving faster simply to stay in the same place is called the Red Queen effect or hypothesis.  The hypothesis asserts “that species must constantly adapt, evolve, and proliferate in order to survive while pitted against ever-evolving opposing species.”  Its name is inspired by the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, who explains to Alice, “here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”

You probably feel the same need to adapt to survive “while pitted against ever-evolving opposing species” every time you see new technologies, read about another new management framework, or hear news from your competitors. You also understand that your organization needs to grow and often hear that it needs to do so at all costs, so you buckle down, work hard, and pull off quarterly miracles.

Good for you! You’re reward?  You get to do it all over again, and faster, this quarter.  And, to add insult to injury, all that growth you’re working harder and harder to achieve is a mirage.

75% of companies do not grow.

HBS professor Gary P. Pisano examined the growth rate of 10,897 publicly held US companies between 1976 and 2019.  When adjusted for inflation, the top quartile grew 11.8% yearly, but the other 75% showed little to negative growth. 

Being in that top quartile was no guarantee of success, as only 15% (3% of the total sample) were able to sustain a growth rate of 0.3%+ for 30 years. In fact, only SEVEN companies—Walmart, UPS, Southwest, Publix, Johnson & Johnson, Danaher, and Berkshire Hathaway—were top-quartile growth companies throughout the thirty years studied.

If you worked at one of those 7 companies, congrats!  Your hard work delivered real and repeatable growth.  If you worked at any of the other 10,890, I hope they offer great benefits?

We know why.

Every good academic knows you can’t just throw out some data without trying to find a causal link, and Professor Pisano is a good academic

“I have found that while the usual explanations for slow or minimal growth—market forces and technological changes such as disruptive innovation—play a role, many companies’ growth problems are self-inflicted. Specifically, firms approach growth in a highly reactive, opportunistic manner. When market demand is booming, they go on hiring binges, throw resources at developing new capacity, and build out organizational infrastructure without thinking through the implications… In the process of chasing growth, companies can easily destroy the things that made them successful in the first place, such as their capacity for innovation, their agility, their great customer service, or their unique cultures. When demand slows, pressures to maintain historical growth rates can lead to quick-fix solutions such as costly acquisitions or drastic cuts in R&D, other capabilities, and training. The damage caused by these moves only exacerbates the growth problems.”

(Bold text added by me)

Good news: You Can Do Something About It

In fact, as a leader in your organization, you’re among the few who have any prayer of pulling your organization out of the Red Queen’s race and putting it on track to real and sustainable growth. Achieving this incredible success requires you (and your colleagues) to decide three things:

  1. How fast to grow (target rate of growth)
  2. Where to find sources of new demand (direction of growth)
  3. How to assemble the resources required to grow (method of growth)

Together, these three decisions comprise your growth strategy and enable your organization to achieve the “delicate balance” between demand and supply required to sustain profitable growth.

Getting to these decisions isn’t easy, but neither is slaying the Jabberwocky.  So, as this brief rest stop in your race comes to an end, who do you choose to be – Alice, who works hard and deals with a bit of nonsense to progress, or the Red Queen, content to work harder to stay in the same place?

Image credit: Unsplash

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50% Off of Charting Change This Weekend Only

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50% Off of Charting Change This Weekend Only

Wow! Exciting news!

My publisher is having a 24 hour flash sale that will allow you to get the hardcover or the digital version (eBook) of my latest best-selling book Charting Change for 50% off!

What People Are Saying

Phil McKinney “Braden Kelley and his merry band of guest experts have done a nice job of visualizing in Charting Change how to make future change efforts more collaborative. Kelley shows how to draw out the hidden assumptions and land mines early in the change planning process, and presents some great techniques for keeping people aligned as a change effort or project moves forward.”
– Phil McKinney, retired CTO for Hewlett-Packard and author of Beyond the Obvious
Daniel H Pink “There’s no denying it: Change is scary. But it’s also inevitable. In Charting Change, Braden Kelley gives you a toolkit and a blueprint for initiating and managing change in your organization, no matter what form it takes.”
– Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and To Sell is Human
Marshall Goldsmith “Higher employee retention? Increased revenue? Process enhancements? Whatever your change goal, Charting Change is full of bright ideas and invaluable visual guides to walk you through change in any area where your organization needs it.”
– Marshall Goldsmith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Triggers, MOJO and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

You must go to SpringerLink for this Cyber Sale:

  • The offer is valid until August 5, 2024 only using code FLASH50

Click here to get this deal using code FLASH50

Quick reminder: Everyone can download ten free tools from the Human-Centered Change methodology by going to its page on this site via the link in this sentence, and book buyers can get 26 of the 70+ tools from the Change Planning Toolkit (including the Change Planning Canvas™) by contacting me with proof of purchase.

*This offer is valid for selected English-language Springer, Apress & Palgrave books & eBooks and is redeemable on link.springer.com only. Titles affected by fixed book price laws, forthcoming titles and titles temporarily not available on springer.com are excluded from this promotion, as are reference works, handbooks, encyclopedias, subscriptions, or bulk purchases. The currency in which your order will be invoiced depends on the billing address associated with the payment method used, not necessarily your preferred currency. Regional VAT/tax may apply. Promotional prices may change due to exchange rates. This offer is valid for individual customers only. Booksellers, book distributors, and institutions such as libraries and corporations please visit springernature.com/contact-us. This promotion does not work in combination with other discounts or gift cards. Promotional prices may change due to exchange rates.






Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of July 2024

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of July 2024Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are July’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Organizational Debt Syndrome Poses a Threat — by Stefan Lindegaard
  2. Do Nothing More Often — by Robyn Bolton
  3. Is Disruption About to Claim a New Victim? — by Robyn Bolton
  4. What Top Innovators Do Differently — by Greg Satell
  5. Four Hidden Secrets of Innovation — by Greg Gatell
  6. Rise of the Atomic Consultant — by Braden Kelley
  7. Do You Bring Your Whole Self to Work? — by Mike Shipulski
  8. Giving Your Team a Sense of Shared Purpose — by David Burkus
  9. Creating Effective Digital Teams — by Howard Tiersky
  10. Smarter Risk Taking — by Janet Sernack

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in June that continue to resonate with people:

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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Do Nothing More Often

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Do Nothing More Often

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

“What do you plan to do on vacation?” my friend asked.

“Nothing…”

Long silence

“…And it will be amazing.”

We live in a world that confuses activity with achievement so I should not have been surprised that the idea of deliberately doing nothing stunned my friend into silence.

After all, when people say, “I wish I had nothing to do” they usually mean “I wish I could choose what I do with my time.” And, when they do have the opportunity to choose, very few choose to do nothing.

Why does the idea of doing nothing make us so uncomfortable?

To put it bluntly, busy-ness is a status symbol.

In their paper, “Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol,” professors Silvia Bellezza (Columbia Business School), Neeru Paharia (Georgetown University), and Anat Keinan (Harvard University), wrote that people’s desire to be perceived as time-starved is

“driven by the perceptions that a busy person possesses desired human capital characteristics (competence, ambition) and is scarce and in demand on the job market.”

We didn’t always believe this.

For most of human history, we’ve had a pretty balanced view of the need for both work and leisure. Aristotle argued that virtue was obtainable through contemplation, not through endless activity. Most major religions call for a day of rest and reflection. Even 19th-century moral debates, as recorded by historian EO Thompson, recognized the value of hard work AND the importance of rest.

So what happened?

While it’s easy to say that we have to work more because of the demands of our jobs, the data says otherwise. In fact, according to a working paper by Jonathan Gershuny, a time-expert based on the UK, actual time spent at work has not increased since the 1960s.

The actual reason may be that we want to work more. According to economist Robert Frank, those who identify as workaholics believe that:

“building wealth…is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”

We choose to spend time working because Work — “the job itself, the psychic benefits of accumulating money, the pursuit of status, and the ability to afford the many expensive enrichments of an upper-class lifestyle” according to an article in The Atlantic — is what we find most fulfilling.

It’s not that I like working, I just don’t like wasting time.

We tend to equate doing nothing with laziness, apathy, a poor work ethic, and a host of other personality flaws and social ills. But what if that’s not true.

What if, in the process of doing nothing, we are as productive as when we do something?

Science is increasingly showing this to be the case.

Multiple fMRI studies have revealed the existence of the default mode network (DMN), a large-scale brain network that is most active when we’re day-dreaming. Researchers at the University of Southern California argue that

“downtime is, in fact, essential to mental processes that affirm our identities, develop our understanding of human behavior and instill an internal code of ethics — processes that depend on the DMN.”

The results of harnessing the power of your DMN are immense:

More creativity. The research discussed in Scientific American suggests that DMN is more active in creative people. For example, according to Psychology Today:

  • The most recorded song of all time, “Yesterday” by The Beatles, was ‘heard’ by Paul McCartney as he was waking up one morning. The melody was fully formed in his mind, and he went straight to the piano in his bedroom to find the chords to go with it, and later found words to fit the melody.
  • Mozart described how his musical ideas ‘flow best and most abundantly.’ when he was alone ‘traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep… Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.’
  • Tchaikovsky described how the idea for a composition usually came ‘suddenly and unexpectedly… It takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches and leaves, and finally blossoms.’

More productivity. According to an essay in The New York Times, “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”

Less burnout. Regardless of how many hours you work, consider this: researchers have found that it takes 25 minutes to recover from a phone call or an e-mail. On average, we are interrupted every 11 minutes which means that we can never catch up, we’re always behind.

That feeling of always being behind leads to burn-out which the World Health Organization officially recognized as a medical condition defined as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” and manifests with the following symptoms:

  • Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
  • Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
  • Reduced professional efficacy

Doing nothing, quieting our minds and not focusing on any particular task, can actually help reset our bodies systems, quieting the release of stress chemicals, slowing our heart rates, and improving our mental and physical energy

Better health. Multiple studies indicate that idleness “produces many health benefits including, but not limited to, reduced heart rate, better digestion, improvements in mood, and a boost in overall emotional well-being — which, of course, affects everything on a biochemical and physiological level, thereby serving as a major deciding factor on whether or not we fall ill, and/or remain ill. Mental downtime also replenishes glucose and oxygen levels in the brain, and allows our brains to process and file things, which leaves us feeling more rested and clear-headed, promotes a stronger sense of self-confidence, and…more willing to we trust change.”

Fine, you convinced me. How can I do nothing?

There are the usual suspects — vacations, meditation, and physical exercise — but, if you’re anything like me, the thought of even finding 5 minutes to listen to a meditation app is so overwhelming that I never even start.

An easier place to start, in my experience, is in intentionally working nothing into the moments that are already “free.” Here are three of my favorite ways to work a bit of nothing into my day.

Make the Snooze button work for you. When my alarm goes off, I instinctively hit the Snooze button because, I claim, it is my first and possibly only victory of the day. It’s also a great way to get 9 minutes of thoughtful quiet nothingness in which I can take a few deep breaths, scan my body for any aches and pains, and make sure that I’m calm and my mind is quiet when I get out of bed.

Stare out the window. I always place my computer next to a window so that I can stare out the window for a few minutes throughout the day and people think I’m thinking deep thoughts. Which I am. Subconsciously. Lest anyone accuse me of being lazy or unproductive while I watch the clouds roll by, I simply point them to research that shows “that individuals who took five to ten minute breaks from work to do nothing a few times a day displayed an approximately 50% increase in their ability to think clearly and creatively, thus rendering their work far more productive.

Bring the beach to you. Research from a variety of places, from the UK Census to The Journal of Coastal Zone Management, indicate that our brains and bodies benefit from time at the beach. But, if you can’t go to the beach, there are lots of ways to bring the beach to you. Perhaps the simplest is to bring more blue into your environment. Most people associate blue with feelings of calm and peace and a study published in the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that the color blue can boost creativity. Even putting a picture of a beach (or your own personal happy place) on your desk or computer screen can trigger your brain to slow down, relax, and possibly trigger your DMN.

With so many benefits, isn’t it time you started doing more nothing?

Image credit: Pexels

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