Category Archives: Change

Positive Power of Negative Emotions Drive Change

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Positive Power of Negative Emotions Drive Change

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

You want to make life better for others. This desire is reflected in the optimism and positivity of your language – create value, love the problem, and delight the customer.  But making life better requires change, and, as the adage goes, “People want change, but they don’t want to be changed.”

You are confident that the solution you created will make life better and that the change people need to make is quite small and painless, well worth the dramatic improvement you offer.  Yet they resist.  No amount of explaining, showing, convincing, or cajoling changes their mind.  What else can you do?

To quote Darth Vader, “Give yourself to the Dark Side.  It is the only way to save your friends.”

“If only you knew the power of the Dark Side…”

The Dark Side is populated by “negative” emotions like anger, fear, and frustration, which are incredibly powerful.

Consider that:

Unfortunately, these are also some of the first emotions experienced when confronting change.   

Change requires people to let go of what they know in exchange for the promise of something better.  This immediately triggers Loss Aversion, the cognitive bias in which the pain of losing is psychologically twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining. 

As a result, people won’t let go of what they know until the pain of holding on becomes unbearable.  When you point out the problems and pain of the current situation, you help people understand and experience the unbearableness of the current situation. 

“Anger, fear, aggression; the Dark Side of the Force are they”

Not every “negative” emotion elicits the same behavior, so carefully choose the one to tap into.

Fear motivates people to seek safety, which can be good if your solution truly offers a safer alternative.  It’s a motivator used well by companies such as Volvo, SimpliSafe, and Graco.  But lean on it too much, and people may feel overwhelmed and remain frozen to the status quo.

Anger motivates people to take risks, which can be good when the change requires bold decisions and dogged persistence.  It can be great when it bonds people together to achieve a shared goal or protect a common value.  Apple used this emotion to brilliant effect in its famous “1984” commercial announcing the launch of Macintosh.  But incite too much anger, and things can get broken and not in a helpful way like Apple’s ad.

Frustration, one of the emotions that often drives aggression, is anger’s polite little sister.  When people feel frustrated, they’re likely to act, persistently pursue solutions, and creatively approach and overcome obstacles.  But if the change is big, feels scary, and puts their sense of self at risk, frustration isn’t powerful enough to convince people to let go of the old and embrace the new.

“If you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.”

Yoda is incredibly wise, but he gets this one wrong.  Using the Dark Side to speak to people’s “negative” emotions doesn’t doom you to a life or career of fear-mongering or inciting violence.  Start here, don’t stay here.

Multiple research studies show that positive emotions, like hope and joy, are more powerful than negative ones in maintaining motivation and even enable more creative thinking and problem-solving.  By speaking to both negative and positive emotions, the Dark Side and the Light, you enable change by giving people a reason to let go of the past and a future worth reaching for.

When people stop resisting and start reaching to the future you’re offering, change happens, and you realize that Yoda was right, “Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.”

Image credit: Pixabay

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3 Innovation Lessons from The Departed

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3 Innovation Lessons from The Departed

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

It’s award season, which means that, as a resident of Boston, I have the responsibility and privilege to talk about The Departed (pronounced: The Dep-ah-ted).  The film won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2007 and earned Martin Scorsese his first, and to date only, Academy Award for Best Director.  It is also chock-full of great lessons for corporate innovators.

Quick Synopsis

If you’ve seen The Departed, you can skip this part.  If you haven’t, why not and read on.

The Departed is loosely based on notorious Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger and features three main characters:

  1. Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), a vicious and slightly unhinged Irish mob boss
  2. Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a Massachusetts State Trooper in the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) formed to catch Costello, who, in his spare time, is a spy for Costello.
  3. Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), a police academy recruit who goes undercover to infiltrate Costello’s organization

But wait!  There’s more.  Alec Baldwin plays Colin’s SIU boss, George Ellerby.  Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg (who received an Oscar nomination for this role) play Billy’s Mass State Police (MSP) bosses, Captain Queenan and Staff Sergeant Dignam, respectively.  Completing the chaos is Vera Farmiga, who plays Madolyn Madden, Colin’s girlfriend and Billy’s court-ordered psychiatrist.

There’s a lot of other stuff going on, but that gives you enough context for the following quotes to hopefully make sense.

Listen to the words people use.

Colin (after Dignam refuses to hand over undercover files): I need those passwords.

Ellerby: No, you want those passwords

It’s not often that Ellerby says something useful, let alone wise, but he nails it with this one.  Colin wants the passwords to Dignam’s files on undercover agents because it will make both Colin’s official job of finding Costello’s rat in the MSP and his unofficial job of finding the MSP officer in Costello’s crew easier.  He doesn’t need the passwords, however, because, with enough time and effort, he can find the rats he’s looking for.

When we hear from customers that they want something, it’s tempting to run off and create it.  But as Ellerby points out, wants and needs are different.  Just because customers want something doesn’t mean they are willing to pay for or change their behavior to get and use it. 

Figuring out what a customer needs is difficult because it requires them to trust you enough to admit they have a problem they can’t solve.  It’s also difficult because most of us have access to solutions to our functional needs (think the bottom few layers of Maslow’s hierarchy).  As a result, the needs consumers grapple with tend to be emotional and social, and it’s far more challenging to admit those to a stranger, especially in a focus group or product-focused interview.

How you feel impacts everyone around you

Madolyn (after a counseling session): Why is the last patient of the day always the hardest?

Billy: Because you’re tired, and you don’t give a sh*t.  It’s not super-natural.

Billy and Madolyn get off to a rough start in their first counseling session, culminating in Billy asking for a prescription for Valium.  Madolyn calls him out for “drug-seeking behavior” and throws two Valiums across the desk before Billy storms out.  A few minutes later, Madolyn catches up with Billy, hands him a prescription for Valium, and asks the above question.

Being a corporate innovator can be difficult, sometimes soul-crushing work (ask the good people at Store 8).  It can also be thrilling and inspiring.  It can even be all those things in one day.  That’s what makes it tiring, even when you give a sh*t. 

Managing your energy and monitoring your behavior are leadership qualities we don’t discuss often enough.  It’s okay to be exhausted after a day of facilitating ideation sessions or intense strategic meetings.  It’s normal to be frustrated after a contentious conversation or demotivated when you get bad news.  But leaders usually find a way to not take those emotions out on their teams.  And, in the rare instance when they punish the team for someone else’s sin, they apologize and explain. 

Your job is not your identity.

Billy: Look, I just want my identity back, all right?  That’s all.

Colin: All right, I understand.  You want to be a cop again.

Billy: No, no, being a cop’s not an identity.  I want my identity back.

Towards the end of the film, Billy is tired of working undercover and reports to MSP headquarters to complete the paperwork required to expunge his criminal record and get his identity back.  That’s when Colin makes the same mistake most of us make and confuses Billy’s job with his identity.

We spend so much time at work.  We rely on our paychecks for so much.  We even introduce ourselves to new people using our job titles.  It’s easy for your job to feel like your identity, especially when your job aligns so closely with your deeply held beliefs and values.  But your job is not your identity.  You are still a Tempered Radical, even without your corporate title.   You are still an optimistic problem-solver, even when it’s been months since your last brainstorming session. 

You are an innovator, even if you don’t have a business card to prove it.

Image credit: RadioTimes.com

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

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of March 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 March’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Agile Innovation Management — by Diana Porumboiu
  2. How to Re-engineer the Incubation Zone — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  3. It’s Not Clear What Innovation Success Is — by Robyn Bolton
  4. How Do You Know If Your Idea is Novel? — by Mike Shipulski
  5. How to Tell if You Are Trusted — by Mike Shipulski
  6. Innovation is Rubbish! — by John Bessant
  7. Celebrating the Trailblazing Women Pioneers of Innovation — by Art Inteligencia
  8. Thinking Differently About Leadership and Innovation — by Janet Sernack
  9. The Remarkable Power of Negative Feedback — by Dennis Stauffer
  10. 10 CX and Customer Service Predictions for 2024 (Part 1) — by Shep Hyken

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in February 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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Easter Sale on Charting Change

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Easter Sale on Charting Change

Wow! Exciting news for Easter!

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 to slide nicely into the Easter basket of someone you love!

I created the Human-Centered Change methodology to help organizations get everyone literally all on the same page for change. The 70+ visual, collaborative tools are introduced in my book Charting Change, including the powerful Change Planning Canvas™. The toolkit has been created to help organizations:

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

You must go to SpringerLink for this Cyber Sale:

  • The offer is valid until April 1, 2023 only using code 50off

Click here to get this deal using code 50off

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 English-language Springer, Palgrave & Apress books & eBooks. The discount is redeemable on link.springer.com only. Titles affected by fixed book price laws, forthcoming titles and titles temporarily not available on link.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 home 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.






Thinking Differently About Leadership and Innovation

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Thinking Differently About Leadership and Innovation

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

We live in a world, with less stability, certainty, simplicity, and predictability, where regional conflicts, societal divisions, and civil unrest have increased globally. Simultaneously, technological-induced disruptive innovations and the climate crisis impact every aspect of our daily lives. This means that we live in an age of overwhelm and a world of unknowns, requiring us all to know how to uncover and eliminate our individual and collective blind spots, to be adaptive and innovative. By thinking and acting differently about leadership and innovation, we can all grow, survive, and thrive within it.

This a moment in time that calls for leaders to boldly and courageously, step up, shift out of any myopic, reactive, cost, and short-term focus, and develop their leadership consciousness.  By taking personal responsibility, and being accountable for owning and shifting their interior state or inner being, to eliminate flaws, maximize core strengths, and build confidence, capacity, and competence to adapt, innovate, and grow through disruption.  

To refocus on developing future-fit systemic and innovative solutions, that add real value in ways that serve and sustain people, profit, and the planet, differently.

Leadership is in crisis

We are experiencing a global leadership crisis.

Many leaders, in the corporate sector, and national and international institutions have become increasingly reactive. In ways that are passively or aggressively defensive, egotistic, and often self-serving. By vacillating between political correctness, denial, justification, and avoidance – and between attacking, shaming, and blaming groups, individuals, and nations for the current state of social unrest, political chaos, cultural divisions, and regional and religious conflicts.

  • Hitting a pause button

The missing key element is the leadership consciousness required in taking the time to pause, retreat (step back), reflect, and explore the deep causes, current implications, and nature of challenging, complex, and systemic problems.

Leaders are obliged to step out of their habitual comfort zones and boost their ability to bravely make sense of what is going on – and develop the foresight skills to risk mitigate and identify the most intelligent actions that will deliver high-value and high-impact outcomes that serve people, profits, and the planet.

To uncover the repetitive mindsets and behaviors that keep on producing results that no one wants, by bravely exposing and eliminating their leadership blind spots. 

Leadership blind spots

We know that most of the innovative solutions to the complex challenges we face already exist.

To unleash these desirable, value-adding, and innovative solutions, we need to empower, enable, and equip leaders to bravely and safely expose and eliminate their largely, unconscious and unknown leadership blind spots. These exist in our individual and collective leadership, they also exist in our everyday team and social interactions.

Because most leaders are smart and know what to do, and how to do it, identifying and eliminating any leadership blind spots will enable them to do it better.

Yet, despite, in many cases, years of leadership training they are at risk of being perpetually reactive, unfocused, overcome with “busyness” and addicted to the tasks involved in “getting stuff” (usually the urgent “small stuff” and not always the “important stuff”) the done. 

As defined by Dr. Karen Blakeley in “Leadership Blind Spots and What to Do about Them,” a blind spot is “a regular tendency to repress, distort, dismiss or fail to notice information, views or ideas in a particular area that results in an individual failing to learn, change or grow in response to changes in that area.”

  • Source of leadership blind spots

The majority of leaders are mostly blind to the Source from which they operate. This is often because many do not have the self-awareness and emotional intelligence to manage and self-regulate any of their unconscious un-resourceful emotional states, mindsets, and behaviors. 

Leadership Consciousness

“An ordered distinction between self and environment, simple wakefulness, one’s sense of self-hood or soul explored by “looking within”; being a metaphorical “stream” of contents, or being a mental state, mental event or mental process of the brain”.

  • Igniting the brain

Leadership blind spots are typically contained in our neurology and can be exposed and eliminated by:


Paying attention to their three core neurological levels and being intentional in cultivating their leadership consciousness.

When engaged in a coaching partnership, a leader can learn how to shift, self-regulate, and self-manage at all three levels to effectively eliminate their flaws, and learn how to think and act differently in delivering successful transformation and change initiatives.

Power of Coaching Intervention

A coach is an external disruptor who seeks to bring out the best in a leader, tap into and maximize their potential, and adds value by facilitating deep, insight-based learning processes, that shifts mindsets and result in sustainable behavior change.

Coaching helps smart people be and think beyond who they are being and beyond what they are thinking now. In ways that can empower, enable, and equip leaders to adapt, innovate, and grow, cultivate their imagination and creativity, to think and act differently in an unstable world.

This enables them to develop and implement systemic and innovative solutions in a timely way and at scale.

  • Noticing, disrupting, disputing, and deviating

Coaches partner with leaders to enable them to notice, disrupt, dispute, and deviate by accessing and harnessing resourceful emotional states, and mindsets. Coaches safely explore the “boxes”, thinking, or the “stories” a leader may have been unconsciously living within, and constricted by.

Because we can’t solve the problem with the same thinking that created it in the first instance.

Especially in a 21st-century world where developing leadership consciousness enables us to adapt, innovate, and grow by:

  • Reducing our brain’s ability to hijack us when doing its best to constantly keep us safe from danger,
  • Letting go of old pervasive Industrial Age mental models and perspectives, especially around cost and efficiency,
  • Relearning new future-fit ways of being, thinking, and acting differently.

And increases our ability to be agile, centered, and focused in thinking faster in the Disruption Age, where technology is accelerating faster than our human brains are.

Upskilling our brains!

A coaching partnership will create a safe and collective holding space to help leaders deep dive into the unknown develop strategies and develop their leadership consciousness in ways that:

  • Opens their minds, ignites their imagination, curiosity, and creativity, shifts their perspective, makes sense of things develops a whole systems perspective, and think differently,
  • Opens their hearts to become connected with self, others, systems, and with Source, and be empathic and compassionate,
  • Opens their will to let go of the need for control, and allows them to deal with paradox and the new to emerge, which can be designed, iterated, and pivoted, in ways that enable them to act differently, in designing and implementing systemic and innovative solutions.

Closing leadership blind spots to adapt, innovate and grow

A coach empowers, enables, and equips a leader’s capacity, confidence, and competence, to identify and close their leadership blind spots, be in charge of their minds, and think and act differently, to adapt, innovate, and grow in times of great uncertainty.

To convincingly work with, and flow with both their peoples overwhelm, and with the constraints in the external environment by:

  • Developing an awareness of their neurological RIGIDITY which exists within their emotional, cognitive, and visceral states, in turn, impacts their ability to mobilise, focus, and engage their efforts.

When a leader has a blind spot in this area, they may demonstrate rigidity, or functional fixedness, resulting in an inability to mobilise, they will be withdrawn, reactive, and become overly passive or even aggressive.  Because they are unconsciously at the effect of the “mental blocks” resulting from unacknowledged fears and anxiety.

  • Developing their neurological PLASTICITY and flexibility to be able to attend to, regulate, and focus their thoughts, and feelings, and be grounded, mindful, present, and intentional in taking intelligent actions.

When a leader has a blind spot in this area, they will not be able to access their brain’s ability to change, reorganize, or grow new neural networks, learn, adapt, and become resilient. They will not develop the agility required to shift mindsets or behaviours, or even learn the new skills that will equip them to be future-fit and deliver the results they seek.

  • Generating the critical and creative thinking, problem sensing, and solving skills required to improve their leadership consciousness and GENERATE their crucial elastic thinking and human skills required to see, think differently in solving complex and wicked problems, be future-fit, and lead others to thrive.

When a leader has a blind spot in this area, they will take a conventional and linear approach to decision-making problem-solving, and team development. They will safely stay stuck in what they know, even though what they did in the past may not have worked.

Adding value to the quality of peoples’ lives

If we keep on trying to solve the problem with the same thinking (and neurological state) that created it, we will continue to reproduce the results no one wants.

We will not be able to shift beyond what we think now, nor will we connect, export, and, discover the crucial new horizons we need to emerge to develop and implement the systemic and innovative solutions, in a timely way and at scale, that the world needs right now!

Imagine if leaders truly and deeply committed to cultivating their leadership consciousness, and make the time and space to eliminate their blind spots, how peaceful and harmonious the world could become!

If leaders could learn how to think and act differently, focus on adding value to the quality of people’s lives in ways they appreciate and cherish, and contribute to the common good, to serve all of humanity, how people, profit, and the planet could flourish.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, is a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, and can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning and coaching program for leadership and team development and change and culture transformation initiatives.

Image Credit: Pexels

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One Day Sale – Charting Change – Second Edition

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Wow! Exciting news!

In honor of International Women’s Day 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

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
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
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 March 10, 2024 only using code IWD24

Click here to get this deal using code IWD24

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.






Change the World One Shared Purpose at a Time

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Change the World One Shared Purpose at a Time

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 1847, a young doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis had a major breakthrough. Working in a maternity ward, he discovered that a regime of hand washing could dramatically lower the incidence of childbed fever. Unfortunately, the medical establishment rejected his ideas and the germ theory of disease didn’t take hold until decades later.

The phenomenon is now known as the Semmelweis effect, the tendency for people to reject new knowledge that contradicts established beliefs. Whether you are a CEO trying to launch a new initiative, a political leader pushing for an important reform or a social activist advocating for a cause, you need more than a big idea to change the world.

The problem is that a new idea has to replace an old one and the status quo has inertia on its side. Even those who are easily convinced have to convince those around them and those, in turn, need to convince others still until the long chain of influence results in a change of the zeitgeist. That’s why to truly make an impact, you need small groups, loosely connected, but united by a shared purpose.

1. Small Groups And Local Majorities

To understand how new ideas take hold it’s helpful to look at a series of conformity experiments conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. The design of the study was simple, but ingenious. Asch merely showed a group of people pairs of cards like these:

Each person in the group was asked to match the line on the left with the line of the same length on the right. However, there was a catch: almost everyone in the room was a confederate who gave the wrong answer. When it came to the real subjects’ turn to answer, most conformed to the majority opinion even when it was obviously incorrect.

The idea that people have a tendency toward conformity is nothing new, but that they would give obviously wrong answers to simple and unambiguous questions was indeed shocking. Now think about how hard it is for a more complex idea to take hold across a broad spectrum of people, each with their own biases and opinions.

The truth is that majorities don’t just rule, they also influence, even local majorities. So if you want an idea to gain traction, the best strategy is not to try to immediately spread it far and wide, but to start with groups small enough to convince a majority. Once you do that, you can begin to work to achieve wider acceptance.

2. Loose Connections

One important aspect of Asch’s conformity studies was that the results were far from uniform. A quarter of the subjects never conformed, some always did, and others were somewhere in the middle. We all have different thresholds for conformity that vary widely, depending on a variety of factors, such as our confidence in our knowledge of a subject.

The sociologist Mark Granovetter addressed this aspect with his threshold model of collective behavior. As a thought experiment, he asks us to imagine a diverse group of people milling around in a square. Some are natural deviants, always ready to start trouble, most are susceptible to provocation in varying degrees and the remainder is made up of unusually solid citizens, almost never engaging in antisocial behavior.

You can see a graphic representation of how the model plays out above. In the example on the left, a miscreant throws a rock and breaks a window. That’s all it takes for his friend next to him to start and then others with slightly higher thresholds join in as well. Before you know it, a full scale riot ensues.

The example on the right is slightly different. After the first few troublemakers start, there is no one around with a low enough threshold to join in. Rather than the contagion spreading, it fizzles out, the three miscreants are isolated and little note is made of the incident. Although the groups are outwardly similar, a slight change in conformity thresholds makes a big difference.

It’s a relatively simplistic example, but through another concept Granovetter developed called the strength of weak ties, we can see how it can lead to large scale change in the final graphic below as an idea moves from group to group.

The top cluster is identical to the one in the first example and a local majority forms. However, no cluster is an island because people tend to belong to multiple groups. For example, we form relationships with people in our neighborhood, from work, religious communities and so on. So an idea that saturates one group soon spreads to others.

Notice how the exposure to multiple groups can help overcome higher thresholds of resistance, because of the influence emanating from additional groups through weak links. Physicists have a name for this type of phenomenon — percolation — and configurations like the ones in the diagram are called a percolating cluster.

As I explain in my book, Cascades, there is significant evidence that this is how ideas actually do spread in the real world. So if you want an idea to gain traction, the best strategy is not to try to convince everybody all at once, but to start with small groups with low resistance thresholds. They, in turn, can help you convince others and build momentum.

3. Forging A Shared Purpose

As many have observed in recent years, you don’t really need leaders to spread ideas. Some, like LOLcats, go viral all on their own. Yet if it’s an idea that you consider to be important, you don’t want to leave things to chance. In many cases, such as the Occupy Movement, even an initially popular idea can spin out of control and lose credibility.

That’s where the importance of leadership comes in. The role of a leader is not so much to guide and direct action, but to inspire and empower belief and a sense of shared purpose. You can’t expect people to do what you want, they first have to want what you want, which is why you can’t change fundamental behaviors without changing fundamental beliefs.

Now we can see where Ignaz Semmelweis went wrong. Rather than working to gain allies among likeminded people, he castigated the medical establishment—those who had high resistance thresholds to a challenge of established beliefs. Instead of being hailed as an innovator, he died in an insane asylum, ironically from an infection he contracted there.

So we need to redefine how we think about leadership. In his book, Leaders: Myth And Reality, General Stanley McChrystal defines leadership as “a complex system of relationships between leaders and followers, in a particular context, that provides meaning to its members.” Control, as attractive as it may seem, is always an illusion.

You Can’t Overpower, You Must Attract

All too often, we think creating change is about charismatic leaders and catchy slogans. People see Martin Luther King Jr. and “I have a dream” or Obama and “Yes, we can,” and think that you need a heroic leader to make change happen. In a similar way, they see CEOs like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk thrill audiences on stage and think that’s what entrepreneurship is all about.

This is a trap. Movements like Occupy didn’t fail because they lacked a Mandela or Gandhi, any more than countless startups fail because they lack a Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. Successful movements like Otpor in Serbia and Pora in Ukraine prevailed against incredible odds, in much more difficult environments, without visible leaders. Bill Gates isn’t really such a charmer and neither are Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google.

Most often, change efforts fail because they seek to overpower rather than attract. Semmelweis sent angry letters to his critics, rather than address their concerns. Many of the Occupy activists were shrill and vulgar. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are often known for their arrogance as much as for their technical prowess.

The problem is that fantasies about overpowering your foes are much more romantic than doing the hard work of building traction in small groups and then painstakingly linking them together through forging a sense of shared purpose. Yet if you want to truly change the world, or even just your little corner of it, that’s what you need to do.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog and previously appeared on Inc.com
— Image credits: DigitalTonto.com and Dall-E on Bing

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

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of February 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 February’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Will Innovation Management Leverage AI in the Future? — by Jesse Nieminen
  2. 4 Simple Steps to Becoming Your Own Futurist — by Braden Kelley
  3. Master the Customer Hierarchy of Needs – Embrace Customer Expectations — by Shep Hyken
  4. Science Fiction Becomes Innovation Reality This Way — by Greg Satell
  5. Are You Engaging in Innovation Theater? — by Mike Shipulski
  6. Innovation the Star of the 2024 NBA All-Star Game — by Braden Kelley
  7. This One Word Will Transform Your Approach to Innovation — by Robyn Bolton
  8. Announcing the Second Edition of Charting Change — by Braden Kelley
  9. Resistance to Innovation – What if electric cars came first? — by Dennis Stauffer
  10. Goals Are Not the Goal — by Mike Shipulski

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in January 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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Implementing Successful Transformation Initiatives for 2024

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Implementing Successful Transformation Initiatives for 2024

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

Transformation and change initiatives are usually designed as strategic interventions, intending to advance an organization’s growth, deliver increased shareholder value, build competitive advantage, or improve speed and agility to respond to fast-changing industries.  These initiatives typically focus on improving efficiency, and productivity, resolving IT legacy and technological issues, encouraging innovation, or developing high-performance organizational cultures. Yet, according to research conducted over fifteen years by McKinsey & Co., shared in a recent article “Losing from day one: Why even successful transformations fall short” – Organizations have realized only 67 percent of the maximum financial benefits that their transformations could have achieved. By contrast, respondents at all other companies say they captured an average of only 37 percent of the potential benefit, and it’s all due to a lack of human skills, and their inability to adapt, innovate, and thrive in a decade of disruption.

Differences between success and failure

The survey results confirm that “there are no short­cuts to successful transformation and change initiatives. The main differentiator between success and failure was not whether an organization followed a specific subset of actions but rather how many actions it took throughout an organizational transformation’s life cycle” and actions taken by the people involved.

Capacity, confidence, and competence – human skills

What stands out is that thirty-five percent of the value lost occurs in the implementation phase, which involves the unproductive actions taken by the people involved.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) supports this in a recent article “How to Create a Transformation That Lasts” – “Transformations are inherently difficult, filled with compressed deadlines and limited resources. Executing them typically requires big changes in processes, product offerings, governance, structure, the operating model itself, and human behavior.”

Reinforcing the need for organizations to invest in developing the deep human skills that embed transformation disciplines into business-as-usual structures, processes, and systems, and help shift the culture. Which depends on enhancing people’s capacity, confidence, and competence to implement the “annual business-planning processes and review cycles, from executive-level weekly briefings and monthly or quarterly reviews to individual performance dialogue” that delivers and embeds the desired changes, especially the cultural enablers.

Complex and difficult to navigate – key challenges

As a result of the impact of our VUCA/BANI world, coupled with the global pandemic, current global instability, and geopolitics, many people have had their focus stolen, and are still experiencing dissonance cognitively, emotionally, and viscerally.

This impacts their ability to take intelligent actions and the range of symptoms includes emotional overwhelm, cognitive overload, and change fatigue.

It seems that many people lack the capacity, confidence, and competence, to underpin their balance, well-being, and resilience, which resources their ability and GRIT to engage fully in transformation and change initiatives.

The new normal – restoring our humanity

At ImagineNation™ for the past four years, in our coaching and mentoring practice, we have spent more than 1000 hours partnering with leaders and managers around the world to support them in recovering and re-emerging from a range of uncomfortable, disabling, and disempowering feelings.

Some of these unresourceful states include loneliness, disconnection, a lack of belonging, and varying degrees of burnout, and have caused them to withdraw and, in some cases, even resist returning to the office, or to work generally.

It appears that this is the new normal we all have to deal with, knowing there is no playbook, to take us there because it involves restoring the essence of our humanity and deepening our human skills.

Taking a whole-person approach – develop human skills

By embracing a whole-person approach, in all transformation and change initiatives, that focuses on building people’s capacity, confidence, and competence, and that cultivates their well-being and resilience to:

  • Engage, empower, and enable them to collaborate in setting the targets, business plans, implementation, and follow-up necessary to ensure a successful transformation and change initiative.
  • Safely partner with them through their discomfort, anxiety, fear, and reactive responses.
  • Learn resourceful emotional states, traits, mindsets, behaviors, and human skills to embody, enact and execute the desired changes strategically and systemically.

By then slowing down, to pause, retreat and reflect, and choose to operate systemically and holistically, and cultivate the “deliberate calm” required to operate at the three different human levels outlined in the illustration below:

The Neurological Level – which most transformation and change initiatives fail to comprehend, connect to, and work with. Because people lack the focus, intention, and skills to help people collapse any unconscious RIGIDITY existing in their emotional, cognitive, and visceral states, which means they may be frozen, distracted, withdrawn, or aggressive as a result of their fears and anxiety.

You can build your capacity, confidence, and competence to operate at this level by accepting “what is”:

  • Paying attention and being present with whatever people are experiencing neurologically by attending, allowing, accepting, naming, and acknowledging whatever is going on for them, and by supporting and enabling them to rest, revitalize and recover in their unique way.
  • Operating from an open mind and an open heart and by being empathic and compassionate, in line with their fragility and vulnerability, being kind, appreciative, and considerate of their individual needs.
  • Being intentional in enabling them to become grounded, mindful conscious, and truly connected to what is really going on for them, and rebuild their positivity, optimism, and hope for the future.
  • Creating a collective holding space or container that gives them permission, safety, and trust to pull them towards the benefits and rewards of not knowing, unlearning, and being open to relearning new mental models.
  • Evoking new and multiple perspectives that will help them navigate uncertainty and complexity.

The Emotional Cognition Levels – which most transformation and change initiatives fail to take into account because people need to develop their PLASTICITY and flexibility in regulating and focusing their thoughts, feelings, and actions to adapt and be agile in a world of unknowns, and deliver the outcomes and results they want to have.

You can build your capacity, confidence, and competence to operate at this level by supporting them to open their hearts and minds:

  • Igniting their curiosity, imagination, and playfulness, introducing novel ideas, and allowing play and improvisation into their thinking processes, to allow time out to mind wander and wonder into new and unexplored territories.
  • Exposing, disrupting, and re-framing negative beliefs, ruminations, overthinking and catastrophizing patterns, imposter syndromes, fears of failure, and feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.
  • Evoking mindset shifts, embracing positivity and an optimistic focus on what might be a future possibility and opportunity.
  • Being empathic, compassionate, and appreciative, and engaging in self-care activities and well-being practices.

The Generative Level – which most transformation and change initiatives ignore, because they fail to develop the critical and creative thinking, and problem sensing and solving skills that are required to GENERATE the crucial elastic thinking and human skills that result in change, and innovation.

You can build your capacity, confidence, and competence to operate at this level by:

  • Creating a safe space to help people reason and make sense of the things occurring within, around, and outside of them.
  • Cultivating their emotional and cognitive agility, creative, critical, and associative thinking skills to challenge the status quo and think differently.
  • Developing behavioral flexibility to collaborate, being inclusive to maximize differences and diversity, and safe experimentation to close their knowing-doing gaps.
  • Taking small bets, giving people permission and safety to fail fast to learn quickly, be courageous, be both strategic and systemic in taking smart risks and intelligent actions.

Reigniting our humanity – unlocking human potential  

At the end of the day, we all know that we can’t solve the problem with the same thinking that created it. Yet, so many of us keep on trying to do that, by unconsciously defaulting into a business-as-usual linear thinking process when involved in setting up and implementing a transformation or change initiative.

Ai can only take us so far, because the defining trait of our species, is our human creativity, which is at the heart of all creative problem-solving endeavors, where innovation can be the engine of change, transformation, and growth, no matter what the context. According to Fei-Fei Li, Sequoia Professor of Computer Science at Stanford, and co-director of AI4All, a non-profit organization promoting diversity and inclusion in the field of AI.

“There’s nothing artificial about AI. It’s inspired by people, created by people, and most importantly it has an impact on people”.

  • Develop the human skills

When we have the capacity, confidence, and competence to reignite our humanity, we will unlock human potential, and stop producing results no one wants. By developing human skills that enable people to adapt, be resilient, agile, creative, and innovate, they will grow through disruption in ways that add value to the quality of people’s lives, that are appreciated and cherished, we can truly serve people, deliver profits and perhaps save the planet.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack, is a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, and can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning and coaching program for leadership and team development and change and culture transformation initiatives.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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How Ready Is Your Team for Change?

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How Ready Is Your Team for Change?

GUEST POST from Stefan Lindegaard

When we need to navigate through the complexities of organizational change, particularly in times like today where change is everywhere around us, we need a nuanced understanding of a team’s readiness for change and thus how it can enhance its resilience.

This ties into building a strategic approach to gauge, understand, and subsequently enhance this team readiness for change.

A Simple Exercise for Your Team Readiness

First, I would like to share a simpe exercise crafted to pragmatically assess your team’s preparedness and resilience in the face of change.

See the image and then embark on this reflective exercise, grading your team on a scale from 1 (low) to 6 (high) on these five questions.

Be mindful to approach this with candor as it will pave the way for tangible, beneficial insights.

1. Anticipation, Preparation:

1. How adept is your team at anticipating possible changes and preparing strategies and backup plans to manage them?

Adaptability, Role Flexibility:

2. How well does your team adjust its skills, knowledge, and alter roles and operations, to effectively implement new tools and methodologies during times of change?

Communication:

3. How effective, transparent, and consistent is the communication within your team during times of change?

Emotional Readiness:

4. To what extent does your team display emotional readiness and stability and what is the level of psychological safety during changes in the workplace?

Leadership During Change:

5. How effectively does the next level of leadership above your team guide, support, and provide clear directions during change processes, ensuring stability and clarity?

How well does your team score? Is change your worst enemy or you just great at dealing and growing with this?

Diving into the Elements

I added each component of this exercise to address key aspects of a team’s navigation through the terrains of change. Here’s why:

1. Anticipation, Preparation:

A cornerstone of resilient performance amidst change lies in anticipation and strategic preparation, ensuring the team can adeptly navigate through different scenarios, maintaining functionality and mitigating reactionary responses.

2. Adaptability, Role Flexibility:

Ensuring a team can modify its functions and shift roles, absorbing new methodologies, tools, and technologies during transitions, is vital for maintaining performance and productivity during upheavals.

3. Communication:

Transparency and consistency in communication form the bedrock of clarity and coordinated maneuvering during change, reducing anxiety and ensuring a unified team approach towards transitional phases.

4. Emotional Readiness:

A team that displays emotional stability and ensures a psychologically safe environment during change is poised to maintain morale and productivity, addressing and navigating through the emotional and psychological impacts of change.

5. Leadership During Change:

Leadership’s role in providing stability, direction, and support during change processes cannot be overstated, ensuring that the team can confidently navigate through alterations without feeling rudderless.

Other Considerations for Change Readiness

Beyond the above elements, several other facets warrant consideration to ensure a more comprehensive, multi-dimensional analysis of a team’s readiness for change:

– Team Cohesion During Change:

Maintaining supportive, strong relationships and a united front during transitions is pivotal for ensuring sustained performance and morale.

– Continuous Learning and Improvement Post-Change:

A structured approach towards analyzing and learning from each change process, applying these insights to future transitions, enhances adaptive capabilities.

– Employee Well-being and Support:

Acknowledging and addressing team members’ well-being during change is paramount to prevent burnout and sustain healthy team dynamics.

– Change Impact Analysis (KPI’s):

Ensuring a structured, strategic approach to managing the impacts of change on operations and objectives mitigates potential negative ramifications. This is also where you can look into metrics and KPI’s.

– Partners, Stakeholder Management:

So much happens in networks and ecosystems today, so we also need to maintain trust and rapport with partners and stakeholders during transitions in order to ensure sustained positive external relationships.

Feel free to add your thoughts and perspectives on other elements for team readiness for change.

Final Thoughts

The components outlined in the exercise provide a foundational framework for understanding and enhancing a team’s readiness for change. However, it is imperative to acknowledge that change is multi-faceted and complex, demanding continuous, dynamic approaches to managing it effectively.

The simple exercise can help your team reflect on the important topic of change readiness and I hope that by coupling reflective assessments with strategic action, your team can not only navigate through the changes of today but also fortify itself for the uncertainties of tomorrow.

Ultimately, it is through understanding and addressing these elements that teams can truly become adept, resilient navigators of change.

Image Credit: Pexels

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