Category Archives: Change

When the Startup Romance Dies

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When the Startup Romance Dies

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Every startup is exciting and romantic in the beginning. The founders usually know each other well and want to work together. They bring on others who are likeminded and committed to the mission of the enterprise. Long hours and shared experience makes the business feel less like work and more like a family.

Yet as the company grows and more people are brought on, the social fabric begins to fray. Roles, which once were fluid and interchangeable, begin to formalize and solidify. Tight camaraderie gives way to office politics. What was once a “family” begins to seem like just another place to work and earn a living.

The story is so common that nobody should be surprised when it happens, but inevitably most are, which is why few entrepreneurs prepare for it. Often, because they still feel connected to the senior team, they don’t even realize it’s happening until it’s too late. That’s a shame, because the breakdown of the family atmosphere can be avoided if you prepare for it.

The Dunbar Dilemma

In 1992, anthropologist Robin Dunbar published his groundbreaking paper on optimal group sizes. For humans, he estimated the maximum group size that can maintain stable relationships to be about 150, now known as the Dunbar Number. Other researchers using different methodologies have come up with slightly higher numbers, but the general principle stands. Go past a certain point and natural connections start to break down.

That’s why around when an organization hits 150-200 employees, the “family atmosphere” starts to break down and take on a decidedly more corporate feel. Early employees don’t feel the same bonds with the latecomers and new employees don’t build the same camaraderie when they join the company.

Inevitably, the change in atmosphere is attributed to the type of people hired, rather than the number of people in the organization. So the first step to solving the problem is to simply acknowledge that running a larger enterprise is different than running a small one. Culture will no longer take care of itself, you have to work to build and maintain it.

All too often, entrepreneurs attempt to reorganize the company at this point. That’s almost always a mistake. Valdis Krebs, who researches organizational networks, notes that reorganizations can often sever informal ties that you aren’t aware of but that are crucial to how the company functions.

The Importance Of Boundary Spanners

In the early 1970s, sociologist Mark Granovetter began researching how professional, technical and managerial workers found jobs in the Boston area. He was somewhat surprised to find that they often found work someone they knew, but not a close contact, like a friend or family member, but someone more removed, like a friend of a friend or a distant cousin. He called this principle the Strength of Weak Ties.

Further analysis shows why it works. Those who are closest to us know pretty much the same things we do, because they frequent similar places and do similar things. So if we want to gain access to new information, we need to broaden our scope and connect with people further out on the social spectrum.

In a small startup, the strength of weak ties plays a negligible role, because everybody knows each other through first-degree connections. However, once the Dunbar threshold of 150-200 people is passed, that’s no longer true. As the company grows, information increasingly needs to flow through second and third degree connections.

Network scientists call people who link disparate networks in an organization boundary spanners and they are crucial for maintaining culture as an organization grows. Once you understand the importance of boundary spanners, you can start redesigning programs and platforms to optimize for connection.

Redesigning Programs And Platforms For Connection

Every organizational culture is unique, so there are no hard and fast rules for designing programs and platforms to optimize for connection, but the best place to start is to build on what you already have. Often, companies accidentally find that an existing program that was built for another purpose effectively builds boundary spanners.

For example, Facebook originally designed its six week engineering bootcamp to help it scale by immersing new engineers in its methods and codebase, no matter what their level of experience. However, what it found was that bootcampers would build bonds during those six weeks that would persist long after they moved to disparate parts of the company.

In a similar vein, Experian found that its employees that participated in its “Le Tour de Experian” bike rides to benefit charity would build bonds that would span across organizational boundaries and lead to professional collaborations. So it built Employee Resource Groups and Clubs to build connections across a wider variety of interests.

Other companies, such as General Electric, encourage high potential executives to work in different divisions to create boundary spanners. Still others create seminars and best practice programs. There are many ways you can network your organization, once you learn to prioritize connections to build boundary spanners.

Evolving Leadership & Culture

In the early days of a startup most of the energy is necessarily focused on action items, such as developing a product, coming up with a go-to-market strategy and executing basic tasks. Job titles tend to be fluid and everybody pitches in where they can. With a small number of people, work can often be organized through quick huddles and whiteboard sessions.

Yet as the organization grows, more formal procedures and processes begin to take shape. Communication, necessarily, becomes more formal and less ad hoc. Roles within the company solidify and employees are increasingly expected to “stay in their lane.” Entrepreneurial leaders begin to spend less time focusing on the details of day-to-day execution.

This is when it is crucial for leaders to evolve from operational managers to what General Stanley McChrystal, in his book Team of Teams, calls “empathetic crafters of culture.” In a larger organization, a leaders role cannot be merely to plan and direct action, but needs to increasingly focus on shaping connections within the firm.

Perhaps most of all, entrepreneurs need to understand that the transition from a small startup to a significant enterprise doesn’t necessarily mean you have to lose “the family.” It just means that the leadership and culture need to evolve. That won’t simply happen all by itself. You have to put in the time and effort to make it so.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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Generation AI Replacing Generation Z

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Generation AI Replacing Generation Z

by Braden Kelley

The boundary lines between different named generations are a bit fuzzy but the goal should always be to draw the boundary at an event significant enough to create substantial behavior changes in the new generation worthy of consideration in strategy formation.

I believe we have arrived at such a point and that it is time for GenZ to cede the top of strategy mountain to a new generation I call Generation AI (GenAI).

The dividing line for Generation AI falls around 2014 and the people of GenAI are characterized by being the first group of people to grow up not knowing a world without easy access to generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools that begin to transform their interactions with our institutions and each other.

We have already seen professors and teachers having to police AI-generated school essays, while the rest of us are trying to cope with frighteningly realistic deep fake audio and video. But what other impacts on people’s behavior will we see as a result of the coming ubiquity of artificial intelligence?

It is important to remember that generative artificial intelligence is not really artificial intelligence but collective intelligence informed by what we the people have contributed to the training/reference set. As such these large language models are predicting the next word or combining existing content based on whatever training set they are exposed to. They are not creating original thought.

Generative AI is being built into nearly all of our existing software and cloud tools, and GenAI will grow up only knowing a reality where every application and web site they interact with will have an AI component to it. Generation AI will not know a time where they cannot ask an AI, in the same way that GenZ relies on social search, and Gen X and Millenials assume search engines hold their answers.

Our brains are changing to focus more on processing and less on storage. These changes make us more capable, but more vulnerable too.

This new AI technology represents a double-edge sword and its effects could fall on either edge of the sword in different areas:

Option 1 – Best Case

  • Generative AI will amplify creativity by encouraging recombination of existing images, text, audio and video in new inspiring ways using the outputs of AI as inputs into human creativity

Option 2 – Worst Case

  • Generative AI will reduce creativity because people will become reliant on using artificial intelligence to create, creating an echo chamber of new content only created from existing content, leading to AI outputs becoming the only outputs and a world where people spend more time interacting with AI’s than with other people

Which of these two options on the impact of AI reliance do you see as the most likely in the areas where you focus?

How do you see Generation AI impacting the direction of societies around the world?

Are you planning to add Generation AI to your marketing strategies and strategic planning for 2024 or beyond?

Reference

For reference, here is timeline of previous American generations according to an article from NPR:

Though there is a consensus on the general time period for generations, there is not an agreement on the exact year that each generation begins and ends.

Generation Z – Born 2001-2013 (Age 10-22)

These kids were the first born with the Internet and are suspected to be the most individualistic and technology-dependent generation. Sometimes referred to as the iGeneration.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This description is erroneous, the differentiating factor of GenZ is that they experienced the rise of social media.

Millennials – Born 1980-2000 (Age 23-43)

They experienced the rise of the Internet, Sept. 11 and the wars that followed. Sometimes called Generation Y. Because of their dependence on technology, they are said to be entitled and narcissistic.

Generation X – Born 1965-1979 (Age 44-58)

They were originally called the baby busters because fertility rates fell after the boomers. As teenagers, they experienced the AIDs epidemic and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sometimes called the MTV Generation, the “X” in their name refers to this generation’s desire not to be defined.

EDITOR’S NOTE: GenX also experienced the rise of the personal computer and this has influenced their parenting of a large portion of Millenials and GenZ

Baby Boomers – Born 1943-1964 (Age 59-80)

The boomers were born during an economic and baby boom following World War II. These hippie kids protested against the Vietnam War and participated in the civil rights movement, all with rock ‘n’ roll music blaring in the background.

Silent Generation – Born 1925-1942 (Age 81-98)

They were too young to see action in World War II and too old to participate in the fun of the Summer of Love. This label describes their conformist tendencies and belief that following the rules was a sure ticket to success.

GI Generation – Born 1901-1924 (Age 99+)

They were teenagers during the Great Depression and fought in World War II. Sometimes called the greatest generation (following a book by journalist Tom Brokaw) or the swing generation because of their jazz music.

If you’d like to sign up to learn more about my new FutureHacking™ methodology and set of tools, go here.

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Embrace the Innovation Hate

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Embrace the Innovation Hate

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas,” said the computing pioneer Howard Aiken. “If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” The truth is that any idea important enough to be valuable will be disruptive enough to inspire significant opposition to it ever gaining traction.

This phenomenon is often known as the Semmelweis Effect, after the Hungarian physician who pioneered hand washing in hospitals. Unfortunately, the medical establishment rejected his ideas and antiseptic procedures didn’t come into common use decades later. Millions of people died needlessly.

Yet as I’ve previously explained, much of the blame lays at Semmelweis’s door. Instead of taking into account valid criticisms of how he collected and communicated his data, he railed against the establishment, became a pariah and lost all credibility. The truth is that we need our critics, if for no other reason than that they have the power to save us from ourselves.

Exposing Flaws In Your Idea

One of the most effective programs for helping to bring discoveries out of the lab is I-Corps. First established by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help recipients of SBIR grants identify business models for scientific discoveries, it has been such an extraordinary success that the US Congress has mandated its expansion across the federal government.

Based on Steve Blank’s lean startup methodology, the program aims to transform scientists into entrepreneurs. It begins with a presentation session, in which each team explains the nature of their discovery and its commercial potential. It’s exciting stuff, pathbreaking science with real potential to truly change the world.

Inevitably, during this initial session, they are asked, “how many customers have you talked to?” and, just as inevitably, their answer comes up woefully short. They are often yelled at and ordered to “get out of the building and talk to customers.” For many, it is a dressing down that they will never forget.

Ironically, much of the success of the I-Corps program is due to these early sessions. Once the entrepreneurs realize that they are on the wrong track, they embark on a crash course of customer discovery, interviewing dozens — and sometimes hundreds — of customers in search of a business model that actually has a chance of succeeding.

Make no mistake, every idea is flawed. As Steve Blank likes to say, “no business plan survives first contact with a customer.” So you want to expose as many flaws as you can before that happens.

Identifying Shared Values

In 1992, during the war in Bosnia, massive student protests broke out in Serbia. For 26 days, they demanded an end to the war and for the country’s authoritarian leader, Slobodan Milošević, to resign. Eventually, summer came, the students went home and little, if anything, was accomplished.

“These were very ‘Occupy’ type of protests,” Srdja Popović, one of the student leaders would later tell me,” where we occupied the five biggest universities and lived there in our little islands of common sense with intellectuals and rock bands while the rest of the country was more or less supportive of Milošević’s idea.”

Yet much like the I-Corps entrepreneurs, the activists learned from the experience. “We began to understand that staying in your little blurb of common sense was not going to save the country,” Popović remembers. In later years, the activists would learn to tailor their messages specifically to less educated rural Serbians who were turned off by the anti-war protests.

In much the same way, when developing a new product, it is often better to start with a minimum viable product rather than a full-featured prototype. You do this not so people can tell you how much they love your idea, but so they can tell you what they hate it and why. You have to get out of your own “little island” to find what people truly value.

They Can Send People Your Way

In the early hours of December 11, 2013, special police forces descended into the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine to violently assault peaceful activists protesting the Yanukovych regime. Known for their brutality, the units, called Berkut, cleared the streets and sent those gathered running to the shelter to the nearby St. Michaels Cathedral.

It proved to be a turning point, but not the one that Yanukovych expected. Mustafa Nayyem, who helped spark and then lead the protests, told me that the protests were losing steam and the brutal actions of the regime threw the support of the country their way. Yanukovych was forced out of office a few months later.

Often, your most fierce opponents can be your greatest asset. In his efforts to reform the Pentagon in the 1980s, Colonel John Boyd would start by doing low-key briefings to peers and then move on to congressional staffers. As his ideas gained steam, high-ranking generals would try to crush his efforts. Inevitably, they would overreach and he would gain even more support.

The key to leveraging your opposition is to not attack or even address them directly. Start by building the support of those who are already likely to be excited by the idea. As you gain traction, others will notice and join in. Eventually, your haters will feel they need to do something drastic and that will send even more people your way.

Whenever You Have A Big Idea, Someone’s Not Going To Like It

In researching my book, Cascades, I found that every successful transformational effort had a plan to overcome opposition. They didn’t dismiss their haters, but studied them, learned from them and were able to turn the disparagement to their own advantage. As the pressure increased, their opponents inevitably make a huge mistake that would turn the tide.

This is, of course, obvious in political and social movements, but I’ve found that it is just as important in corporate and organizational transformations. Make no mistake, if you want to drive anything more than incremental change, someone isn’t going to like it and they will work to undermine your efforts anyway they can. That is just a simple fact of life.

It is also something you can use to your advantage. Those who oppose your idea can point out flaws you may have missed. You can fix them. They help you expose underlying values that others may share as well. You can work to address them. As you build support, they are likely to lash out, creating an opening for you to win the day.

All too often, we end up preaching to the choir instead of venturing out of the church and mixing with the heathens. That’s how change efforts fail. So don’t ignore your haters. Embrace them. Learn from them. They can provide the key to driving transformation forward.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of May 2023

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of May 2023Drum 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 May’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. A 90% Project Failure Rate Means You’re Doing it Wrong — by Mike Shipulski
  2. ‘Innovation’ is Killing Innovation. How Do We Save It? — by Robyn Bolton
  3. Sustaining Imagination is Hard — by Braden Kelley
  4. Unintended Consequences. The Hidden Risk of Fast-Paced Innovation — by Pete Foley
  5. 8 Strategies to Future-Proofing Your Business & Gaining Competitive Advantage — by Teresa Spangler
  6. How to Determine if Your Problem is Worth Solving — by Mike Shipulski
  7. Sprint Toward the Innovation Action — by Mike Shipulski
  8. Moneyball and the Beginning, Middle, and End of Innovation — by Robyn Bolton
  9. A Shortcut to Making Strategic Trade-Offs — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  10. 3 Innovation Types Not What You Think They Are — by Robyn Bolton

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in April 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 three years:

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When Innovation Becomes Magic

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When Innovation Becomes Magic

GUEST POST from Pete Foley

Arthur C Clarke’s 3rd Law famously stated:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”

In other words, if the technology of an advanced civilization is so far beyond comprehension, it appears magical to a less advanced one. This could take the form of a human encounter with a highly advanced extraterrestrial civilization, how current technology might be viewed by historical figures, or encounters between human cultures with different levels of scientific and technological knowledge.

Clarke’s law implicitly assumed that knowledge within a society is sufficiently democratized that we never view technology within a civilization as ‘magic’.  But a combination of specialization, rapid advancements in technology, and a highly stratified society means this is changing.  Generative AI, Blockchain and various forms of automation are all ‘everyday magic’ that we increasingly use, but mostly with little more than an illusion of understanding around how they work.  More technological leaps are on the horizon, and as innovation accelerates exponentially, we are all going to have to navigate a world that looks and feels increasingly magical.   Knowing how to do this effectively is going to become an increasingly important skill for us all.  

The Magic Behind the Curtain:  So what’s the problem? Why do we need to understand the ‘magic’ behind the curtain, as long as we can operate the interface, and reap the benefits?  After all, most of us use phones, computers, cars, or take medicines without really understanding how they work.  We rely on experts to guide us, and use interfaces that help us navigate complex technology without a need for deep understanding of what goes on behind the curtain.

It’s a nuanced question.  Take a car as an analogy.  We certainly don’t need to know how to build one in order to use one.  But we do need to know how to operate it and understand what it’s performance limitations are.  It also helps to have at least some basic knowledge of how it works; enough to change a tire on a remote road, or to have some concept of basic mechanics to minimize the potential of being ripped off by a rogue mechanic.  In a nutshell, the more we understand it, the more efficiently, safely and economically we leverage it.  It’s a similar situation with medicine.  It is certainly possible to defer all of our healthcare decisions to a physician.  But people who partner with their doctors, and become advocates for their own health generally have superior outcomes, are less likely to die from unintended contraindications, and typically pay less for healthcare.  And this is not trivial.  The third leading cause of death in Europe behind cancer and heart disease are issues associated with prescription medications.  We don’t need to know everything to use a tool, but in most cases, the more we know the better

The Speed/Knowledge Trade-Off:  With new, increasingly complex technologies coming at us in waves, it’s becoming increasing challenging to make sense of what’s ‘behind the curtain’. This has the potential for costly mistakes.  But delaying embracing technology until we fully understand it can come with serious opportunity costs.  Adopt too early, and we risk getting it wrong, too late and we ‘miss the bus’.  How many people who invested in crypto currency or NFT’s really understood what they were doing?  And how many of those have lost on those deals, often to the benefit of those with deeper knowledge?  That isn’t to in anyway suggest that those who are knowledgeable in those fields deliberately exploit those who aren’t, but markets tend to reward those who know, and punish those who don’t.    

The AI Oracle:  The recent rise of Generative AI has many people treating it essentially as an oracle.  We ask it a question, and it ‘magically’ spits out an answer in a very convincing and sharable format.  Few of us understand the basics of how it does this, let alone the details or limitations. We may not call it magic, but we often treat it as such.  We really have little choice; as we lack sufficient understanding to apply quality critical thinking to what we are told, so have to take answers on trust.  That would be brilliant if AI was foolproof.  But while it is certainly right a lot of the time, it does make mistakes, often quite embarrassing ones. . For example, Google’s BARD incorrectly claimed the James Webb Space Telescope had taken the first photo of a planet outside our solar system, which led to panic selling of parent company Alphabet’s stock.  Generative AI is a superb innovation, but its current iterations are far from perfect.  They are limited by the data bases they are fed on, are extremely poor at spotting their own mistakes, can be manipulated by the choice of data sets they are trained on, and they lack the underlying framework of understanding that is essential for critical thinking or for making analogical connections.  I’m sure that we’ll eventually solve these issues, either with iterations of current tech, or via integration of new technology platforms.  But until we do, we have a brilliant, but still flawed tool.  It’s mostly right, is perfect for quickly answering a lot of questions, but its biggest vulnerability is that most users have pretty limited capability to understand when it’s wrong.

Technology Blind Spots: That of course is the Achilles Heel, or blind spot and a dilemma. If an answer is wrong, and we act on it without realizing, it’s potentially trouble. But if we know the answer, we didn’t really need to ask the AI. Of course, it’s more nuanced than that.  Just getting the right answer is not always enough, as the causal understanding that we pick up by solving a problem ourselves can also be important.  It helps us to spot obvious errors, but also helps to generate memory, experience, problem solving skills, buy-in, and belief in an idea.  Procedural and associative memory is encoded differently to answers, and mechanistic understanding helps us to reapply insights and make analogies. 

Need for Causal Understanding.  Belief and buy-in can be particularly important. Different people respond to a lack of ‘internal’ understanding in different ways.  Some shy away from the unknown and avoid or oppose what they don’t understand. Others embrace it, and trust the experts.  There’s really no right or wrong in this.  Science is a mixture of both approaches it stands on the shoulders of giants, but advances based on challenging existing theories.  Good scientists are both data driven and skeptical.  But in some cases skepticism based on lack of causal understanding can be a huge barrier to adoption. It has contributed to many of the debates we see today around technology adoption, including genetically engineered foods, efficacy of certain pharmaceuticals, environmental contaminants, nutrition, vaccinations, and during Covid, RNA vaccines and even masks.  Even extremely smart people can make poor decisions because of a lack of causal understanding.  In 2003, Steve Jobs was advised by his physicians to undergo immediately surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer.  Instead he delayed the procedure for nine months and attempted to treat himself with alternative medicine, a decision that very likely cut his life tragically short.

What Should We Do?  We need to embrace new tools and opportunities, but we need to do so with our eyes open.   Loss aversion, and the fear of losing out is a very powerful motivator of human behavior, and so an important driver in the adoption of new technology.  But it can be costly. A lot of people lost out with crypto and NFT’s because they had a fairly concrete idea of what they could miss out on if they didn’t engage, but a much less defined idea of the risk, because they didn’t deeply understand the system. Ironically, in this case, our loss aversion bias caused a significant number of people to lose out!

Similarly with AI, a lot of people are embracing it enthusiastically, in part because they are afraid of being left behind.  That is probably right, but it’s important to balance this enthusiasm with an understanding of its potential limitations.  We may not need to know how to build a car, but it really helps to know how to steer and when to apply the brakes .   Knowing how to ask an AI questions, and when to double check answers are both going to be critical skills.  For big decisions, ‘second opinions’ are going to become extremely important.   And the human ability to interpret answers through a filter of nuance, critical thinking, different perspectives, analogy and appropriate skepticism is going to be a critical element in fully leveraging AI technology, at least for now. 

Today AI is still a tool, not an oracle. It augments our intelligence, but for complex, important or nuanced decisions or information retrieval, I’d be wary of sitting back and letting it replace us.  Its ability to process data in quantity is certainly superior to any human, but we still need humans to interpret, challenge and integrate information.  The winners of this iteration of AI technology will be those who become highly skilled at walking that line, and who are good at managing the trade off between speed and accuracy using AI as a tool.  The good news is that we are naturally good at this, it’s a critical function of the human brain, embodied in the way it balances Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 thinking. Future iterations may not need us, but for now AI is a powerful partner and tool, but not a replacement

Image credit: Pixabay

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A Tipping Point for Organizational Culture

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A Tipping Point for Organizational Culture

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

Like millions of others globally, I watched with fascination, the sensational and striking spectacle of the ceremony, significant symbolism, spectacular artifacts, and rituals at the recent King of England’s majestic coronation. At the same time, I allowed my mind to wander and wondered how this visually stunning and unrivaled British ceremony would impact the nations and realms’ culture and leadership, today and in the future, wondering if, indeed, it is at a cultural tipping point.

Where it is believed, by some, that the coronation made “two statements of great importance for today’s world about the place of religion in public life and the importance and meaning of the nation”. Acknowledging that such a monumental and marvelous event is indicative of a cultural tipping point, not only for the people it embraces but also for organizations, nations, and realms as a whole, to search for what is meaningful and valued by its people.

Making the connection

My mind wandered and made some obvious connections between the core and common elements that embody both organizational, and national cultural realms – the values, beliefs, assumptions, and mindsets that drive key behaviors and deliver the common implicit messages. As well as the disciplined systems and processes that deliver the results, the rituals that are enacted, and finally, the artifacts whose symbols represent what the culture values.

Maintaining relevance and engagement 

Like the monarchy, what do organizations need to do to maintain relevance and engagement to thrive in unstable and uncertain times, especially when their existence and legacies are being questioned and evaluated by the people they serve?

At a pivotal time when new sets of global, societal, and organizational demands are being made, largely as a result of the fourth industrial revolution, encompassing the convergence of exponential technologies impacting all of us globally.

At the same time, we are all still affected by the consequences of the global pandemic-induced lockdowns, impacting every fabric of our social and civic structures in our world today.

A case study for leveraging cultural tipping points differently 

The coronation of King Charles III provides us with a great case study of an outstanding and remarkable display of English cultural attributes.

This enables us to ask some serious questions about how national and organizational cultures and leadership in times of exponential change, like today, might thrive with uncertainty and co-create solutions to some of the most complex global challenges, by leveraging the range of cultural tipping points differently.

A range of organizational cultural tipping points

We are in effect, experiencing globally a range of cultural tipping points:

  1. At the macro level, according to a recent article here in Australia, where King Charles still resides as our head of state, the local SMH states that this realm is in a state of flux:

“The King is head of state in 15 countries. More than half of the so-called “realm states” are in the Caribbean and most of them are bailing out. Barbados two years ago, Jamaica probably next year. Belize, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are planning their exit as well”.

  1. At the micro level, according to Mc Kinsey & Co, in a recent article “New Leadership for a new era of thriving organizations” stated that organizations and leadership are also in a state of flux:

“Organizations such as Allianz, Haier, Microsoft, and Nucor are transforming their industries with a new organizational approach that seeks to be open, fluid, and adaptable; unleashes the collective energy, passion, and capabilities of its people; reimagines strategy; and focuses on delivering greater value to all stakeholders”.

“Their cultures support a more open, collaborative, and emergent way of working. And the shift to this new kind of model changes the way businesspeople must lead”.

Going back to culture and leadership fundamentals

Because culture and leadership are, according to Edgar H. Schein “two sides of the same coin and cannot understand one without the other” we have to be in charge and focused to intentionally, constructively, and creatively manage their interdependence.

He also states that culture matters because it is a “powerful, tacit, and often unconscious set of forces that determine both our individual and collective behaviors, ways of perceiving, thought patterns, and values”.

If we do not intentionally and strategically take charge, focus, and leverage these forces, we will simply always be at the effect of them, as they take us down the path of least resistance, remain implicit, and will not deliver the results we want and need in a disruptive world.

Going back to culture and leadership fundamentals

Because culture and leadership are, according to Edgar H. Schein “two sides of the same coin and cannot understand one without the other” we have to be in charge and focused to intentionally, constructively, and creatively manage their interdependence.

He also states that culture matters because it is a “powerful, tacit, and often unconscious set of forces that determine both our individual and collective behaviors, ways of perceiving, thought patterns, and values”.

If we do not intentionally and strategically take charge, focus, and leverage these forces, we will simply always be at the effect of them, as they take us down the path of least resistance, remain implicit, and will not deliver the results we want and need in a disruptive world.

Sharing the key messages

My mind then wandered and considered what might be the key messages being communicated by this incredible series of marvelous events, and wondered how relevant and engaging they might be to people today:

  • A coronation signals the conferment of God’s grace upon a ruler,
  • A coronation appoints the king as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England,
  • A coronation is a joyous and celebratory event.

Back to the SMH “The people got what they wanted. The cheers in the Mall, the boulevard built for the adoration of royalty, were real, even if the masses were down on those for the Queen’s Jubilee.”

Impacting the future

It remains to be seen if this powerful, majestic, memorable, and significant once-in-a-lifetime ceremonial event will ultimately help unify or divide the English realm. Which it seems, is facing its own range of unique challenges and a controversial cultural tipping point, ultimately and seriously impacting its future viability.

Back to the SMH “But Charles’s big show might be his last great day. The last dance of a wheeling, brilliant circus that has entertained and beguiled but which soon enough, in its distant realms, will stutter and shrink and reel no more.”

Why does this matter?

This matters today because we are individually, and collectively at a range of social, civic, and organizational cultural tipping points.

Where our organization and leaders are also dancing many of our “last dances”, and “stutter and shrink and reel nor more” because, according to some, we are not strategically focussed on leveraging the culture and leadership basics:

  • Implicitly clarifying values that focus on delivering value that improves the quality of people’s lives that they appreciate and cherish and explicitly making them an active part of corporate life.
  • Ensuring that leaders role model and enact behaviors that demonstrate the values in action, where people are accountable and rewarded by rigorous systems and supportive disciplined, and agile processes.
  • Co-creating powerful sets of rituals, symbols, and artifacts, aligned to the values, that deliver the “new architectures” to create permission, safety, and trust that drive collaboration, experimentation, innovation, inclusion, and sustainability.
  • Communicating engaging and inclusive messages that resonate creativity, respect, and appreciation for people, profit, and the planet.

Shifting the organizational cultural tipping points

It’s time to transform leadership to transform organizations, in ways that are self-aware and inspiring, meaningful and purposeful, equitable and sustainable, with increasing speed, resilience, and efficiency to guide organizational cultures and leadership that:

  • Helps people navigate and balance in-person and remote work, be mentally healthy and well, and make the way for both applied AI and human skills development.
  • Develops new rules for attracting and retaining people, close the capability chasm and walk the talent tightropes to better equip, empower and harness people’s harness collective intelligence to make both the organization and the world better places.
  • Creates, invents, and innovates new ways of thinking, and acting that ultimately shift the range of cultural tipping points to meet new sets of global, societal, and organizational demands and challenges emerging in the 21st century, and lets go of what is no longer relevant to better serve humanity as a whole.

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, which can be customised as a bespoke corporate learning program.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique innovation context. Find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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3 Innovation Types Not What You Think They Are

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But They Do Determine Your Success

3 Innovation Types Not What You Think They Are

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

The Official Story

When discussing innovation, you must be specific so people know what you expect. This is why so many thought leaders, consultants, and practitioners preach the importance of defining different types of innovation.

  • Clayton Christensen encourages focusing on WHY innovation is happening – improve performance, improve efficiency, or create markets – in his 2014 HBR article.
  • The classic Core/Adjacent/Transformational model focuses on WHAT is changing – target customer, offering, financial model, and resources and processes.
  • McKinsey’s 3 Horizons focus on WHEN the results are achieved – this year, 2-3 years, 3-6 years.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the options and worry about which approach is “best.”  But, like all frameworks, they’re all a little bit right and a little bit wrong, and the best one is the one that will be used and get results in your organization.

The REAL story

Everything in the official story is true, but not the whole truth.

“Innovation” is not peanut butter. 

You can’t smear it all over everything and expect deliciousness.

When doing innovation, you must remember your customer – the executives who make decisions, allocate resources, and can accelerate or decimate your efforts.

More importantly, you need to remember their Jobs to be Done (JTBD) – keep my job, feel safe and respected, and be perceived as competent/a rising star – because these jobs define the innovations that will get to market.

Three (3) REAL types of innovation

SAFE – The delightful solution to decision-makers’ JTBD

Most closely aligned with Core innovation, improving performance or efficiency, and Horizon 1 because the focus is on improving what exists in a way that will generate revenue this year or next. Decision-makers feel confident because they’ve “been there and done that” (heck, doing “that” is probably what got them promoted in the first place). In fact, they’re more likely to get in trouble for NOT investing in these types of innovations than they are for investing in them.

STRETCH – The Good Enough solution

Most like Adjacent innovation because they allow decision-makers to keep one foot in the known while “stretching” their other foot into a new (to them) area. This type of innovation makes decision-makers nervous because they don’t have all the answers, but they feel like they at least know what questions to ask. Progress will require more data, and decisions will take longer than most intrapreneurs want. But eventually, enough time and resources (and ego/reputation) will be invested that, unless the team recommends killing it, the project will launch.

SPLATTER – The Terrible solution

No matter what you call them – transformational, radical, breakthrough, disruptive, or moonshots – these innovations make everyone’s eyes light up before reality kicks in and crushes our dreams. These innovations “define the next chapter of our business” and “disrupt ourselves before we’re disrupted.”  These innovations also require decision-makers to let go of everything they know and wander entirely into the unknown. To invest resources in the hope of seeing the return (and reward) come back to their successor (or successor’s successor). To defend their decisions, their team, and themselves when things don’t go exactly as planned.

How to find the REAL type that will get real results.

  1. “You said you want X. Would you describe that for me?” (you may need to give examples). When I worked at Clayton Christensen’s firm, executives would always call and ask for our help to create a disruptive innovation. When I would explain what they were actually asking for (something with “good enough” performance and a low selling price that appeals to non-consumers), they would back away from the table, wave their hands, and say, “Oh, not that. We don’t want that.”
  2. “How much are you willing to risk?”  If they’re willing to go to their boss to ask for resources, they’re willing to Stretch. If they’re willing to get fired, they’re willing to Splatter. If everything needs to stay within their signing authority, it’s all about staying Safe.
  3. “What would you need to see to risk more?”  As an innovator, you’ll always want more freedom to push boundaries and feel confident that you can convince others to see things your way. But before you pitch Stretch to a boss that wants Safe, or Splatter to a boss barely willing to Stretch, learn what they need to change their minds. Maybe it will be worth your effort, maybe it won’t. Better to know sooner rather than later.

Image credits: Pixabay

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How Networks Power Transformation

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How Networks Power Transformation

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In February 2004, Viacom announced that it would spin off Blockbuster Video into its own independent company, which gave its CEO, John Antioco, the opportunity to begin addressing the disruptive threat emanating from Netflix head on. He developed a viable strategy, executed it well, but in the end his efforts were for naught.

Around the same time General Stanley McChrystal was tapped to take command of Special Forces in Iraq. Much like Antioco and Blockbuster, he faced a disruptive threat in the form of Al Qaeda that, using unconventional tactics, threatened to thwart his efforts. Unlike Antioco, however, McChrystal succeeded brilliantly.

We tend to think about transformation in terms of strategy and tactics, but if that was all there was to it, Blockbuster would still be thriving today. As I explain in Cascades, the difference between Antioco and McChrystal wasn’t that one had a good plan and the other didn’t, but that McChrystal saw that he had to rewire the networks in his organization.

Why Blockbuster Really Failed

Today, Blockbuster is a cautionary tale, but for all the wrong reasons. When the spinoff was announced, Antioco moved quickly to build an online rental business and remove the late fees that so many found annoying. Later, in 2006, he created the Total Access program that allowed customers rent DVDs online and return them in stores.

The convenience of the Total Access program was something that Netflix couldn’t match and almost immediately Blockbuster began to surpass Netflix in adding new subscribers. Yet within a few months, a compensation dispute arose between Antioco and the corporate raider Carl Icahn, who had gotten control of the company. Antioco left, the new CEO reversed the strategy and Blockbuster declared bankruptcy in 2010.

The tensions had actually been building for some time. Antioco’s shift to the online business made franchisees, many of whom had their life’s savings tied up in Blockbuster stores, uneasy. The changes were also costly, which depressed earnings and made investors and analysts skeptical. The stock price cratered.

It was the low stock price that led Icahn to buy up stock in Blockbuster, a proxy fight that allowed him to take control of the company’s board, the compensation dispute, Antioco’s departure and the reversal of the strategy. What really killed Blockbuster wasn’t external competition, but internal opposition.

Addressing The Internal Struggle

While Antioco framed the challenge Blockbuster faced largely in terms of strategy and tactics, McChrystal saw his task as an internal struggle. His forces were among the best in the world and were winning every battle. Yet somehow, they were losing the war and losing it badly.

As McChrystal would later write, “the world had outpaced us. In the time it took us to move a plan from creation to approval, the battlefield for which the plan had been devised would have changed. By the time it had been implemented, the plan—however ingenious in its initial design—was often irrelevant.”

So instead of trying to come up with better plans, McChrystal sought to change how his organization functioned. The problem, as he saw it, was one of interoperability. His forces needed not only to work with each other, but also partner agencies and other stakeholders, in order to succeed.

“I needed to shift my focus from moving pieces on the board to shaping the ecosystem,” McChrystal would remember. The moves paid off. The tide of the war soon shifted and the forces under his command would achieve their major objectives.

Rewiring Networks

The main difference between Antioco and McChrystal had less to do with their actions than it did with their mindsets. Where Antioco saw his task in terms of planning and execution, McChrystal saw his in terms of connection. “We began to make progress when we started looking at these relationships as just that: relationships— parts of a network, not cogs in a machine or outputs and inputs,” he would later write.

Antioco would take a very different approach. He set up the Blockbuster Online team in a warehouse down the street its Dallas headquarters. That allowed him to pursue the online strategy with little disruption to operations in the core business, but it also allowed suspicion and fear to fester and grow.

McChrystal, on the other hand, moved to forge links anywhere he could. He started embedding intelligence analysts into commando teams and vice versa. Liaison officer positions, traditionally given to marginal performers or those nearing retirement, were now earmarked for the very best operators.

Moves like these slowed down the individual teams — commandos in business suits placed at embassies don’t kill many terrorists — but that wasn’t the point, building networks of trust and interoperability was. Over the next few years, the effectiveness of his organization improved markedly and overall operating efficiency improved by a factor of seventeen.

Rethinking Leadership For A Networked Age

To a large degree, the most important difference between Antioco and McChrystal was how they saw their role as leaders. Antioco was truly a brilliant strategist and had built an enormously successful career devising effective plans and driving efficient execution. He had encountered opposition before, but had always been able to prevail by showing results.

McChrystal came to see things differently. “I began to reconsider the nature of my role as a leader,” he would later write. “The wait for my approval was not resulting in any better decisions, and our priority should be reaching the best possible decision that could be made in a time frame that allowed it to be relevant.

In other words, where Antioco saw a vertical hierarchy for carrying out tasks efficiently, McChrystal saw a horizontal network of connections which needed to be cultivated. Where Antioco built a strong senior management team to drive his strategy, McChrystal forged shared values throughout his organization so that units could act independently.

The truth is that we need to reimagine leadership for a networked age to focus less on driving strategy and tactics and more on widening and deepening connections in networks. Or, as McChrystal put it, “The role of the senior leader was no longer that of a controlling puppet master, but that of an empathetic crafter of culture.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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Save on Charting Change Digitally for Two Weeks

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Charting Change for an Outstanding 2023

Wow! Exciting news!

From now until May 26, 2023 you can get the digital version (eBook) of my latest best-selling book Charting Change for only $16.99!

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of April 2023

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of April 2023Drum 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 April’s ten most popular innovation posts:

  1. Rethinking Customer Journeys — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  2. What Have We Learned About Digital Transformation Thus Far? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
  3. Design Thinking Facilitator Guide — by Douglas Ferguson
  4. Building A Positive Team Culture — by David Burkus
  5. Questions Are More Powerful Than We Think — by Greg Satell
  6. 3 Examples of Why Innovation is a Leadership Problem — by Robyn Bolton
  7. How Has Innovation Changed Since the Pandemic? — by Robyn Bolton
  8. 5 Questions to Answer Before Spending $1 on Innovation — by Robyn Bolton
  9. Customers Care About the Destination Not the Journey — by Shep Hyken
  10. Get Ready for the Age of Acceleration — by Robert B. Tucker

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in March 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 three years:

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