Category Archives: Change

A Different Approach to Well-being, Resilience and Creativity

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A Different Approach to Well-being, Resilience and Creativity

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In our previous blogs, we outlined the need, in our chaotic world of unknowns, to reclaim our focus and attention and take charge of our own minds. By reclaiming these, and enhancing self-awareness we have a deeper understanding of the sources of our anxiety and distractions.  How to self-manage and self-regulate them through developing deliberate calm. To effectively create consciousness, and a safe space that potentially transforms the power of our minds and hearts to connect with others, cultivate well-being, harness people’s collective genius, and generate our resilience, through thinking about creativity differently.

Transforming fear and alarm

This mobilizes the energy our fears, anxiety, and alarm provide to transform the power of our minds and develop physical and psychological well-being. We can then apply proven neuroscience principles and coaching practices to cultivate resilience and think about creativity differently.

Transforming our fears and alarm in this way increases our resilience in responding to events in real-time, anticipating future events, and processing learning’s post events. It also enhances our well-being and creativity to enable us to be courageous and compassionate when inventing and innovating in an uncertain and constantly changing environment.

The potential outcomes include people experiencing more positive emotions, increased engagement at work, increased development of positive relationships, and more meaningful and purposeful work. These help us be adaptive, and transform the power of our hearts and minds to be creative, accomplish, learn, adapt, grow, and innovate through disruption.

Well-being is in crisis

In the latest report, by Udemy on “Workplace Learning Trends” they compare data collected from Australian workers (human capital) in early September 2022 with previous surveys in November 2019, August 2020, and May 2021.

They discovered three surprising truths about well-being, including:

  • Workers’ resilience levels are waning. More than two-thirds of workers (68.5%) felt like they were burning out at work. This is impacting workers’ levels of performance, job satisfaction, and commitment.
  • There is a crisis for meaningful work Only 39.1% of workers said their work was valuable and worthwhile, versus 47% in 2021, and 52.9% in 2020.
  • Many workplaces are wasting their well-being Workplaces have too much invested in EAP services (which are proving only slightly more effective than doing nothing) and not enough in more effective tools that workers are more comfortable accessing like Wellbeing Artificial Intelligence Bots, Wellbeing Apps, Wellbeing Workshops and Wellbeing Coaching.

This reinforces the need to think and act differently when we approach cultivating well-being, resilience, and creativity to better realize our human potential and human skills in times when they are our most valuable assets and needed the most and are crucial to future success!

Developing deliberate calm

“Deliberate calm” involves developing a practice of adaptive, intentional choices that anyone can develop by embracing what was once regarded as “soft” stuff: self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and mindfulness to learn proactively and lead dynamically amid the most uncertain circumstances, where according to Aaron De Smet, the co-author of “Deliberate Calm: How to Learn and Lead in a Volatile World”:

“Why do we say “deliberate”? Because if you’re not deliberate about it you will probably freak out. I need to be very deliberate in knowing that I’m in a chaotic situation, knowing the stakes are high, knowing there’s a lot of uncertainty, and then deliberately calming myself down and taking stock”.

Deliberate calm looks at the inner world, the outer world, the context, and the dynamic between those and starts by slowing down to create a safe space for people to enjoy the benefits of deliberate calm.  This helps activate, focus, and unleash our creative brains and facilitates thinking about creativity differently.

Hitting our pause buttons

Creating deliberate calm is one of the most critically urgent human skill sets to develop.

It involves creating for ourselves and co-creating, with others, more normalized states of equilibrium and calmness. This enables us to cultivate our physical and psychological well-being, develop resilience and unleash creativity differently by accessing our collective intelligence, skills, and experience through applying proven neuroscience principles and coaching practices.

It starts with initiating a habit of pausing long enough to take deep breaths, retreat, reflect, and access these inner parts of ourselves; including noticing our emotions, identifying our triggers, observing our physical reactions to normalize our equilibrium, coherence, and calmness, and focusing on thinking about creativity differently.

Re-appraising our situation

We can then reappraise what is really going on, by identifying what our emotions are telling us, sustaining the most resourceful emotions and letting negative ones go, and finally, by identifying the key options for taking positive actions. Ultimately take smarter risks, make smarter decisions, and take more intelligent actions that cultivate our well-being, develop our resilience, unleash creativity differently, and satisfy our desire for meaning, purpose, and accomplishment.

As evidenced by our global coaching practice, this personally empowering and energizing activity focuses our attention, minds, and hearts on what really matters, and on what we can truly influence and control in a world of unknowns, and engages people deeply in doing the value-adding, productive and meaningful work that delivers it.

Three new deliberate calming practices to access and unleash our creative brains

  • Being grounded: involves being fully embodied, whole, centered, and balanced in ourselves and our relationships, we are in complete control of our mental, physical, and emotional selves, and are not easily influenced or shaken by other ideas or individuals.
  • Our unconscious mind, through our brains’ default mode network (DMN), is freed to wander, and be spontaneous in emerging and generating novel and surprising ideas and patterns.

This is usually achieved by regularly practicing a range of very simple activities that help us get centered, including removing any distractions (mobile phones), deep breathing (box breathing), and slow grounding repetitive exercises such as Feldenkrais.

  • Being mindful: involves focusing our conscious attention on the present moment, our physical sensations, thoughts, and emotions in an accepting, nonjudgmental, and discerning way. It involves training our unconscious minds to notice, focus and pay deep attention to what is really going on, for ourselves, for others, and in the system, we are operating within.
  • Our conscious minds are now provided with the focus necessary for guided problem-solving and for identifying the actions required to deliver the desired outcomes.

This is usually achieved by simple activities, by directing your focus when walking during the day (in nature without headsets), yoga, swimming, golf, tennis, listening to music, cooking, or by simple mindful meditation practices.

  • Being conscious: involves being in the present moment, or fully in the “here and now,” and means that we are grounded, fully aware, and mindful of what is happening at every moment because we are now consciously aware and able to shift our minds and generate creative thinking strategies.
  • Our conscious minds are able to exploit possibilities and make sense of the ideas that surface in the mind-wandering phase, by accessing the salience network, which then recruits the executive control networks, in our brains to refine and develop an idea. We can then exploit the range of creative ideas to make unexpected connections and to emerge, diverge and converge novel ideas for thinking about creativity differently, as well as for smart risk-taking, decision-making, and innovative problem-solving.

Empowering people to envision and transform

Creating a safe space, to transform the power of our minds and hearts to connect with others cultivates our well-being, harnesses peoples’ collective genius, generates resilience, and unleashes creativity by thinking about creativity differently.

This manifests as an opportunity to empower people to plan and make the nudges necessary to kickstart change, envision and plan for the future of unknowns.

Rather than unintentionally colluding with their unconscious panicking and retreating from the fears, anxiety, and risks currently emerging in an uncertain world full of disruption and crises.

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, starting Friday, May 12, 2023.

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.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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10 Days to Save on Charting Change

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Charting Change for an Outstanding 2023

Wow! Exciting news!

From now until April 19, 2023 you can get my latest best-selling book Charting Change in hardcover for only $24.99 – plus FREE shipping!

Sorry, unfortunately this sale doesn’t have a discount on the eBook, meaning the hardcover is temporarily cheaper.

You must go to SpringerLink for this Cyber Sale:

  • The offer is valid until April 19, 2023 on the hardcover only
  • Free shipping worldwide – with a few restrictions (check the restrictions carefully)

Click here to get this hardcover deal

*This offer is valid for English-language Palgrave hardcover books and 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.

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

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

  1. Taking Care of Yourself is Not Impossible — by Mike Shipulski

  2. Rise of the Prompt Engineer — by Art Inteligencia

  3. A Guide to Effective Brainstorming — by Diana Porumboiu

  4. What Disruptive Innovation Really Is — by Geoffrey A. Moore

  5. The 6 Building Blocks of Great Teams — by David Burkus

  6. Take Charge of Your Mind to Reclaim Your Potential — by Janet Sernack

  7. Ten Reasons You Must Deliver Amazing Customer Experiences — by Shep Hyken

  8. Deciding You Have Enough Opens Up New Frontiers — by Mike Shipulski

  9. The AI Apocalypse is Here – 3 Reasons You Should Celebrate! — by Robyn Bolton

  10. Artificial Intelligence is Forcing Us to Answer Some Very Human Questions — by Greg Satell

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 three years:

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Take Charge of Your Mind to Reclaim Your Potential

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Take Charge of Your Mind to Reclaim Your Potential

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In our recent blog, we explored how our focus and attention have been stolen, and how our ability to pay attention is collapsing and described why we need to be intentional in reclaiming it. Yet, many of us are constantly challenged by very short attention spans, where we can often be found sitting at our desks, dealing with a range of very urgent deadlines with a distracted, and unfocussed mind. Despite being intrinsically motivated to meet our deadlines, and being self-aware of needing to focus on completing the tasks in front of us, many of us often still struggle to disrupt and stop our thoughts from wandering randomly and haphazardly. Because, we are no longer being in charge of our minds, our time, or of our cognitive capacities and abilities that help us self-regulate, concentrate and focus our attention, kickstart change, innovate and become resilient.

A recent article in Psychology Today “The War For Your Attention” reinforces this problem by stating:

 “We live in a time when attention has become our most valuable asset, one for which multiple stakeholders are competing. Political parties, media outlets, companies, and individuals want a share of it, and if they can have it, they want it all. As a result, remaining in charge of our minds has become a daily challenge. Our attention defines our experience, which sets the mindset of our minds”.

Become Resilient

Because we don’t know if companies will ever return to their pre-pandemic-like worlds, and what new technologies will emerge, we need to become resilient to be future-fit, in this new world of unknowns.

This requires people to unlearn some of their less resourceful “bad pre and post-pandemic habits” and be:

  • Open towards relearning and reskilling in how to focus, concentrate and observe, and how to manage, direct and expand our attention spans.
  •  Intentional, outcome-focused, and therefore, effective, agile, adaptive, and resilient in an uncertain world full of disruption and crises.

This is reinforced by a recent article “Seizing the momentum to build resilience for a future of sustainable inclusive growth” by McKinsey & Co:

“In the past year, leaders have been confronted with a lifetime’s worth of disruption and crises: global conflict, energy uncertainty, food shortages, accelerating inflation, and severe climate events. Natural and human-made disruptions will only persist. To enable long-term, sustainable, and inclusive growth, today’s business leaders and policymakers must strengthen resilience beyond a survival capacity.”

  • From surviving to thriving

The nature and speed of change are not going to slow down, at the same time, our uncertain world full of disruption and crises is having a harsh psychological toll on everyone, impacting negatively on people’s states of emotional and physical health.

If we want people to thrive, we have to start helping people to live better than we ever have.

Taking the first baby steps requires people to confidently and courageously be, think and act differently.

Starting with empowering and enabling people to take charge of their hearts and minds, and commit to focusing their attention on building their resilience.

The Switch-Cost Effect

In his best-selling book Johann Hari – Stolen Focus, describes how Professor Earl Miller, a specialist in neuroscience, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, states that “our brains can only produce one or two thoughts” in our conscious minds at once.

Because “we are very, very single-minded” and have “very limited cognitive capacity.”

  • Multi-tasking is an illusion

The delusion that we can multitask, or juggle a number of thoughts and activities at the same time, is revealed, through robust research, as actually “switching, back and forth.”

He states that we don’t notice the switching because:

“Our brain sort of papers it over to give a seamless experience of consciousness, but what they’re actually doing is switching and reconfiguring their brain moment-to-moment, task-to-task – which comes with a cost.”

  • Losing time to refocus

This is described as the “switch-cost effect” and means that every time we switch tasks while trying to work, we are actually losing a huge amount of time required to concentrate and manage our attention spans to refocus afterward.

“For example, one study at Carnegie Mellon University’s human-computer interaction lab took 136 students and got them to sit a test. Some of them had to have their phones switched off, and others had their phones on and received intermittent text messages. The students who received messages performed, on average, 20% worse. It seems to me that almost all of us are currently losing that 20% of our brainpower, almost all the time. Miller told me that as a result we now live in “a perfect storm of cognitive degradation”.

Reducing Cognitive Degradation

There are a number of simple and obvious ways to reduce our cognitive degradation and heal our unconscious “attention deficit syndromes”, and cognitively reappraise to be in charge of our minds, concentrate and effectively manage our attention spans.

It is also the first step we need to take to empower and enable ourselves and others, in taking charge of our hearts and minds and demonstrating our commitment to focusing our attention and becoming initially resilient.

These simple actions require us to be self-disciplined, methodical, and rigorous and open to re-learning how to concentrate and self-regulated our attention spans by habitually:

  • Stripping out distractions,
  • Ceasing to multi-task,
  • Getting more quality sleep,
  • Taking regular short breaks,
  • Doing brain exercises,
  • Doing physical exercises,
  • Listening to music,
  • Setting priorities,
  • Using a timer.

How to be in charge of our own minds

If we want to cultivate a calmer, coherent, and resourceful psychological state, to achieve the outcomes we want to have in our lives, then focus and place our attention on both what we want to manifest (our intention), and on what we want your attention to move away from, to cease.

  • Attention activates

When choosing to consciously slow down, hit our pause buttons, and retreat into stillness and silence, opens the sacred space, that allows us to reflect, focus and pay deeper attention to the impact of our emotions and beliefs on our thoughts.

We can then also attend to, and break down any unresourceful beliefs, emotions, and cognitive distortions about what we can really and truly influence and control to:

  • Create a more normalised state of equilibrium and calm, get grounded and fully present and manage our attention spans to concentrate on what really matters to us, in ways that are self-compassionate and optimistic about the future.
  • Support ourselves by believing that we can succeed in handling our situations, responsibly, creatively, and effectively.
  • Become resilient by knowing how to respond to events in real-time, anticipate events and problems that may occur in the future, and bounce from adversity whilst processing the insights and learnings gained by conquering key challenges.

Developing Resilience

We can then be in charge of our minds, become resilient, and create a safe space and generosity for others to fully show up and connect with us. We can open our eyes, minds, and hearts to all options, unleash possibilities and opportunities, make smart change choices, and innovate, rather than panicking and retreating from the risks emerging in an uncertain world full of disruption and crises.

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, starting Friday, May 12, 2023.

Image Credit: Pixabay, Pexels

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Building a True Revolution

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Building a True Revolution

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

“Revolution” is a term that gets thrown around a lot. There was an Industrial Revolution powered by steam and then another one powered by oil and electricity. The Green Revolution transformed the way we fed ourselves. Many political revolutions have overthrown powerful regimes and the digital revolution changed the way we work with information.

My friend Srdja Popović, who helped lead the Bulldozer Revolution that overthrew Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, told me that the goal of a revolution should be to become mainstream, to be mundane and ordinary. If you are successful it should be difficult to explain what was won because the previous order seems so unbelievable.

The problem with most would-be revolutionaries is that they seek exactly the opposite. All too often, they seek attention, excitement and crowds of admiring fans. Yet all that noise is likely to create enemies just as fast as it makes friends. True revolutions aren’t won in the streets or on the airwaves, but through smart strategies that transform basic beliefs.

A Shift in Paradigms

The idea of a paradigm shift was first established by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which explained how scientific breakthroughs come to the fore. It starts with an established model, the kind we learn in school or during initial training for a career. Eventually, those models are shown to be untenable, and a period of instability ensues until a new paradigm can be created and adopted.

While Kuhn developed his theory to describe advancements in science, it has long been clear that it applies more broadly. For example, in my experiences in post-communist countries, the comfort of the broken, but relatively stable, system seemed to many to be preferable to the instability of change.

In the corporate world, models are not only mindsets, but are embedded in systems, processes and practices, which makes them especially pervasive. To bring change about, you need to disrupt basic operations and that comes with costs. Customers, partners and suppliers depend on the stability of how an organization does business.

So, the first step to driving change about is to create a new vision that can credibly replace the existing model without causing so much chaos that the perceived costs outweigh the benefits. As I explain in my book, Cascades, successful revolutionaries are more than just warriors, they are also educators that are able to mobilize others through the power of their vision.

Mobilizing Small Groups, Loosely Connected

We tend to think of revolutions as mass actions, such as protestors storming the streets or excited customers lining up outside an Apple store, yet they don’t start out that way. Revolutions begin with small groups, loosely connected, but united by a shared purpose.

For example, groups like the Cambridge Apostles and the Bloomsbury Group helped launch intellectual revolutions in early 20th century Cambridge. The Homebrew Computer Club helped bring about the digital revolution. Groups like Otpor, Kmara and Pora formed the grassroots of the Color Revolutions in the early 2000s.

What made these groups effective was their ability to connect and bring others in. For example the Homebrew Computer Club would hold convene informal gatherings at a bar after the more formal meetings of the club. In the Serbian revolution that overthrew Slobodan Milošević, Otpor used humor and street pranks to attract people to their cause.

Revolutions are driven by networks and power in networks emanates from the center. You move to the center by connecting out. That’s how you mobilize and gain influence. What you do with that power and influence, however, will determine if your revolution will succeed.

Influencing Institutional Change

Mobilization can be a powerful force but does not in itself create a revolution. To bring change about, you need to be able to influence institutions that have the power to drive change. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t write a single piece of legislation or decide a single court case but was able to influence the legislative and legal systems through his activism.

In his efforts to reform the Pentagon, Colonel John Boyd went outside the chain of command to brief congressional staffers and a small circle of journalists. As he gained support from Congress and the media, he was able to put pressure on the Generals and create a reform movement within the US military.

Now compare that to the Occupy Movement, which mobilized activists in 951 cities across 82 countries. However, they wanted to have nothing to do with institutions and actually refused opportunities to influence them. In fact, when Congressman John Lewis, himself a civil rights leader, showed up at a rally, they turned him away. Is it any wonder they never achieved any tangible change?

Make no mistake. If you truly want to bring change about, you have to mobilize somebody to influence something. Merely sending people out in the streets with signs won’t amount to much.

Preparing for the Counterrevolution

In his 2004 State of the Union Address, President Bush delivered a full-throated condemnation of same-sex marriage. Incensed, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom decided to unilaterally begin performing weddings for gay and lesbian couples at City Hall, in what was termed the Winter of Love. 4,027 couples were married before their nuptials were annulled by the California Supreme Court a month later.

The backlash was fierce and led Proposition 8, an amendment to the California Constitution that prohibited gay marriage, on the ballot. It was passed with a narrow majority of 52% of the electorate and was so harsh that it not only galvanized LGBT activists, but also began to sway public opinion.

The tide began to change when LBGT activists, began to appeal to values they shared with the general public, such as the right to live in committed relationships and raise happy, healthy families. In a Newsweek op-ed, Ted Olson, a conservative Republican lawyer who had previous served as President Bush’s Solicitor General, argued that legalizing same-sex marriage wasn’t strictly a gay issue, but would be “a recognition of basic American principles.”

Today, same sex marriage has become, to paraphrase my friend Srdja, mundane. It has become a part of everyday life that is widely accepted as the normal course of things. That’s when you know a revolution is complete. Not when the fervor of zealots drive people out into the streets, but when those in the mainstream begin to accept it as the normal course of business.

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

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The Life of a Corporate Innovator

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As Told in Three Sonnets

The Life of a Corporate Innovator

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Day 1

Oh innovation, a journey just begun

A bold quest filled with challenges, risks, and dreams,

A path of creativity, knowledge and fun,

That will bring change, growth and a brighter scene.

Do not be afraid, though unknowns abound,

For greatness starts with small unsteady steps

Take courage and embrace each change that’s found,

And trust that success will be the final event.

Remember, every challenge is a chance,

To learn, grow, and shape thy future bright,

And every obstacle a valuable dance,

That helps thee forge a path that’s just and right.

So go forth, my friend, and boldly strive,

To make innovation flourish and thrive.

The Abyss (Death and Rebirth)

Fight on corporate innovator, who art so bold

And brave despite the trials that thou hast,

Thou hast persevered through promises cold,

And fought through budget cuts that came so fast.

Thou hast not faltered, nor did thou despair,

Despite the lack of resources at thy door,

Thou hast with passion, worked beyond repair,

And shown a steel spine that’s hard to ignore.

Thou art a shining example to us all,

A beacon of hope in times that are so bleak,

Thou art a hero, standing tall and strong,

And leading us to victories that we seek.

So let us celebrate thy unwavering faith,

And honor thee, innovator of great grace.

The Triumph

My dear intrapreneur, well done,

The launch of thy innovation is a feat,

A result of years of hard work, and fun,

That sets a shining example for all to meet.

Thou hast persevered through many a trial,

With unwavering determination and drive,

And now, thy hard work doth make thee smile,

As thy business doth grow and thrive.

This triumph is a testament to thee,

Of thy creativity, passion, and might,

And serves as a reminder of what can be,

When we pour our hearts into what is right.

So let us raise a glass and celebrate,

Thy success, and the joy innovation hath created!

These sonnets were created with the help of ChatGPT

Image credit: Pixabay

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Charting Change Mystery Deal

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Charting Change for an Outstanding 2023

Wow! Exciting news!

From now until March 27, 2023 you can get up to a 45% discount on my latest best-selling book Charting Change – plus FREE shipping!

OR you can also save on the eBook!

You must go to SpringerLink for this Cyber Sale:

  • The offer is valid until March 27, 2023
  • Please use Mystery2023 at check-out to get your discount on books & eBooks*
  • Free shipping

Click here and enter the code Mystery2023 before checkout

*This offer is valid for English-language Springer, Palgrave, Apress books and eBooks and 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.

The Coming Innovation Slowdown

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The Coming Innovation Slowdown

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Take a moment to think about what the world must have looked like to J.P. Morgan a century ago, in 1919. He was not only an immensely powerful financier with access to the great industrialists of the day, but also an early adopter of new technologies. One of the first electric generators was installed at his home.

The disruptive technologies of the day, electricity and internal combustion, were already almost 40 years old, but had little measurable economic impact. Life largely went on as it always had. That would quickly change over the next decade when those technologies would drive a 50-year boom in productivity unlike anything the world had ever seen before.

It is very likely that we are at a similar point now. Despite significant advances in technology, productivity growth has been depressed for most of the last 50 years. Over the next ten years, however, we’re likely to see that change as nascent technologies hit their stride and create completely new industries. Here’s what you’ll need to know to compete in the new era.

1. Value Will Shift from Bits to Atoms

Over the past few decades, innovation has become almost synonymous with digital technology. Every 18 months or so, semiconductor manufacturers would bring out a new generation of processors that were twice as powerful as what came before. These, in turn, would allow entrepreneurs to imagine completely new possibilities.

However, while the digital revolution has given us snazzy new gadgets, the impact has been muted. Sure, we have hundreds of TV channels and we’re able to talk to our machines and get coherent answers back, but even at this late stage, information and communication technologies make up only about 6% of GDP in advanced countries.

At first, that sounds improbable. How could so much change produce so little effect? But think about going to a typical household in 1960, before the digital revolution took hold. You would likely see a TV, a phone, household appliances and a car in the garage. Now think of a typical household in 1910, with no electricity or running water. Even simple chores like cooking and cleaning took hours of backbreaking labor.

The truth is that much of our economy is still based on what we eat, wear and live in, which is why it’s important that the nascent technologies of today, such as synthetic biology and materials science, are rooted in the physical world. Over the next generation, we can expect innovation to shift from bits back to atoms.

2. Innovation Will Slow Down

We’ve come to take it for granted that things always accelerate because that’s what has happened for the past 30 years or so. So we’ve learned to deliberate less, to rapidly prototype and iterate and to “move fast and break things” because, during the digital revolution, that’s what you needed to do to compete effectively.

Yet microchips are a very old technology that we’ve come to understand very, very well. When a new generation of chips came off the line, they were faster and better, but worked the same way as earlier versions. That won’t be true with new computing architectures such as quantum and neuromorphic computing. We’ll have to learn how to use them first.

In other cases, such as genomics and artificial intelligence, there are serious ethical issues to consider. Under what conditions is it okay to permanently alter the germ line of a species. Who is accountable for the decisions and algorithm makes? On what basis should those decisions be made? To what extent do they need to be explainable and auditable?

Innovation is a process of discovery, engineering and transformation. At the moment, we find ourselves at the end of one transformational phase and about to enter a new one. It will take a decade or so to understand these new technologies enough to begin to accelerate again. We need to do so carefully. As we have seen over the past few years, when you move fast and break things, you run the risk of breaking something important.

3. Ecosystems Will Drive Technology

Let’s return to J.P. Morgan in 1919 and ask ourselves why electricity and internal combustion had so little impact up to that point. Automobiles and electric lights had been around a long time, but adoption takes time. It takes a while to build roads, to string wires and to train technicians to service new inventions reliably.

As economist Paul David pointed out in his classic paper, The Dynamo and the Computer, it takes time for people to learn how to use new technologies. Habits and routines need to change to take full advantage of new technologies. For example, in factories, the biggest benefit electricity provided was through enabling changes in workflow.

The biggest impacts come from secondary and tertiary technologies, such as home appliances in the case of electricity. Automobiles did more than provide transportation, but enables a shift from corner stores to supermarkets and, eventually, shopping malls. Refrigerated railroad cars revolutionized food distribution. Supply chains were transformed. Radios, and later TV, reshaped entertainment.

Nobody, not even someone like J.P. Morgan could have predicted all that in 1919, because it’s ecosystems, not inventions, that drive transformation and ecosystems are non-linear. We can’t simply extrapolate out from the present and get a clear future of what the future is going to look like.

4. You Need to Start Now

The changes that will take place over the next decade or so are likely to be just as transformative—and possibly even more so—than those that happened in the 1920s and 30s. We are on the brink of a new era of innovation that will see the creation of entirely new industries and business models.

Yet the technologies that will drive the 21st century are still mostly in the discovery and engineering phases, so they’re easy to miss. Once the transformation begins in earnest, however, it will likely be too late to adapt. In areas like genomics, materials science, quantum computing and artificial intelligence, if you get a few years behind, you may never catch up.

So the time to start exploring these new technologies is now and there are ample opportunities to do so. The Manufacturing USA Institutes are driving advancement in areas as diverse as bio-fabrication, additive manufacturing and composite materials. IBM has created its Q Network to help companies get up to speed on quantum computing and the Internet of Things Consortium is doing the same thing in that space.

Make no mistake, if you don’t explore, you won’t discover. If you don’t discover you won’t invent. And if you don’t invent, you will be disrupted eventually, it’s just a matter of time. It’s always better to prepare than to adapt and the time to start doing that is now.

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

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The Impact of AI on Human Civilization

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A New Era of Possibility

The Impact of AI on Human Civilization: A New Era of Possibility

GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

OpenAI released ChatGPT on Nov 30th, 2022, which has captivated the public due to its applicability to various needs and asks and near-human accuracy at astounding efficiency. AI has traditionally elicited mixed reactions, ranging from excitement and anticipation to fear and hesitation. With the introduction of this revolutionary technology, questions about its implications are beginning to arise. How will this affect knowledge workers? Which career paths are likely to become obsolete? What new knowledge do marketers, creators, programmers, etc. need to acquire to make the most of this changing landscape?

These are valid and important questions to consider, and it is essential that we have open and honest conversations about the potential impacts of AI on the workforce and how its emergence is making us and our co-workers feel. As the workplace continues to evolve and adopt more of these tools, It is critical to explore some common fears people have about AI and discuss ways that individuals and organizations can adapt, maintain the best parts of our humanity, and thrive alongside these technological advancements.

The tools now available to the public are incredibly powerful and are ushering in a momentous time of discovery. The availability of such powerful AI tools has opened up new avenues for discovery and innovation in various fields. GPT-3, Claude,  Sparrow, and the technology they will inspire all have the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate, learn, and interact with information. If we approach this game-changing tech with humanity, curiosity, and excitement, we can easily step into a world where AI is not only a tool but also a collaborator.

A common reaction to experiencing the power of AI is a feeling of cheating or that we are replaceable, this leads to discussion and debate about whether people will lose their jobs. It’s important to remind ourselves that this feeling is not new or unique to AI. Consider innovations like the printing press or the internet. While initially seen as disruptive, more opportunity has always been generated than lost. New roles and markets emerge in times of massive change.

One unique thing about AI technologies, in particular, is that there are advancing and improving at an astonishing rate. This means that it’s an exciting time to play and watch and learn what can be done with these tool and how they might shape our work in the future. As we learn more and gain clarity and confidence, we are better suited to experiment with new approaches to our work. From there, we can consider how our jobs might shift and take on new requirements and meanings. If the AI can now automate 80% of your work, what can you do with that 80% that is now gifted back to you? Are you able to spend focus on the 20% that really provided the most value? The part that speak to your humanness?

While many people will shift habits and behaviors, some will shift into complete new roles with new titles that never existed before. We’ve already seen this happen in the AI ecosystem. A role that has specifically caught my attention is the “Prompt Engineer” I fondly like to refer to them as AI Facilitators. If you’ve spent any time with ChatGPT, you’ve learned that getting great results from Chat GPT is similar to getting great results from a room of people you are facilitating. You have to ask GREAT QUESTIONS.

Software companies seeking to add GPT capabilities into their products are hiring Prompt Engineers to create the best prompts for GTP to tailor the responses for their product use cases. Think of it like constructing the perfect MadLib. Consumers of a product will interact with the product and maybe fill in some data or make some requests in the app. The app will then submit that request and data to GTP by inserting the pieces into this perfectly crafted MadLib that will generate the ideal result for the end user. Prompt Engineers design these prompts and Madlib-like structures to get desired outcomes from the AI model.

It’s fun to watch the job boards and careers pages for AI consultancies and AI-forward tech companies to see what trends are emerging around new job titles. Reflecting on these observations and considering what that means for overall trends and how those might emerge in your work can lead to valuable insights. Take a look. What ideas surface for you when you consider potential new roles in this emerging landscape?

If nothing else, remember to be curious! It’s totally normal to feel overwhelmed, confused, scared, frustrated, dubious, and generally concerned. Take time to move past those reactions and cultivate the generative curiosity needed to learn and understand the technology. When we are curious, we see connections that are non-obvious, and when these pathways are illuminated are able to design our future more effortlessly.

Putting It Into Action

As I mentioned previously, questions have always been paramount in facilitation, which is still true for ChatGTP and other language modules. While these tools are amazing, you won’t get far if you don’t know how to ask good questions or know what questions you should be asking. Questions are uniquely human. No other being discovered has this ability. And, when we engage in self-reflection, introspection, and empathy towards others, we connect more deeply with our humanity—leading to a better understanding of our thoughts, emotions, and values as well as how we are connected to those around us. Thoughtful inquiry cultivates a greater sense of awareness, compassion, and connection within our teams, organizations, and, eventually the AIs alongside us.

Master facilitators have spent years honing their skills and developing their ability to attune to and guide the flow of energy, attention, and conflict in a room. Successful facilitation in the future will also require mastering the art of collaborating with machines. Adapting and extending existing practices to maximize new potential with AI will be the norm. In preparation for this new age of collaboration, we’ve started experimenting by employing proven facilitation techniques while interacting with ChatGPT and other tools. The familiarity of the tools provides some comfort and confidence as we experiment with the unknown.

Start with classic facilitative questions to help guide ChatGPT toward your outcomes:

  1. How might we clarify and align the goals and objectives?
  2. How might we identify the tone and perspective?
  3. How might we recognize empathetic requirements that are considerate to our audience?
  4. How might we brainstorm and generate ideas for prompts and test them?
  5. How might we evaluate and prioritize prompts with core values in mind?

If you are a leader, facilitation is key to your work, or you are curious to grow into these areas, start by familiarizing yourself with the capabilities and nuances of the tools. You’ll want to start with any tool-specific tutorials to familiarize yourself with the UI and functions of the tool. Once you are on the tool and ready to start experimenting, take a moment to explore and learn how to craft questions that yield the best outcomes. As with any good question, think about the context of your audience, what do they know, the purpose of your question, what’s the format of a really good response, and even the types of answers you’d like to avoid.  Remember that we have spent our entire lives asking, communicating, and presenting questions to other humans, and it will take some time and experimentation to master questions for machines.

I have been experimenting with ChatGPT and have made some progress on how to get the most interesting results.

  • Always make sure to start with your purpose, and think clearly about why this is important. Find ways to incorporate your why into the questions and prompts you construct for ChatGPT.

  • Consider the personality of, or style of, the response that might be most valuable to you. Would you like to have your meeting summarized from the perspective of an investigative journalist, Charles Dickens, or Gandhi Think about the tone, attitude, and mindsets you seek to convey.

  • Remember that ChatGPT is there to perform tasks for you. What is the thing you want it to generate? An essay, a poem, a love letter, a summary, a report, or computer code.

  • One noteworthy feature of ChatGPT is that it can reference up to approximately 3000 previous words from the conversation. Take advantage of this is beneficial for requesting revisions and getting the tool to generate variations and adaptations until you get results you are happy with. Give it specific instructions on how to improve.

  • Include specific qualities or requirements you have for defining a good response. This may not be immediately apparent when you first start, and you’ll need to rely on iterating and refining to get the answer you want. Over time you’ll get a handle on the criteria and instructions that are important to you. Save these for the next time you use ChatGPT.

We have created a template laying out these steps in further detail so you can play with ideas and help streamline this process.

ChatGPT has lots of potential but how do we get the most out of it? It’s all about the prompt. Writing and tweaking prompts specific to your needs is key to unlocking the best results. Use this tool template to think through what you’d like to achieve and how to construct the ideal prompt for ChatGPT to get you there.

Collaborating With AI

Practice, practice, practice! Learn to ask the right questions and become more comfortable collaborating with AI. This is key because, eventually, AI will work with us on our teams. We need to become accustomed to how they operate and how they “think”, as it will be different than collaborating with humans. We have generations of experience collaborating with humans, and now is the time to start building that same experience with machines.

Imagine you are on a team of five, four humans and one AI.

  1. What does collaboration with AI look like, and how does it feel?
  2. What questions will the team ask the AI?
  3. How will we learn to work and collaborate in new ways?
  4. What does it mean to invite AI in as a team member?
  5. How might we notice and encourage it to have more ethical and inclusive answers?

Inviting the AI in as a team member means giving it context and teaching it how to work best with us. We can help it learn our culture and values to better align with our mission, vision, and purpose. Building a strategy to incorporate AI as a team member is not unlike working with people in an organization. When a company’s strategy is aligned with its values and purpose, it can create a more meaningful and fulfilling work experience for employees. AI can be an extension of this, reinforcing desired norms and behaviors. Creating a safe environment allowing people to bring their whole selves to work and tap into their innate sense of purpose and connection with others. This can, in turn, help employees lean deeper into their humanity and contribute to a more positive, ethical, and sustainable organizational culture.

Transcending The AI

There are many examples of how technology has allowed us to put aside trivial matters and  elevate as humans. AI is currently simplifying tasks of all kinds by efficiently performing mundane tasks on demand. For example, AI design tools are able to nearly eliminate the creation of UI design, allowing designers to spend their time considering the strategy, conceptual design, how to elevate user experience, and how to address accessibility or other concerns. While the simple example is handy for examples sakes, the potential is much greater than just moving from tactical work to strategic work. As these tools advance and provide deeper functionality for us, we will shift into a higher state of work, finding deeper connections and relating at levels never before experienced in the workplace.

Humans are exceptionally adaptable organisms, and the AI revolution is a time that calls for us to lean into that ability. As with any change, we must also be considerate of long-term systemic implications and sustainability of our actions and work. As you embark on your journey, consider the ethics of what you or your organization are asking of the AI.  Think about the second and third-order effects of what you are asking. If the AI excels at doing this task, what might result from that and so on and so forth? What are the long-term consequences of that? Finally, consider if we might want to pick a different starting point or provide more conditions to properly guide or constrain the AI.

I’m excited about what the future holds for us. As we explore these times together, join me as I focus on appreciating and respecting the diversity of experiences and perspectives that make us all unique. As we begin to create our first relationships with AI, remember to reach firmly into the deepest depths of our humanity.

Article first published at VoltageControl.com

Image credit: Pixabay

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Deciding You Have Enough Opens Up New Frontiers

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Deciding You Have Enough Opens Up New Frontiers

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If you are happy with what you have, others have no power over you.

If you don’t want more, you call the shots.

If you have nothing to prove, no one can manipulate you.

If you have enough, the lure of more cannot pull you off the path of what you think is right.

If you don’t need approval from others, you can do what you think is right.

If you know what’s important to you, you can choose the path forward.

If you know who you are, so does everyone else.

If you know who you are, you don’t care what others think of you.

When you don’t care about what others think about you, you can do the right work.

When you can do the right work in the right way, you are impervious to influence.

When you are impervious to influence, the right work happens, despite the displeasure of the Status Quo.

Image credit: Pixabay

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