Category Archives: Change

Leading in the Age of Uncertainty

How to Anticipate and Adapt with Confidence

Leading in the Age of Uncertainty

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The defining characteristic of the modern business environment is not speed, but volatility. We live in a perpetual state of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity). For many leaders, this constant flux generates paralysis, a desperate clinging to old, rigid plans. As a champion of Human-Centered Change, I argue that this uncertainty is not a threat to be managed, but a resource to be leveraged. The true differentiator of effective leadership today is the ability to move beyond mere reactivity and cultivate a proactive culture of Anticipatory Adaptation.

Anticipatory Adaptation is the fusion of foresight and flexibility. It recognizes that in a world where AI, geopolitics, and customer demands shift monthly, the most dangerous strategy is having no strategy for change itself. It’s about building an organizational immune system that can detect weak signals, prototype rapid responses, and maintain psychological safety throughout the process. This approach is the engine that keeps Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire to burn brightly, even through the fog of the unknown.

The Three Pillars of Anticipatory Leadership

To lead confidently amidst the chaos, we must operationalize foresight and agility across three interconnected domains:

1. Institutionalizing Weak Signal Detection

Most organizations are blind to the future because they only listen to strong, incumbent signals — the loudest customers, the direct competitors, the latest earnings reports. Proactive leaders institutionalize the detection of weak signals — the faint, emerging trends on the periphery of their industry. This means empowering diversity of thought and challenging the organizational echo chamber. Who is talking to the fringe users? Who is monitoring the startup ecosystem that could completely disrupt your business model? This exercise, often facilitated through tools like FutureHacking sessions, turns passive watching into active, strategic reconnaissance.

2. Prioritizing Minimum Viable Actions (MVAs)

Uncertainty creates risk aversion, leading to large, slow, ‘bet-the-farm’ projects. The adaptive leader breaks down major strategy into small, rapid, reversible experiments—Minimum Viable Actions (MVAs). The goal of an MVA isn’t scale; it’s learning. MVAs are designed to test the underlying assumptions of a trend or a threat with minimal resource commitment. By running five small, fast experiments instead of one huge pilot, you dramatically accelerate your learning curve and reduce the cost of failure. Speed of learning is the only sustainable competitive advantage in an uncertain age.

3. Anchoring Decision-Making in Purpose

When the environment is stable, processes guide decisions. When the environment is volatile, processes break down. The only constant anchor is a clear, shared purpose. The human-centered leader ensures every team member understands the organizational Why—the mission that transcends quarterly earnings. When faced with an unforeseen threat or a pivot opportunity, team members can independently and rapidly make aligned decisions because they share a common moral and strategic filter. This decentralized, purpose-driven decision-making is the ultimate expression of empowered agency in an uncertain world.

Case Study 1: The Retailer’s Digital Pivot

A major brick-and-mortar retailer with a strong regional presence was initially slow to adopt e-commerce. As the pandemic hit, they faced imminent closure. Traditional leadership might have panicked and attempted a massive, desperate digital overhaul, likely failing due to speed and cost.

Instead, the new leadership team adopted an Anticipatory Adaptation approach. They didn’t try to build Amazon overnight. Their weak signal detection—which they had instituted pre-crisis—had already flagged the rapid shift toward local delivery apps. Their MVA focused solely on testing one assumption: Could their existing store associates execute high-quality, local, last-mile delivery? They launched a pilot within 72 hours, integrating with a single local courier service, manually tracking results. When the MVA proved successful, they rapidly scaled the model, granting each store manager the agency to customize the local delivery integration based on their specific community needs.

By focusing on speed of learning with MVAs and leveraging their existing human assets (store associates), they successfully transformed their physical stores into micro-distribution centers, not only surviving the crisis but gaining market share by offering hyperlocal service that larger competitors couldn’t match. Their success was a product of small, rapid adaptations, not a sweeping, rigid plan.

Case Study 2: Hacking the Climate Risk

I worked with a global utility provider whose core infrastructure faced rising climate-related risks (severe storms, heat waves). The traditional response was a twenty-year capital expenditure plan. While necessary, it was too slow for the pace of change.

We instituted a futurology program centered on uncertainty. We didn’t ask, “What will the weather be?” but “What if the worst-case scenario happened five years early?” This forced cross-functional teams (engineering, finance, public relations, and frontline operations) to anticipate cascading failures. The MVA derived from this exercise was a decentralized Rapid Response Kit—a set of pre-approved procedures, pre-allocated minor budgets, and pre-trained local teams empowered to deploy immediate, tactical infrastructure solutions (like temporary microgrids) without waiting for C-suite sign-off during a crisis.

The result was a cultural shift from passive risk management to proactive resilience. The utility didn’t eliminate the climate risk, but they drastically reduced the time between recognizing a threat and taking decisive, purpose-aligned action. Their improved response times during subsequent extreme weather events saved millions in recovery costs and significantly boosted public trust, illustrating how empowering people to act within a purpose framework is the most effective defense against uncertainty.

“Confidence in an uncertain world isn’t about knowing the answer; it’s about trusting your organization’s ability to learn faster than the pace of change. Trust comes from human empowerment, not rigid control.”

The Adaptive Leader’s Next Steps

Leading with confidence in this environment means shifting your leadership focus:

Audit Your Blind Spots: Dedicate resources to actively seek and discuss weak signals that challenge your current success model. What customer are you losing that you aren’t talking about?
Institutionalize Rapid Testing: Require every major strategic initiative to be broken down into three to five low-cost, reversible MVAs. Celebrate the learning derived from failed experiments, not just the success of the winners.
Embrace Humility: Recognize that the smartest person is the network, not the individual leader. Your job is to facilitate learning, remove organizational friction, and anchor everyone in the shared purpose so they can adapt locally and autonomously.

Uncertainty tests the structural integrity of every organization. The leaders who succeed will be those who trust their people, prioritize learning over planning, and wield Anticipatory Adaptation as their core strategic competence.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credit: Pexels

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4 Key Aspects of Robots Taking Our Jobs

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4 Key Aspects of Robots Taking Our Jobs

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

A 2019 study by the Brookings Institution found that over 61% of jobs will be affected by automation. That comes on the heels of a 2017 report from the McKinsey Global Institute that found that 51% of total working hours and $2.7 trillion dollars in wages are highly susceptible to automation and a 2013 Oxford study that found 47% of jobs will be replaced.

The future looks pretty grim indeed until you start looking at jobs that have already been automated. Fly-by-wire was introduced in 1968, but today we’re facing a massive pilot shortage. The number of bank tellers has doubled since ATMs were introduced. Overall, the US is facing a massive labor shortage.

In fact, although the workforce has doubled since 1970, labor participation rates have risen by more than 10% since then. Everywhere you look, as automation increases, so does the demand for skilled humans. So the challenge ahead isn’t so much finding work for humans, but to prepare humans to do the types of work that will be in demand in the years to come.

1. Automation Doesn’t Replace Jobs, It Replaces Tasks

To understand the disconnect between all the studies that seem to be predicting the elimination of jobs and the increasingly dire labor shortage, it helps to look a little deeper at what those studies are actually measuring. The truth is that they don’t actually look at the rate of jobs being created or lost, but tasks that are being automated. That’s something very different.

To understand why, consider the legal industry, which is rapidly being automated. Basic activities like legal discovery are now largely done by algorithms. Services like LegalZoom automate basic filings. There are even artificial intelligence systems that can predict the outcome of a court case better than a human can.

So, it shouldn’t be surprising that many experts predict gloomy days ahead for lawyers. Yet the number of lawyers in the US has increased by 15% since 2008 and it’s not hard to see why. People don’t hire lawyers for their ability to hire cheap associates to do discovery, file basic documents or even, for the most part, to go to trial. In large part, they want someone they can trust to advise them.

In a similar way we don’t expect bank tellers to process transactions anymore, but to help us with things that we can’t do at an ATM. As the retail sector becomes more automated, demand for e-commerce workers is booming. Go to a highly automated Apple Store and you’ll find far more workers than at a traditional store, but we expect them to do more than just ring us up.

2. When Tasks Become Automated, The Become Commoditized

Let’s think back to what a traditional bank looked like before ATMs or the Internet. In a typical branch, you would see a long row of tellers there to process deposits and withdrawals. Often, especially on Fridays when workers typically got paid, you would expect to see long lines of people waiting to be served.

In those days, tellers needed to process transactions quickly or the people waiting in line would get annoyed. Good service was fast service. If a bank had slow tellers, people would leave and go to one where the lines moved faster. So training tellers to process transactions efficiently was a key competitive trait.

Today, however, nobody waits in line at the bank because processing transactions is highly automated. Our paychecks are usually sent electronically. We can pay bills online and get cash from an ATM. What’s more, these aren’t considered competitive traits, but commodity services. We expect them as a basic requisite of doing business.

In the same way, we don’t expect real estate agents to find us a house or travel agents to book us a flight or find us a hotel room. These are things that we used to happily pay for, but today we expect something more.

3. When Things Become Commodities, Value Shifts Elsewhere

In 1900, 30 million people in the United States were farmers, but by 1990 that number had fallen to under 3 million even as the population more than tripled. So, in a manner of speaking, 90% of American agriculture workers lost their jobs, mostly due to automation. Still, the twentieth century became an era of unprecedented prosperity.

We’re in the midst of a similar transformation today. Just as our ancestors toiled in the fields, many of us today spend much of our time doing rote, routine tasks. However, as two economists from MIT explain in a paper, the jobs of the future are not white collar or blue collar, but those focused on non-routine tasks, especially those that involve other humans.

Consider the case of bookstores. Clearly, by automating the book buying process, Amazon disrupted superstore book retailers like Barnes & Noble and Borders. Borders filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and was liquidated later that same year. Barnes & Noble managed to survive but has been declining for years.

Yet a study at Harvard Business School found that small independent bookstores are thriving by adding value elsewhere, such as providing community events, curating titles and offering personal recommendations to customers. These are things that are hard to do well at a big box retailer and virtually impossible to do online.

4. Value Is Shifting from Cognitive Skills to Social Skills

20 or 30 years ago, the world was very different. High value work generally involved retaining information and manipulating numbers. Perhaps not surprisingly, education and corporate training programs were focused on teaching those skills and people would build their careers on performing well on knowledge and quantitative tasks.

Today, however, an average teenager has more access to information and computing power than a typical large enterprise had a generation ago, so knowledge retention and quantitative ability have largely been automated and devalued. High value work has shifted from cognitive skills to social skills.

Consider that the journal Nature has found that the average scientific paper today has four times as many authors as one did in 1950, and the work they are doing is far more interdisciplinary and done at greater distances than in the past. So even in highly technical areas, the ability to communicate and collaborate effectively is becoming an important skill.

There are some things that a machine will never do. Machines will never strike out at a Little League game, have their hearts broken or see their children born. That makes it difficult, if not impossible, for machines to relate to humans as well as a human can. The future of work is humans collaborating with other humans to design work for machines.

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

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Storytelling as a Strategic Asset

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Building a Culture of Shared Vision

Storytelling as a Strategic Asset

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the complex, data-saturated landscape of modern business, leaders often mistake communication for connection. We blast out metrics, strategy decks, and endless transformation roadmaps, yet struggle to achieve true alignment. Why? Because facts inform, but stories inspire. As a proponent of Human-Centered Change, I believe that Storytelling is not a soft skill reserved for the marketing department; it is the single most powerful strategic asset a leader possesses for knitting together a culture of shared purpose and driving difficult, lasting innovation.

Innovation requires people to leave the certainty of the present for the ambiguity of the future. No spreadsheet can bridge that gap; only a compelling narrative can. Storytelling provides the emotional context that turns a complex 10-point plan into a simple, unforgettable journey. It is the necessary fuel for lighting your Innovation Bonfire.

The Anatomy of a Strategic Narrative

A strategic story is not just a recounting of events. It is a structured tool designed to achieve three non-negotiable goals:

1. Establishing Context and the “Why”

Every great story starts with a clear call to action or, in business, a clear articulation of the challenge (the villain) and the opportunity (the treasure). The narrative must define why the change is necessary — not just for the bottom line, but for the customer, the employee, and the broader world. This anchors the change in a higher purpose, making sacrifice feel meaningful.

2. Defining the Hero (It’s Not You)

Effective leaders understand they are the narrator, not the hero. The heroes of the transformation story must be the employees, the customers, or the front-line innovators. When you center the narrative on the team’s potential to overcome the challenge, you foster psychological ownership. People are far more likely to commit to a vision in which they play the starring role.

3. Creating Emotional Residency

Data is processed in the prefrontal cortex; stories are processed across the brain, activating areas linked to emotion and memory. A compelling narrative creates emotional residency — the feeling that the future state is already real and deeply desirable. This emotional connection is what sustains momentum when the inevitable project setbacks occur.

Case Study 1: The NASA “Janitor” Story

One of the most enduring stories of strategic vision involves President John F. Kennedy visiting NASA headquarters in 1962. During his tour, he encountered a janitor carrying a broom and simply asked him what he did at NASA. The janitor’s response was legendary: “Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

This is a masterclass in strategic storytelling. The janitor’s answer wasn’t a product of an operations manual or an HR training deck. It was evidence that the highest organizational mission — the “Why” — had successfully permeated every single level of the organization. The story of landing on the moon was the shared vision, and every employee understood their specific, vital role in that narrative. By anchoring the organization’s purpose in a powerful, common goal, NASA fostered an internal culture of innovation and dedication that transcended job titles and silo boundaries. The story became the operating system.

Case Study 2: Leading Change Through Artifacts

I once worked with a large, traditional manufacturing firm attempting a massive digital transformation, but the mid-level managers were entrenched in the old way of working. The strategy was too abstract — a deck of slides called “Digital 2.0.” To make the change real, we shifted to Human-Centered Storytelling through Artifacts.

Instead of presenting the “Digital 2.0” slides, the leadership team created a simple, physical Customer Pain Map — a large, visual representation highlighting the three most frustrating, friction-filled touchpoints for the customer that the current systems created. Crucially, they accompanied this map with three laminated printouts of customer complaints — actual, raw feedback taken from the call center — that were so painful they were almost impossible to read without wincing.

These artifacts became the new narrative. The purpose of the transformation instantly became clear: it wasn’t about saving money; it was about ending the customer’s pain. The team wasn’t “building Digital 2.0”; they were “fixing the red dots on the pain map.” By making the strategy tangible, emotional, and centered on the customer-as-hero, the leadership bypassed logical resistance and activated empathy, accelerating the shift in operational priorities far faster than any quarterly report could have.

“Data tells, but narrative sells. If you want people to commit to an ambiguous future, you must give them a vivid, emotional story they can step into and own.”

Building Your Storytelling Muscle

How does a leader evolve from a communicator of facts to a champion of vision through narrative? It requires deliberate practice:

Embrace Vulnerability: Start with your own story. Leaders who share their personal “Why” — their own journey and the failure they overcame — build trust and give permission for their team members to be vulnerable, too. This is the foundation of psychological safety.
Gather Front-line Narratives: The most powerful stories live on your company’s front-line. Dedicate time in town halls or team meetings to have employees share a “Hero Moment” — a recent example where they solved a problem that perfectly embodied the company’s stated values.
Simplify the Vision: Can you summarize your entire transformation strategy in a single, three-sentence narrative that your janitor could repeat? If not, the story is too complex. Strip away the jargon until the core conflict and resolution are crystal clear.

Your ability to narrate the future is the core competency of Human-Centered Leadership. By turning your strategic plan into a compelling, human-centric story, you move past mere communication. You create a shared reality, galvanize collective action, and unlock the massive reservoir of human potential needed to win the future.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Charting Change for a Successful 2023

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Charting Change for a Successful 2023

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From now until December 31, 2022 you can get a 50% discount on my latest best-selling book Charting Change – plus FREE shipping!

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Five Key Skills for Chief Transformation Officers

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Five Key Skills for Chief Transformation Officers

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

As digital transformation continues to become more commonplace in the modern business landscape, the role of the Chief Transformation Officer (CTO) has become increasingly important. A CTO is responsible for leading and managing large-scale, enterprise-wide transformation initiatives that typically involve multiple stakeholders, departments, and processes.

Given the complexity of their role, CTOs must possess a blend of technical and leadership skills in order to be successful. Here are five key skills that every CTO should have:

1. Strategic Thinking

The CTO needs to be able to identify and prioritize potential areas of transformation in order to develop a comprehensive and effective transformation plan. This requires a deep understanding of the organization and its goals, as well as the ability to think strategically and plan ahead.

2. Change Planning, Leadership and Management

The CTO must be able to effectively lead and manage the transformation process, which includes developing and implementing a plan, managing stakeholders, and ensuring that the transformation is successful. This requires a deep understanding of change planning, leadership, and management principles and processes. Ideally, they should be a certified Human-Centered Change professional, skilled at leveraging the Change Planning Toolkit™.

3. Cross-Functional Communication

The CTO must have excellent communication skills in order to effectively communicate the transformation plan and objectives to stakeholders across functional siloes, as well as to ensure that everyone is on the same page throughout the process. The Change Planning Canvas™ is a great tool for getting everyone literally all on the same page for change, and is introduced in Braden Kelley’s best-selling book Charting Change.

4. Technical Expertise

The CTO must possess a strong understanding of the technical and operational aspects of the organization in order to develop effective transformation plans and strategies. This may involve a deep understanding of data, analytics, and enterprise systems.

5. Relationship Building

The CTO needs to be able to build relationships with stakeholders across the organization in order to ensure that everyone is on board with the transformation plan and objectives. This requires the ability to understand different perspectives and build consensus among stakeholders.

These five skills are essential for any CTO to be successful in their role. With the right skillset and a strategic approach, a CTO can lead their organization to success and ensure a successful transformation.

To read more about Chief Transformation Officers, see my other article here:

What is a Chief Transformation Officer? — by Art Inteligencia

Extra Extra: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pexels

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How Transformational Leaders Learn to Conquer Failure

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How Transformational Leaders Learn to Conquer Failure

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

When we think of great leaders their great successes usually come to mind. We picture Washington crossing the Delaware or Gandhi leading massive throngs or Steve Jobs standing triumphantly on stage. It is moments of triumph such as these that make indelible marks on history’s consciousness.

While researching my book, Cascades, however, what struck me most is how often successful change movements began with failure. It seems that those later, more triumphant moments can blind us to the struggles that come before. That can give us a mistaken view of what it takes to drive transformational change.

To be clear, these early and sometimes tragic failures are not simply the result of bad luck. Rather they happen because most new leaders are not ready to lead and make novice mistakes. The difference, I have found, between truly transformational leaders and those that fail isn’t so much innate talent or even ambition, but their ability to learn along the way.

A Himalayan Miscalculation

Today, we remember Mohandas Gandhi as the “Mahatma,” an iconic figure, superlatively wise and saintly in demeanor. His greatest triumph, the Salt March, remains an enduring symbol of the power of nonviolent activism, which has inspired generations to work constructively toward positive change in the world.

What many overlook, however, is that ten years before that historic event Gandhi embarked on a similar effort that would fail so tragically he would come to regard it as his Himalayan miscalculation. It was, in fact, what he learned from the earlier failure that helped make the Salt March such a remarkable success.

In 1919, he called for a nationwide series of strikes and boycotts to protest against unjust laws, called the Rowlatt Acts, passed by the British Raj. These protests were successful at first, but soon spun wildly out of control and eventually led to the massacre at Amritsar, in which British soldiers left hundreds dead and more than a thousand wounded.

Most people would have simply concluded that the British were far too cruel and brutal to be dealt with peacefully. Yet Gandhi realized that he had not sufficiently indoctrinated the protestors in his philosophy of Satyagraha. So he spent the next decade creating a dedicated cadre of devoted and disciplined followers.

When the opportunity arose again in 1930 Gandhi would not call for nationwide protests, but set out on the Salt March with 70 or 80 of his closest disciples. Their nonviolent discipline inspired the nation and the world. That’s what led to Gandhi’s ultimate victory, Indian independence, in 1947.

Learning To Overthrow a Dictator

If you looked at Serbia in 1999, you probably wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss. The country was ruled, as it had been for a decade, by Slobodan Milošević, whose power was nearly absolute. There was no meaningful political opposition or even an active protest movement. Milošević, it seemed, would be ruler for life.

Yet just a year later he was voted out of power. When he tried to steal the election, massive protests broke out and, when he lost the support of the military and security services, he was forced to concede. Two years later, he was tried at The Hague for crimes against humanity and found guilty. He would die in his prison cell in 2006.

However, the success of these protests was the product of earlier failures. There were student protests in 1992 that, much like the “Occupy” protests later in the US, quickly dissipated with little to show for the effort. Later the Zajedno (together) opposition coalition had some initial success, but then fell apart into disunity.

In 1998, veterans of both protests met in a coffee shop. They reflected on past failures and were determined not to repeat the same mistakes. Instead of looking for immediate results, they would use what they learned about organizing protests to build a massive networked organization, called Otpor, that would transcend political factions.

They had learned that if they could mobilize the public that they could beat Milošević at the polls and that, just like in 1996, he would deny the results. However, this time they would be prepared. Instead of disorganized protests, the regime faced an organization of 70,000 trained activists who inspired the nation and brought down a dictator.

A Wunderkind’s Fall from Grace

There is probably no business leader in history more iconic than Steve Jobs. We remember him not only for the incredible products he created, but the mastery with which he marketed them. Apple’s product launches became vastly more than mere business events, but almost cultural celebrations of expanding the limits of possibility.

What most people fail to realize about Steve Jobs, however, is how much he changed over the course of his career. Getting fired from Apple, the company he founded, was an excruciatingly traumatic experience. It forced him to come to terms with some of the more destructive parts of his personality.

While the Macintosh is rightfully seen today as a pathbreaking product, most people forget that, initially at least, it wasn’t profitable. After leaving Apple he started NeXT Computer which, although hailed for its design, also flopped. Along the way he bought Pixar, which struggled for years before finally becoming successful.

When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 he was a very different leader, more open to taking in the ideas of others. Although he became enamored with iMovie, his team convinced him that digital music was a better bet and the iPod became the new Apple’s first big hit. Later, even though he was dead set against allowing outside developers to create software for the iPhone, he eventually relented and created the App store.

Before You Can Change the World, You First Must Change Yourself

We tend to look back at transformational leaders and see greatness in them from the start. The truth is that lots of people have elements of greatness in them, but never amount to much. It is the ability to overcome our tragic flaws that makes the difference between outsized achievement and mediocrity.

When Gandhi began his career as a lawyer he was so shy that he couldn’t speak up in court. Before the founders of Otpor became leaders of a massive movement, they were just kids who wanted to party and listen to rock and roll. Steve Jobs was always talented, was so difficult to deal with even his allies on Apple’s board knew he needed to go.

Most people never overcome their flaws. Instead, they make accommodations with them. It would have been easy for Gandhi to blame the British for his “Himalayan Miscalculation,” just as it would have been easy for the Otpor founders to blame Milošević for their struggles and for Jobs to continue to swing at windmills, but they didn’t. Instead, they found the capacity to change.

We all have our talents, but innate ability will only take you so far. In the final analysis, what makes transformational leaders different is their ability to transform themselves to suit the needs of their mission.

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

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Your Personal Change Playbook

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A Step-by-Step Guide to Adapting

Your Personal Change Playbook - A Step-by-Step Guide to Adapting

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

As a thought leader focused on human-centered change, I often guide organizations through massive transformations—shifting cultures, adopting new technologies, or entering new markets. But every large-scale change, at its root, is a collection of thousands of individual, personal transformations. The biggest bottleneck in corporate innovation isn’t a lack of money or technology; it’s the human inability to adapt effectively.

The pace of modern life — the constant evolution of work, technology, and social structures—demands that we become master adapters. If we don’t actively manage our own journey through change, we default to resistance, anxiety, and stagnation. This article is your personal Change Playbook—a structured, step-by-step guide to help you navigate, process, and ultimately thrive amidst continuous disruption. It’s about applying the same principles of strategic change management we use for billion-dollar companies to the most complex system of all: you. Our goal is to replace change fatigue with adaptive resilience.

Phase 1: Awareness and Acknowledgment (The “Why”)

The first and most crucial step is to move past denial and build situational awareness around the change. This is the diagnostic phase, focused on emotional and cognitive clarity.

Step 1: Define the Disruption: Clearly articulate what is changing. Is it a skill (e.g., GenAI replacing a task), a role (a reorganization), or an environment (moving cities)? Be specific; vague anxiety is a resource drain.
Step 2: Identify the Loss: Every change, even a positive one, involves a loss: loss of routine, loss of status, loss of a comfortable skill set. Acknowledge this loss and the resulting grief cycle (denial, frustration, sadness). Skipping this step traps you in resistance and depletes psychological capital.
Step 3: Articulate Your Personal “WIIFM”: WIIFM stands for “What’s In It For Me?” Executives need a business case; you need a personal one. What specific, beneficial future state does this change unlock for you? A new career path, better work-life balance, or a challenging new skill? This creates the personal motivation for action.

“Change resistance is often un-managed fear. To overcome it we must acknowledge and quantify what we stand to lose AND gain.” — Braden Kelley

Phase 2: Experimentation and Iteration (The “How”)

Once you’ve accepted the reality of the change, you must shift from processing emotions to taking small, deliberate actions. Think of this phase as running short Agile Sprints on your life.

Step 4: Micro-Commitments: Break the change down into the smallest possible tasks. If you need to learn Python, your first task isn’t “Become a Coder.” It’s “Complete the first 3 lessons of the online course” or “Write one 5-line function.” This builds early wins and momentum, reducing the activation energy required for the next step.
Step 5: Embrace the “Ugly Prototype”: Accept that you will be inefficient and awkward in the new state. A novice guitarist doesn’t sound like a master; a new skill will feel slow and frustrating. The goal is rapid, imperfect prototyping of the new behavior, not perfection. This reduces the paralyzing fear of failure and accelerates the learning curve.
Step 6: Build Your Support Coalition: No change happens in isolation. Identify three types of people: a Mentor (who has done the change), a Buddy (who is doing the change with you), and a Champion (your accountability partner). This creates your personal change ecosystem and strengthens your social support net.

Case Study 1: The Mid-Career Pivot of “Sarah”

The Challenge:

Sarah, a 48-year-old marketing director, learned her company was shifting their entire strategy from traditional advertising to data-driven digital platforms. Her core expertise (creative storytelling and media buying) was suddenly becoming obsolete. She felt immense fear and a threat to her professional identity.

The Personal Change Playbook in Action:

Sarah applied Phase 1 by first defining the loss: “I am losing my status as the ‘go-to’ expert.” Her WIIFM was to lead the new digital transformation team and remain relevant for the next decade. In Phase 2, she started with a micro-commitment: spending 30 minutes every morning before work to complete an online certification in Google Analytics and a data visualization tool. She didn’t announce her grand plan; she focused on the next small task. By focusing on doing the change, she gradually built confidence and tangible skills.

The Result:

Within six months, Sarah became the most vocal and skilled advocate for the new strategy. She didn’t become a programmer, but she became fluent in the language of data, allowing her to lead and manage the younger data science teams effectively. Her willingness to be a beginner accelerated her into a new, expanded leadership role, proving that intentional adaptation is a powerful career shield.

Phase 3: Integration and Mastery (The “What’s Next”)

The final phase is about locking in the new behaviors and preparing for the inevitable next change by establishing a Personal Feedback Loop.

Step 7: Codify the New Normal: Make the new habit non-negotiable. If the change was switching to a new workflow software, delete the old one. If it was a new exercise routine, book it in your calendar as a meeting you can’t miss. Ritualize the behavior until it requires minimal conscious effort and becomes part of your identity.
Step 8: Reflect and Document (The Personal Retrospective): The most underutilized tool for change is a journal. Write down what you learned about yourself during the process. What triggered resistance? What enabled quick progress? This creates an adaptability blueprint for your future changes, turning every transformation into a learning opportunity.
Step 9: Anticipate the Next Shift: Use your newly developed foresight muscle to look ahead. Based on what you see in your industry, what is the next skill, tool, or mindset you will need to start prototyping? The goal is to make pre-emptive change your default state, ensuring you are always one step ahead of obsolescence.

Case Study 2: Overcoming Remote Work Burnout “Mark”

The Challenge:

Mark, a software engineer, shifted to permanent remote work. While initially happy, he quickly succumbed to work-life boundary collapse. He was always “on,” leading to severe burnout, reduced creativity, and a strained relationship with his family. The change was his environment.

The Personal Change Playbook in Action:

Mark’s loss was “structured time and separation.” His WIIFM was “sustainable productivity and restored family life.” His Micro-Commitment (Step 4) wasn’t complicated; it was physical. He implemented a non-negotiable 30-minute commute ritual (Step 7): a brisk walk around the neighborhood before 9 AM and again at 5 PM. During this time, he mentally “commuted,” listening to podcasts on the way in and calling his wife on the way out. He also physically moved his work laptop into a specific home office and never used it anywhere else (Codifying the New Normal).

The Result:

The ritualized transition created the mental and physical boundary the office had provided. His productivity recovered, and his burnout receded. He documented (Step 8) that his greatest enabler was the physical separation of work and rest, proving that sometimes, the most sophisticated solution to a digital problem is a simple human ritual.

Ultimately, change is not an event you endure; it is a skill you cultivate. By approaching your personal transformations with the same rigor, empathy, and strategic thinking that we apply to organizational change, you stop being a victim of disruption and start becoming a master of your own adaptation. Start today. Your playbook is waiting.

Image credit: 1 of 950+ FREE quote slides for your presentations at http://misterinnovation.com

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Nominations Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022

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Human-Centered Change and Innovation loves making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, because we truly believe that the better our organizations get at delivering value to their stakeholders the less waste of natural resources and human resources there will be.

As a result, we are eternally grateful to all of you out there who take the time to create and share great innovation articles, presentations, white papers, and videos with Braden Kelley and the Human-Centered Change and Innovation team. As a small thank you to those of you who follow along, we like to make a list of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers available each year!

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2015
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2016
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2017
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2018
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2019
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021

Do you just have someone that you like to read that writes about innovation, or some of the important adjacencies – trends, consumer psychology, change, leadership, strategy, behavioral economics, collaboration, or design thinking?

Human-Centered Change and Innovation is now looking for the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022.

The deadline for submitting nominations is December 24, 2022 at midnight GMT.

You can submit a nomination either of these two ways:

Sending us the name of the blogger and the url of their blog by @reply on twitter to @innovate
Sending the name of the blogger and the url of their blog and your e-mail address using our contact form

(Note: HUGE bonus points for being a contributing author)

So, think about who you like to read and let us know by midnight GMT on December 24, 2022.

We will then compile a voting list of all the nominations, and publish it on December 25, 2022.

Voting will then be open from December 25, 2022 – January 1, 2023 via comments and twitter @replies to @innovate.

The ranking will be done by me with influence from votes and nominations. The quality and quantity of contributions by an author to this web site will be a contributing factor.

Contact me with writing samples if you’d like to publish your articles on our platform!

The official Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022 will then be announced on here in early January 2023.

We’re curious to see who you think is worth reading!

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Building the Business Case for Human-Centered Change

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Prove It

Building the Business Case for Human-Centered Change

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

As a thought leader in human-centered change and innovation, I spend my life advocating for the things that cannot be easily measured: empathy, psychological safety, and customer delight. These concepts are the bedrock of sustainable growth, yet when we walk into the C-suite, we often face the same skeptical glare and the two most powerful words in corporate budgeting: “Prove It.”

In today’s environment of rapid technological disruption, relying on faith and anecdote to justify human-centered investment is not just ineffective; it’s a competitive liability. Agile, customer-obsessed competitors are already translating human insights into exponential growth. To overcome resistance and secure the budget for innovation, we must translate human value into shareholder value. We must stop speaking the language of feelings and start speaking the language of finance. The strongest business case doesn’t just promise a better workplace; it quantifies the dollar cost of the status quo and the concrete returns of a human-first approach. This is about fiduciary imperative, not philanthropy.

The Cost of Inhumanity: Quantifying the Status Quo

Before presenting the benefits of change, the first step in building a compelling business case is to establish the current financial drain caused by inhuman, legacy systems and cultures. You must find the hidden taxes of the status quo:

Employee Friction Tax: Calculate the cost of replacing talent (high turnover due to burnout or bad processes), time wasted navigating complex internal systems, and lost productivity from low engagement. This is the dollar value of wasted human capital.
Customer Churn Tax: Calculate the lifetime value (LTV) lost when customers abandon a product due to poor user experience, excessive friction, or ineffective support. This tax represents the erosion of your future revenue base.
Rework and Failure Tax: Quantify the cost of failed projects, products built on faulty assumptions (due to lack of user empathy), and expensive technical debt incurred by non-agile, siloed teams. This is the direct cost of innovation risk.

By framing the discussion around these quantifiable losses, you shift the executive conversation from, “Should we spend money on this soft stuff?” to, “How quickly can we stop losing this money?”

“The most powerful business case doesn’t sell the future; it sells the urgent necessity of escaping a financially painful present.” — Multiple Potential Authors

Case Study 1: Transforming Legacy IT Systems at a Global Bank

The Challenge:

A major global bank needed to overhaul its decades-old internal IT infrastructure. The initial proposal was a purely technical, multi-year, multi-million dollar project focused on migrating servers—a classic IT modernization effort that often meets with fierce budget scrutiny. It lacked a compelling, human-centered justification, and was viewed purely as a cost.

The Human-Centered Business Case:

Instead of focusing on server specifications, the new proposal quantified the Employee Friction Tax. The team spent two weeks interviewing high-value traders and back-office staff, finding that the slow, arcane IT systems required employees to spend an average of two hours per day manually reconciling data and waiting for systems to load. They calculated the cost of that lost labor—hundreds of thousands of hours annually—and then tied it to specific, high-risk operational errors caused by the frustration and complexity. The final proposal showed that by investing in a user-friendly, responsive new system, the bank would not just save money on maintenance, but would increase the productive capacity of its highest-paid employees by nearly 25%.

The Result:

The project was approved immediately. It was no longer an IT cost; it was a productivity and risk mitigation investment with a clear, measurable ROI tied to human efficiency. The focus shifted from infrastructure to Employee Experience (EX), which became the project’s success metric.

The Metrics Bridge: Translating Feelings into Finance

The secret to building the business case is creating a Metrics Bridge between the intangible human state and the tangible financial outcome. This is where the ROI is forged:

Intangible: Psychological Safety → Bridge: Employee Submission Rate of High-Risk Ideas → Financial Outcome: New Product Pipeline Value.
Intangible: User Empathy/Delight → Bridge: Reduced Support Ticket Volume & Higher NPS → Financial Outcome: Lower Cost-to-Serve & Increased Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
Intangible: Clarity of Purpose → Bridge: Project Rework Hours & Time-to-Market → Financial Outcome: Faster Revenue Realization & Lower R&D Expense.

Case Study 2: Investing in Deep Customer Empathy (Fidelity Investments)

The Challenge:

Fidelity Investments sought to improve the experience for its customers navigating complex life events, specifically the process of settling an estate. The current digital process was logical but emotionally brutal, forcing grieving customers to repeat information multiple times and navigate dense legal jargon. The traditional business case focused on reducing call center volume, a valid but transactional metric.

The Human-Centered Business Case:

Fidelity’s internal innovation team adopted a human-centered design approach, spending time with customers during the bereavement process. They realized the problem wasn’t efficiency; it was emotional burden. The new business case was built around reducing the Customer Churn Tax and maximizing Trust Lifetime Value. They proposed investing in a radically simplified, empathetic digital pathway. The quantitative anchor became the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and, critically, the retention rate of high-value generational assets (the children of the deceased often take their inherited assets to new, more modern firms). They argued that reducing a moment of profound customer pain would create profound and lasting brand loyalty that translated directly into millions in future assets under management (AUM).

The Result:

The innovation, which included a new “empathy-first” platform, drastically reduced the time required to complete the process and improved customer satisfaction scores dramatically. Crucially, the program became the new gold standard for showing how an intangible benefit (empathy) generates a tangible, multi-generational financial return (retained AUM and referrals), proving that EX is directly connected to the bottom line.

The Fiduciary Imperative

Ultimately, the challenge of securing investment for human-centered change is a challenge of communication and perspective. You must treat every human-centered initiative as a financial strategy designed to mitigate risk and unlock latent value. By quantifying the financial pain of ignoring human needs and projecting the clear, measurable financial reward of prioritizing them, we shift from asking for permission to presenting a fiduciary imperative. The time for whispering about “culture” is over. We must now shout the truth: Caring for your people and your customers is the most profitable and strategically urgent decision your company can make.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Overcoming Resistance: The Persuasive Power of a Well-Told Story

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Overcoming Resistance: The Persuasive Power of a Well-Told Story

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

As a thought leader focused on human-centered change and innovation, I’ve seen countless brilliant strategies—digital transformations, market pivots, organizational redesigns—fail not because of technical flaws, but because they ran headlong into the brick wall of human resistance. We, as change agents, often make a critical error: we speak in the cold, logical language of spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks, yet we expect people to respond with the emotional commitment required for true change. That gap, the gulf between data and devotion, can only be bridged by one thing: a powerful, well-told story.

Resistance to change isn’t malicious; it’s human. It’s born from fear of the unknown, loss of status, or the exhaustion of yet another corporate mandate. Facts and figures may convince the brain, but only a story can rewire the heart. Stories bypass the critical, analytical side of the brain that’s waiting to find fault, and instead engage the empathetic, imaginative centers. When you tell a story, you don’t just present a future state; you invite your audience to live in it—to experience the journey, feel the challenge, and ultimately claim ownership over the success. A compelling narrative acts as an organizational immune booster, inoculating the workforce against the cynicism and “this too shall pass” attitude that kills innovation from within.

The Three Essential Elements of the Change Story

A compelling narrative designed to drive change must contain three core, human-centered elements, regardless of whether you’re using a keynote speech or a short internal video:

1. The Crisis and the Call (Why Now?): Define the stakes. What is the burning platform—the threat or the monumental opportunity—that mandates change? This must be personal, illustrating what failure or success means for the audience, not just the balance sheet.
2. The Journey and the Hero (What’s the Path?): Establish the vision of the future, but focus on the process. Crucially, the hero of the story must be the audience. The leader is merely the guide or mentor. This element shifts the audience from passive listeners to active participants, increasing their willingness to take the risks necessary for innovation.
3. The Triumphant Future (What’s the Reward?): Paint a vivid picture of the world after the change. The reward must be meaningful to the individual: less friction, more time with family, a more meaningful job, or restored customer trust. It cannot simply be a higher stock price.

“People don’t resist change; they resist being changed. A great story allows them to choose their role in the transformation.” — Peter Senge and Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: Transforming Customer Service at Zappos

The Challenge:

In the early 2000s, Zappos made a massive, non-intuitive strategic bet: they would differentiate their online shoe company not through price or selection, but through obsessive customer service. This meant turning their call centers, often seen as cost centers in retail, into premium experience hubs. Internal employees and investors faced resistance: why invest in expensive 24/7, US-based call centers and offer free, 365-day returns? The data (initial costs) looked terrifying.

The Power of the Story:

CEO Tony Hsieh didn’t lead with cost projections; he led with the story of the “Wow” experience. He told tales of employees who were empowered to spend eight hours on a single customer call, or who sent flowers to customers whose feet had been injured. The story wasn’t about the transaction; it was about building a movement defined by happiness—for employees and customers alike. The narrative centered on the employee as the hero, capable of delivering magical moments. This story made the astronomical cost of service acceptable because it redefined service as the core, non-replicable brand innovation. The resistance dissolved as employees rallied around a story that gave their work meaning far beyond simply answering a phone.

The Innovation Impact:

The story became the operational principle. The emotional commitment it generated led to legendary word-of-mouth marketing, turning customer service into the greatest driver of revenue and allowing Zappos to command a premium price. The company’s sale to Amazon for $1.2 billion validated that the emotional story of the “Wow” was the most valuable asset.

Case Study 2: NASA and the Moonshot

The Challenge:

In 1961, when President John F. Kennedy announced the goal of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade, the scientific, technical, and logistical obstacles were almost insurmountable. NASA engineers faced skepticism, limited technology, and a public wary of the massive, unprecedented expenditure. The raw data said: “Impossible.”

The Power of the Story:

The story was the Moonshot itself. It wasn’t framed as a complex series of engineering tasks, but as an epic quest—a simple, audacious narrative that transcended budgets and deadlines. Kennedy’s challenge provided the clear Crisis and the Call (a race against geopolitical rivals) and the Triumphant Future (a bold step for mankind). The story made every engineer, technician, and administrative assistant—down to the janitor—feel like an essential hero on a grand, world-changing journey. When Kennedy asked a janitor at the space center what his job was, the man famously replied, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.” The story had successfully redefined his job description and purpose.

The Innovation Impact:

The compelling narrative drove innovation at a furious, impossible pace. It created a culture of extreme dedication, risk-taking, and cross-functional collaboration. The power of the story overcame the technical resistance and institutional inertia, directly impacting key innovation metrics like speed of execution and employee-driven solutions necessary to solve problems that had no known technical solution at the time.

The Leader’s Mandate: From Analyst to Author

If you are a leader charged with driving significant change, you must recognize that your job is not merely to delegate tasks; it is to craft the narrative. Stop trying to force change with directives and start creating stories that make the desired future irresistible. This narrative isn’t just a speech; it should be woven into every communication, from town halls to interactive digital campaigns.

Embrace the role of the author. Define the villain (the status quo, the market threat, the friction), outline the plot (the transformation journey), and most importantly, position your people as the central characters—the ones who will achieve the extraordinary. This human-centered approach is the single most effective way to overcome resistance and ensure that your innovation initiatives succeed, translating emotional buy-in into faster adoption and greater employee ownership. To change a culture, you must first change the conversation.

Image credit: Pexels

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