Category Archives: Change

Why Small Teams Kick Ass

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Why Small Teams Kick Ass

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

When you want new thinking or rapid progress, create a small team.

When you have a small team, they manage the hand-offs on their own and help each other.

Small teams hold themselves accountable.

With small teams, one member’s problem becomes everyone’s problem in record time.

Small teams can’t work on more than one project at a time because it’s a small team.

And when a small team works on a single project, progress is rapid.

Small teams use their judgment because they have to.

The judgment of small teams is good because they use it often.

On small teams, team members are loyal to each other and set clear expectations.

Small teams coordinate and phase the work as needed.

With small teams, waiting is reduced because the team members see it immediately.

When something breaks, small teams fix it quickly because the breakage is apparent to all.

The tight connections of a small team are magic.

Small teams are fun.

Small teams are effective.

And small teams are powered by trust.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Preparing Your Workforce for Collaborative Intelligence

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Upskilling for the AI Era

Preparing Your Workforce for Collaborative Intelligence

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The rise of Artificial Intelligence is not a distant threat looming on the horizon; it is the fundamental reality of business today. Yet, the conversation is often dominated by fear—the fear of job replacement, of technical obsolescence, and of organizational disruption. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that this narrative misses the most profound opportunity: the chance to redefine the very nature of human work. The true imperative for leaders is not to acquire AI tools, but to upskill their human workforce for a symbiotic partnership with those tools. We must shift our focus from automation to Collaborative Intelligence, where the strength of the machine (speed, data processing) complements the genius of the human (creativity, empathy, judgment).

The AI Era demands a strategic pivot in talent development. We need to move past reactive technical training and invest in the skills that are uniquely human, those that machines can augment but never truly replicate. The future of competitive advantage lies not in owning the best algorithms, but in cultivating the workforce most skilled at collaborating with algorithms. This requires a shift in mindset, skills, and organizational design, ensuring that every employee — from the frontline associate to the senior executive — understands their new role as an AI partner, strategist, and ethical steward.

The Three Pillars of Collaborative Intelligence

Preparing your workforce for the AI era means focusing on three critical, human-centric skill areas that machines will struggle to master:

  • 1. Strategic Judgment and Empathy: AI excels at calculation, but it lacks contextual awareness, cultural nuance, and empathy. The human role shifts to interpreting the AI’s output, exercising ethical judgment, and translating data into emotionally resonant actions for customers and colleagues. This requires deep training in human-centered design principles and ethical decision-making.
  • 2. Creative Problem-Solving and Experimentation: The most valuable new skill is not coding, but prompt engineering and defining the right questions. Humans must conceptualize new use cases, challenge the AI’s assumptions, and rapidly prototype new solutions. This demands a culture of psychological safety where continuous experimentation and failure are encouraged as essential steps toward innovation.
  • 3. Data Literacy and AI Stewardship: Every employee must become literate in data and AI concepts. They don’t need to write code, but they must understand how the AI makes decisions, where its data comes from, and why a result might be biased or flawed. The human is the ethical backstop and the responsible steward of the algorithm’s power.

“The AI won’t take your job; a person skilled in AI will. The upskilling challenge is not about the technology; it’s about the partnership.” — Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: The Global Consulting Firm – From Analyst to Interpreter

The Challenge:

A major global consulting firm faced the threat of AI automation taking over their junior analysts’ core tasks: data aggregation, slide creation, and basic research. They realized that their competitive edge was not in performing these routine tasks, but in their consultants’ ability to synthesize, communicate, and build client trust—all uniquely human skills.

The Collaborative Intelligence Solution:

The firm launched a massive internal upskilling initiative focused on transforming the junior analyst role from “data processor” to “AI interpreter and client strategist.” The training focused heavily on non-technical skills: narrative storytelling (using AI-generated data to craft compelling client stories), ethical deliberation (identifying bias in AI-generated recommendations), and active listening (improving client empathy). AI was positioned not as a replacement, but as an instant, tireless research assistant that handled 80% of the routine work.

The Human-Centered Result:

By investing in human judgment and communication, the firm increased the value of its junior workforce. Consultants spent less time creating slides and more time on high-impact client interactions, leading to stronger relationships and more innovative solutions. This shift proved that the ultimate value-add in a service industry is the human capacity for strategic synthesis and trustworthy communication — skills that thrive when augmented by AI.

Case Study 2: Leading Retail Bank – Embedding AI into Customer Service

The Challenge:

A large retail bank implemented AI chatbots and automated routing systems to handle routine customer inquiries, intending to reduce call center costs. However, customer satisfaction plummeted because complex or emotionally charged issues were being mishandled by the automation. The human agents felt demoralized, fearing redundancy.

The Collaborative Intelligence Solution:

The bank pivoted its strategy, creating a new role: the Augmented Human Agent. The human agents were upskilled in two key areas. First, they received intensive training in emotional regulation and conflict resolution to handle the high-stress, complex calls that the AI flagged and escalated. Second, they were trained in “AI tuning” — learning to review the chatbot’s transcripts, identify common failure points, and provide direct feedback to the AI development team. This turned the agents from passive recipients of technology into active partners in its improvement.

The Human-Centered Result:

This approach restored customer trust. Customers felt valued because their most difficult problems were routed quickly to a highly skilled, emotionally intelligent human. Employee engagement improved because agents felt empowered and recognized as essential collaborators in the bank’s digital transformation. The result was a successful blend: AI handled the volume and efficiency, while highly skilled humans handled the emotion and complexity, achieving both cost savings and higher customer satisfaction.

Conclusion: The Future of Work is Partnership

The AI Era is not about a technological race; it is about a human race to redefine skills, value, and purpose. The most forward-thinking leaders will treat AI deployment as a catalyst for human capital development. This means shifting budget from outdated legacy training programs to investments in judgment, ethics, creativity, and empathy. The future of work is not about the “Man vs. Machine” conflict, but the Man with Machine partnership.

Your competitive advantage tomorrow will be determined by how effectively your people can collaborate with the intelligent systems at their disposal. By focusing your upskilling efforts on the three pillars of Collaborative Intelligence, you ensure that your workforce is not just surviving the AI revolution, but actively leading it—creating a future that is not just efficient, but fundamentally human-centered and more innovative.

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: Pixabay

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Lobsters and the Wisdom of Ignoring Your Customers

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Lobsters and the Wisdom of Ignoring Your Customers

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Being the smart innovator (and businessperson) you are, you know it’s important to talk to customers. You also know it’s important to listen to them.

It’s also important to ignore your customers.

(Sometimes)

Customers will tell you what the problem is. If you stay curious and ask follow-up questions (Why? and Tell me more), they’ll tell you why it’s a problem and the root cause. You should definitely listen to this information.

Customers will also tell you how to fix the problem. You should definitely ignore this information.

To understand why, let me tell you a story.

Eye Contact is a Problem

Years ago, two friends and I took a day trip to Maine. It was late in Fall, and many lobster shacks dotting the coast were closed for the season. We found one still open and settled in for lunch.

Now, I’m a reasonably adventurous eater. I’ll try almost anything once (but not try fried tarantulas). However, I have one rule – I do not want to make eye contact with my food.

Knowing that lobsters are traditionally served with their heads still attached, I braced for the inevitable. As the waitress turned to me, I placed the same order as my friends but with a tiny special request. “I’ll have the lobster, but please remove its head.”

You know that scene in movies when the record scratches, the room falls silent, and everyone stops everything they’re doing to stare at the person who made an offending comment? Yeah, that’s precisely what happened when I asked for the head to be removed.

The waitress was horrified, “Why? That’s where all the best stuff is!”

“I don’t like making eye contact with my food,” I replied.

She pursed her lips, jotted down my request, and walked away.

A short time later, our lunch was served. My friends received their lobsters as God (or the chef) intended, head still attached. Then, with great fanfare, my lobster arrived.

Its head was still attached.

But we did not make eye contact.

Placed over the lobster’s eyes were two olives, connected by a broken toothpick and attached to the lobster’s “ears” by two more toothpicks.

The chef was offended by my request to remove the lobster’s head. But, because he understood why I wanted the head removed, he created a solution that would work for both of us – lobster-sized olive sunglasses.

Are you removing the head or making sunglasses?

Customers, like me, are experts in problems. We know what the problems are, why they’re problems, and what solutions work and what don’t. So, if you ask us what we want, we’ll give you the solution we know – remove the head.

Innovators, like you and the chef, are experts in solutions. You know what’s possible, see the trade-offs, and anticipate the consequences of various choices. You also take great pride in your work and expertise, so you’re not going to give someone a sub-par solution simply because they asked for it. You’re going to provide them with olive sunglasses.

Next time you talk to customers, stay curious, ask open-ended questions, ask follow-up questions, and build a deep understanding of their problems. Then ignore their ideas and suggestions. They’ll only stand in the way of your olive sunglasses.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Crabby Innovation Opportunity

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Crabby Innovation Opportunity

There are many foods that we no longer eat, but because we choose to, not because they have disappeared from nature. In fact, here is a list of 21 Once-Popular Foods That We All Stopped Eating, including:

  • Kool-Aid
  • Margarine
  • Pudding Pops
  • Candy Cigarettes
  • etc.

But today, we’re going to talk about a food that I personally love, but that I’ve always viewed as a bit of luxury – crab legs – that is in danger of disappearing off the face of the planet due to climate change and human effects. And we’re not just talking about King Crab, but we’re also talking about Snow Crab, and we’re talking about Dungeness Crab too. And this is a catastrophe not just for diners, but to an entire industry and the livelihood of too many families to count:

That’s more than a BILLION CRABS that none of us have had the pleasure of their deliciousness.

And given the magnitude of the die off, it is possible they might disappear completely, meaning we can’t enjoy and salivate at the thought of this popular commercial from the 80’s:

Climate change and global warming are real. If you don’t believe humans are the cause, that it’s naturally occurring, fine, it’s still happening.

There can be no debate other than surrounding the actions we take from this point forward.

And while the magnitude of the devastation of other animal species that humans are responsible for is debatable, we are failing in our duties as caretakers of the earth.

This brings me back to the title of the post and the missions of this blog – to promote human-centered change and innovation.

Because we have killed off one of our very tastiest treats (King, Snow and Dungeness Crabs), at least in the short-term (and possibly forever), there is a huge opportunity to do better than krab sticks or the Krabby Patties of SpongeBob SquarePants fame.

If crab legs are going to disappear from the menus of seafood restaurants across the United States, and possibly the world, can someone invent a tasty treat that equals or exceeds the satisfaction of wielding a crab cracker and a crab fork and extracting the white gold within to dip into some sweet and slippery lemon butter?

Who is going to be first to crack this problem?

Or who will be the first to find a way to bring the crabs back from extinction?

We’re not just talking about a food to fill our bellies with, we’re talking about a pleasurable dining experience that is going away – that I know someone can save!

And no Air Protein marketing gimmicks please!

Image credit: Northsea.sg

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Four Ways to Overcome Resistance to Change

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Four Ways to Overcome Resistance to Change

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Why are organizations so resistant to change? Many point to a corporate immune system or to organizational antibodies that instantly attack change. The idea is that leaders prefer stability to disruption and put systems in place to reduce variance. These systems will instantly seek out and destroy anyone who tries to do anything different.

This is a dangerously misleading notion. There is no such thing as a corporate immune system. In fact, most senior executives are not only in favor of change, they see themselves as leading it! However, while most people are enthusiastic about change as a general concept, they are suspicious of it in the particular.

The truth is that is if the change you seek has the potential to be truly impactful, there are always going to be people affected who aren’t going to like it. They will seek to undermine it, often in very dishonest ways. That’s just a fact of life that you need to accept. Yet history clearly shows that, with a smart strategy, even the most ardent opposition can be overcome.

1. Ignore The Opposition — At First

The first principle for overcoming resistance is to understand that there is no reason you need to immediately engage with your active opposition. In fact, it’s something you should do your best to avoid in the early stages when your idea is still untried, unproven and vulnerable.

All too often, change initiatives start with a big kickoff meeting and communication campaign. That’s almost always a mistake. In every organization, there are different levels of enthusiasm to change. Some will be ready to jump on board, but others will be vehemently opposed. For whatever reason, they see this particular idea as a threat.

By seeking to bring in everybody at once, you are very likely to end up spending a lot of time and energy trying to persuade people who don’t want to be persuaded. The truth is that in the beginning your idea is the weakest it’s ever going to be. So there’s no reason to waste your time with people who aren’t open to it.

If you find yourself struggling to convince people, you either have the wrong change or the wrong people. So at first, seek out people who are already enthusiastic about your vision for change and want it to succeed.

2. Identify Your Apostles

In retrospect, transformations often seem inevitable, even obvious. Yet they don’t start out that way. The truth is that it is small groups, loosely connected, but united by a common purpose that drives transformation. So, the first thing you want to do is identify your apostles—people who are already excited about the possibilities for change.

For example, in his efforts to reform the Pentagon, Colonel John Boyd began every initiative by briefing a group of collaborators called the “Acolytes,” who would help hone and sharpen the ideas. He then moved on to congressional staffers, elected officials and the media. By the time general officers were aware of what he was doing, he had too much support to ignore.

In a similar vein, a massive effort to implement lean manufacturing methods at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals began with one team at one factory, but grew to encompass 17,000 employees across 25 sites worldwide and cut manufacturing costs by 25%. The campaign that overthrew Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević started with just 5 kids in a coffee shop.

One advantage to starting small is that you can identify your apostles informally, even through casual conversations. In skills-based transformations, change leaders often start with workshops and see who seems enthusiastic or comes up after the session. Your apostles don’t need to have senior positions or special skills, they just have to be passionate.

3. Shift from Differentiating Values to Shared Values

People feel passionately about things that are different. That’s why the first product that Steve Jobs launched after he returned to Apple was the iMac. It wasn’t a very good computer, but its bright colors were designed to appeal to Apple’s passionate fan base, as was the “Think Different” ad campaign launched around the same time.

Yet if all Steve Jobs had to rely on was difference, Apple would have never grown beyond its most ardent fans and become the most valuable company in the world. It was the company’s growing reputation for high quality and smart features that brought in new customers. True change is always built on common ground.

One of the biggest challenges in driving transformation is that while differentiating values make people excited about an idea, it is shared values that help grow a movement. That doesn’t mean you’re abandoning or watering down your principles. It just means that you need to meet people where they are, not where you wish them to be.

For example, the Agile Manifesto has inspired fierce devotion among its adherents. Yet for those outside the Agile development community, its principles can seem weird and impractical. If you want to bring new people, it’s better to focus on shared values, such as the ability to produce better quality projects on time and on budget.

4. Create and Build on Meaningful Success

The reason people resist change is that they have a certain level of comfort with the status quo. Change forces us to grapple with the unfamiliar, which is always uncomfortable. There are also switching costs involved. So, if you want your change to take hold, at some point you are going to have to prove you can get results.

One great example is the PxG initiative at Procter & Gamble. It got started when three mid-level executives decided that they could dramatically improve a process. They didn’t try to convince anybody or ask for permission but were able to reduce the time it took from weeks down to hours. That started a movement within the company that has attracted thousands.

When Experian CIO Barry Libenson started a cloud transformation at his company, he didn’t force anybody to go along. Instead, he focused on helping product managers who wanted to build successful cloud projects. As they began to show concrete business results, the pressure for others to get with the program increased.

Perhaps most of all, you need to accept that resistance is part of change and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, skeptics can often point out important flaws in your idea and make it stronger. The difference between successful revolutionaries and mere dreamers is that those who succeed anticipate resistance and build a plan to overcome it.

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

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Making Abstract Concepts Tangible

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The Power of Anecdote

Making Abstract Concepts Tangible

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the innovation landscape, we are drowning in data and gasping for insight. We talk endlessly about “digital transformation,” “agile strategy,” and “cultural change”—phrases that are intellectually sound but emotionally sterile. These abstract concepts, presented in PowerPoint decks filled with charts and jargon, may inform the mind, but they rarely move the soul. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I can tell you this truth: Jargon and data don’t drive change; stories do. The single most powerful tool a leader has to ignite a movement, overcome resistance, and embed a new culture is the simple, compelling anecdote. An anecdote takes an abstract, often intimidating strategic goal and anchors it to a specific, tangible human moment, making the incomprehensible accessible and the unbelievable real.

We are wired for narrative. Neurologically, when we hear pure data or statistics, only the language processing centers of our brains are engaged. But when we hear a story, the brain areas that would be active if we were *experiencing* the events ourselves light up. This phenomenon, known as neural coupling, is why an anecdote is the kinetic energy of change. It releases oxytocin, building trust and empathy between the storyteller and the listener. It moves past intellectual understanding to emotional ownership. You can tell an employee that the company needs to be “customer-centric” ten times, and they’ll nod. But tell them the story of how one simple act of service saved a customer’s day, and you don’t just inform them—you transform their understanding of their own role. The anecdote is the ultimate human-centered design for strategy.

A Framework for Anecdotal Leadership

Effective leaders don’t just delegate strategy; they become the chief storytellers of the organization’s future. Leveraging the power of anecdote requires intent and structure, not just random storytelling. Here is a framework for embedding narrative into your leadership:

  • 1. Anchor the Abstract to the Authentic: For every major strategic initiative—whether it’s “sustainability” or “process efficiency”—find the one authentic story that illustrates the point. Do not let a new value statement stand alone; anchor it with the specific human moment that brought that value to life.
  • 2. Democratize Storytelling: The most potent anecdotes often do not come from the C-suite. They come from the front lines, from the customer service representative, the engineer, or the sales associate. Leaders must actively create channels to collect and amplify these stories, turning the front line into the source of organizational truth.
  • 3. Vulnerability as the Currency of Trust: To drive real behavioral change, leaders must model vulnerability. Sharing a personal anecdote about a major failure, a moment of profound uncertainty, or a time when you realized you were wrong is the fastest way to build psychological safety. It signals that it is safe for others to take risks and admit mistakes, which is the oxygen of innovation.
  • 4. The Anecdotal Test: Before presenting any major initiative—a new product, a cultural shift, a strategic pivot—test it with a simple question: “If I stripped away all the data and jargon, what single, compelling story would prove the value of this change?” If you can’t tell that story, your strategy is too abstract to succeed.

“Facts tell, but stories sell. In the business of change, you must sell the vision before you can achieve the strategy.” — Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: NASA’s Apollo Program – The Janitor’s Shared Purpose

The Challenge:

In the 1960s, the goal of “putting a man on the moon” was monumental, abstract, and technically incomprehensible to most people. How do you align thousands of scientists, engineers, and support staff across dozens of different facilities—from mathematicians calculating trajectories to janitors sweeping the halls—to a single, human-centered objective?

The Power of Anecdote:

The solution was encapsulated in a single, enduring anecdote involving President John F. Kennedy. As the story goes, during a 1962 tour of the NASA Space Center, Kennedy approached a janitor and asked him what his job was. The janitor, without hesitation, replied, “Mr. President, I’m helping put a man on the moon.” This story, whether perfectly accurate or slightly mythologized, became the organizational blueprint for shared purpose. It was instantly accessible and emotionally resonant. It showed everyone that their role, no matter how distant from the rocket itself, was essential to achieving the collective, human-centered goal.

The Result:

This anecdote transcended engineering schematics and budget reports. It didn’t just explain the mission; it defined the *meaning* of the mission for every employee. It created an organizational culture where purpose was tangible and felt at every level. It is a powerful example of how a leader can use a single, simple human story to align a massive, complex organization toward an abstract, audacious vision, turning a technical challenge into a human triumph.

Case Study 2: Southwest Airlines – Defining Culture Through Action Stories

The Challenge:

How does an airline maintain a culture of exceptional, “beyond-the-policy” customer service and high operational efficiency in an industry notorious for low margins, high stress, and bureaucratic rigidity? Furthermore, how do they teach this unique culture to thousands of new employees every year?

The Power of Anecdote:

Southwest Airlines achieved this not through rule books, but through an obsessive focus on collecting, sharing, and celebrating stories of service. Instead of a 10-point plan for “Customer Loyalty,” new employees are immersed in anecdotes about fellow staff: the flight attendant who bought a pizza for a stranded flight, the ground crew member who retrieved a teddy bear from a distant airport, or the employee who went above and beyond to comfort a nervous traveler. These stories—passed down in training, internal newsletters, and town halls—do not just describe the culture; they prescribe the behavior. They act as concrete examples of the abstract concept of “LUV,” making the company’s commitment to fun and service palpable and actionable.

The Result:

By making storytelling central to their internal communication, Southwest created an immediately recognizable, human-centered cultural fabric. The anecdotes serve as powerful, memorable standards of conduct that are far more effective than any memo. They guide autonomous decision-making in the moment, empowering employees to break rank for the sake of the customer experience. The enduring success of Southwest proves that a thriving, innovative culture is fundamentally a collection of great stories that its people choose to live out every day.

Conclusion: The Narrative Imperative

The era of leading with abstraction is over. If you want people to move—if you want to ignite genuine innovation, shift culture, and drive a strategic transformation—you must first move their hearts. The anecdote is your most potent tool, the linguistic delivery system for empathy and action. It allows you to take the vast, complex machinery of change and compress it down into a moment that every human can understand, remember, and internalize. As leaders, our role is not just to analyze the data; it is to master the narrative. We must become the chief story collectors and chief storytellers, for the enduring power of a single, well-told human story will always outweigh a thousand bullet points. The most effective strategies are not those that calculate best, but those that resonate best.

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: 1 of 950+ FREE quote slides available at http://misterinnovation.com

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A Superpower That Can Save The Day

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Same But Different

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

If there’s one superpower to develop, it’s to learn how to assess a project and get a good feel for when it will launch.

When you want to know how long a project will take, ask this simple question: ‘What must the project team learn before the project can launch?” By starting with this single question, you will start the discussion that will lead you to an understanding of what hasn’t been done before and where the uncertainty is hiding. And if there’s one thing that can accelerate a project, it’s defining where the uncertainty is hiding. And knowing this doubly powerful, like a pure two-for-one, because if you know where uncertainty is, by definition, you know where it isn’t. Where the uncertainty isn’t, you can do what you did last time, and because you’ve done it before, you know how long it will take. No new tools, no new methods, no new analyses, no new machines, no new skillsets, no new anything. And for the remaining elements of the project, well, that’s where the uncertainty is hiding and that’s where you will focus on the learning needed to secure the launch.

But it can be difficult to understand the specific learning that must be done for a project to launch. One trick I like to use is the Same-But-Different method. It goes like this. Identify a project that launched (Project A) that’s most similar to the one that will launch next (Project B) and perform a subtraction of sorts. Declare that Project B (the one you want to launch) is the same as Project A (the one you already launched) but different in specific ways and then define those differences as clearly and tightly as possible. And where it’s different, that’s where the learning energy must be concentrated.

Same-But-Different sounds simplistic and trivial, but it isn’t. More than anything, it’s powerful. For the elements that are the same, you do what you did last time, which is freeing. And for the small subset if things that are different, you dig in!

Same-But-Different drives deep clarity and extreme focus, which result in blistering progress and blinding effectiveness.

And for some reason unknown to me, asking a team to define the novel elements of a project is at least fifty times more difficult than asking them how Project B is different than Project A. So, it feels good to the team when they can use Same-But-Different to quickly easily define what’s different and then point directly to the uncertainty. And once the team knows where the uncertainty is hiding, it’s no longer hiding.

And if there’s one thing a project team likes, it’s knowing where the uncertainty is hiding.

Image credit: Unsplash

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5 Simple Steps for Launching Game-Changing New Products

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5 Simple Steps for Launching Game-Changing New Products

GUEST POST from Teresa Spangler

There has never been a better time to invent, create, and innovate game-changing products, new business models, and services. In fact, I will be so bold as to say, we must change it dramatically to succeed in the future. You know your team needs to be more creative, they need to collaborate, or many seek more outside influence, but this is counter to your current culture. For years, your company has spent much of its efforts and resources on becoming a lean, mean growth machine.

A few questions you might consider:

  • Are you creating for the future? How do you know?
  • Will what you sell today to be relevant tomorrow? Do you know where your customers are headed? How are your customers changing?
  • Are you paying close attention to the growth trends in your market space? Are there competitors you cannot see lurching behind someone else’s geographic lines?

The start-up world of entrepreneurship is escalating. New things are being developed all over the world. This is good news for our needy economy, but these are the very companies that could come up and bite you where it hurts…right in your future’s revenue pocket.

Inspiring our work teams (and leadership) toward a culture of creativity and idea generation is key to just keeping pace and preparing for the future. But that may not be so easy. I have surveyed and had many conversations and meetings recently with leaders of growth companies.  How proud we are of strong EBIDTA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization). The bottom line is… this is their bottom line… very good profitability. It appears we will all earn our bonuses for managing expenses tightly.

If incentives are based on cost-cutting and expense tightening, there will be very little investment in the future. The addictive need for immediate return is paralyzing these leaders. I am all for fiscal responsibility! But, we need more balance in our plans between cost-saving efficiencies and game-changing strategies to fuel future growth.

“Ideas are great, our company has a lot of them, and we have a full innovation pipeline but there’s not been a lot of success getting these out the door to return on our investments.” One CEO shared with me. “We are not making money, so we’ve limited investments here!” First, let me say as you may already be aware, the world has some very big needs/challenges that need all hands on deck. Savvy entrepreneurs & companies that invest in the future are going to win in solving these problems and most likely to the disruption of latent business models & possibly your business.

First, let’s identify a few of the dramatic trends that may beg for new ways to serve up new ideas:

  • Boomer Segment and Aging: There is a desperate need for new ways to serve this market! Example: an elderly couple cares for each other in their home for many years but neither is very strong, and both have trouble walking much less driving, and getting around is challenging. They do not have the funds for assisted living facilities. They are, however, a lively couple wanting to do things together. What can home designers, product designers, emergency care facilities, security companies do to support these seniors?

  •  The World Is Getting Older (on average) -Shifts in demographics- this is a big change we will start to feel even more in the coming years. Where will the workforce of the future come from? Training older adults to take on new roles, providing new ways to employee talent, leveraging knowledgeable and experienced talent at any age will take shape. What are you doing today to prepare for this shift? Where can you innovate new services, products, solutions to help companies drive a successful shift.

  • The need for new ways to grow food, provide clean water, and ensure the safety of these precious resources, is a growing concern. Example: Some regions in the world still have little infrastructure to support their enormous population. The majority of the rural areas have not toilets, little running water, their streams are used for bathing and cleaning laundry and drinking… what can be created to help these rural regions around the world that have these needs. The U.S. in rural regions has similar needs. How can your company innovate to solve problems like these?

  • Consumer behavior is continuing to shift rapidly: Consider how we buy today which changed dramatically in 2020, what we buy has also changed, and so has what influences us to make a decision. And what about places where consumerism has declined for some regions, yet the birth of consumption is occurring in other regions? Example: Sensors that track us and our health (IoT), Tablets, ipads, iphones, and smart devices have changed our behavior as consumers. When you are in the car waiting for your child to come out of school … are you searching on your phone for new doctor, a home designer, a new car? Think NOT about how you are using these tools today but how these tools will progress and continue changing how we do everything. Another example: shopping for that perfect dress or suit. Take your ideas, drawings, colors, and any thoughts you have on the designs…go shopping and have your perfect outfit designed for you. Hyper customization will continue.

  • The need for alternative energy sources will only be exasperated by the explosive population growth in regions like Shanghai, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, and NYC.

  • Cybersecurity: The challenges are beyond comprehension and the solutions are not enough. With all the brilliant technology and creative talent in your community and network, how could you generate breakout ideas to solve some of our most challenging issues in the world today with cyber threats?’

Push the human race forward… and while some see them as the crazy ones, we see them as genius! — Steve Jobs, Think Different

  • Global Health Care:  we’ve watched the best and the worst first-hand over the last year. There is room for improving how healthcare is delivered, prepping for future pandemic-like events, and innovating new methods of caring for people in rural areas. There are so many challenges which is to say, there are so many opportunities.

  • Mental Health Supports- THIS IS A STAGGERING Statistic reported by TheHartford: New research finds 70% of employers report mental health challenges among their employees, 52% also report substance misuse or addiction, while 72% say mental health stigma blocks care.

These are big problems, big changes, and even bigger opportunities for entrepreneurs and brands alike to innovate. How might these trends be affecting you? Your customer? Your market?

I agree priorities should be on revenue coming in the door. It is a difficult balancing act with such tightly managed resources and focuses on the bottom line and profitability to add any new initiatives that may be futuristic and top-line focused. Much of our client work is about creating the balance for top-line growth initiatives while also managing bottom-line responsibilities.

How do you set aside resources and break down the barriers to game-changing ideas? And then how do you deal with the litany of barriers that will crop up on the path to any new inventive thing?

Let’s dissect a few of the challenges that keep us from continuous innovation on your way to market leadership. Here are 4 examples of barriers you may face along your inventive future:

  • Companies are fixated on quick returns… there is this addiction like quality to seeing our investments instantly returning benefit to us. But if we do not invest in the future to grow top line revenues and invest in new products, services that will engage the market of the future (and the future is coming at us faster and faster) we’ll extinct our own companies. Example solution: Use open communities or outside consultants that are experts at innovation and commercialization. You can budget your time, leverage their resources, and budget the funds without defocusing your current team.

  • Nay-Sayers stop us in our tracks all too often. Embrace the Nay-sayers. They should have their voices heard for their valued input but do not cave in the face of their fears. There are, what I call, negative risks and positive risks. Negative risks are those that are pushed through without planning, insights, trends or customer interactions. They are made in isolation.

  • We are Positive Risk-Takers– Positive Risk-Taking is when you’ve done homework, customer discussions, you understand the trends, but there are still certainly risks on this unknown path. Example solutions: Create pilot programs, move forward slowly, and know what metrics you need to know this big idea is gaining momentum. Give it enough time to get traction. Big ideas do not happen overnight. They do not happen even in a year or two sometimes depending on the nature of your game changing idea. Withstand the Nay-sayers, and hear them out.

  • Lack of time, mentorship, resources, and investments! in every client these are issues that persist, if you are growing you will always need more of all of those things. Leveraging our open collaboration methodology can be a great way to learn, manage early costs and keep investments low while you are in discovery, planning and building stages.

  • Lack of embracing older talent. Somewhere along the way of building our great country, corporate America narrowed our prime working years to ages 23 to 42. The employable world has been treated as this demographic is the only time creative brain power exists. What benefits could you receive by diversification of your talent pool? Example solution: build your own internal game-changing mentor network. I once did an innovation workshop and had 4 people from an AARP chapter office join the group. I was shocked (yes, maybe at the time, I had bought into the whole young creative minds thing too) to learn this group was designing alternative transportation and working with the local energy company to do so. Many of the group were retired from larger companies with great knowledge and experience and were very eager to volunteer mentor or contract themselves out. Leverage brilliance, not age.

No need to go it alone! Bring in experts to show you the way. Maybe you are very experienced. Is this where your valuable time should be spent? Leverage is the name of the game. Commercializing our client’s innovations (getting customers and revenue in the door), Aligning internal teams, and accelerating success is 99% of the work we do at Plazabridge Group. There are great options out there to help you. Use them and increasing your available time on critical priorities.

Five Baby Steps to Kick-start your way Game Changing Innovation

What tips can I provide you to break free some of the more challenging barriers? We must change our thinking, our behavior, our cultures to truly create game changing innovations.

1.   Be open to the possibility: Our educational systems educate us to research why things will not work, look for justifications, returns, market needs, corporations are stuck in this cycle of simplistic additions of products and services. Not mind-blowing, turn it all inside out, cool as innovations that excite and delight customers! So many great ideas are killed before they are even shared with 3 people. Case brief: In one of our consulting engagements with large consumer beverage company we heard, of course, under their breath “we’ve lost our coolness.” The project goal was to shift their leaders and their corporate culture (globally) from being risk averse to taking more risks. This is a big challenge in the face of Six Sigma black belts. Every idea was summarily dismissed before the idea could be written fully on the whiteboard. The young emerging leaders would get excited the senior team became paralyzed in fear and why it would not work in this lean operationally efficient system. Challenging everything they knew, they agreed to work on one of the ideas that came out of one of our sessions (this took 4 months). That idea took 3 years to finally reach the market, but it was a true game changer for this company. They captured desired market share goals, built a new sustainable revenue stream, and took back the title as “cool”!

2.   Yes AND! A first step to get there may be a simple shift: instead of YES BUT use YES AND! We often get stuck in the vision of the Mt. Everest like mountain climb but without training and dedicated Sherpas to lead the way: nearly impossible to reach the peak! We know the outcome before we’ve even taken one step. Drop this thinking now. It is devastating to any game-changing acts. You must be passionate, diligent, believe in the mission, be focused, and not worried about the ups and the downs and the back ups as that is the ride you will be on till the game is changed. Example: As a mentor to young entrepreneurs, I, too often, the words can’t and don’t. We stop ourselves before even getting a good strong start on our ventures. There are many programs through the universities, through organizations like Take advantage of all the resources you can find. In our larger client companies, we hear similar statements, “my ideas go nowhere”, “we aren’t getting traction to get game-changing technologies out the door”, “we are strapped for resources”, “where’s the ROI on the investments?” and so many other barrier statements that stop us in our tracks.

3.   Open up! Whether you “open up” to a closed circle of trusted friends and colleagues or to an open collaborative forum sharing your ideas with others who may have interest can propel ideas forward at speeds sometimes unimaginable! Example: In many of the companies we work with, there is the need for a shift in their culture to a creative and innovation culture and centering it on the customer and b. to encourage more creativity amongst themselves. I will admit this is not a baby step but one step that is critical to the success of innovation. There are many simple ways to shift cultures and. in tandem, drive successful results. Here are a few case studies on some of the work we have done:

4.   Enroll others into your vision over time! Not everyone may be as quick at seeing your idea or vision. Spend time with people one on one. Take time to grow consensus on ideas. We must help them see the way. Rarely, in game changing products or companies, do customers immediately flock to the new thing. Again, we must show them, educate, and encourage people to try new things. Example: Many of our clients are in the game changing business. To help them commercialize their new ideas and technologies we build a process that is slow, methodical, and measurable. By building in milestones and measures, we educate ourselves on what we need to do to bring our customers into buying mode. Simple steps are best to start out with and if you engage your customers for feedback along the way you will learn more about what they need from you to buy.

5.   Become a Savvy Money Navigator Vs a Bank! Money will always be the subliminal barrier at every stage of your growth! Take some time to learn where funding exists for ideas inside your company. For the CEO, really consider your future growth and task your teams to look forward! Where will growth come from? Will it be with existing customers? Do you know where their future plans are heading and how you align with their journey forward? Many companies lose sight of their customer’s future growth plans and more times than desired those plans do not include their current partners’ and suppliers’ products. Don’t assume…ASK!

How might we help you drive game-changing growth? Reach out directly to me.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Reset and Reconnect to Increase our Connectedness

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Reset and Reconnect to Increase our Connectedness

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

In our second blog in the Reconnect and Reset series of three blogs, we stated that now is not the time to panic. Nor is it a time to languish from change fatigue, pain, and emotional lethargy. It is a significant moment in time to focus, rehabilitate, rebuild, repair, regrow and reset to increase our connectedness through linking human touchpoints that increase people-power in the fourth industrial revolution.

In the current environment, where chaos and order are constantly polarizing, it’s crucial to touch people with empathy, reignite their social skills, and enable them to become healthily self-compassionate and more self-caring to:

  • Patiently support, lead, manage, mentor, and coach them towards finding their own balance to flow with mitigating the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution.
  • Take advantage of new technologies, networks, and ecosystems to re-engage and collaborate with others and with civil society in positive ways that contribute to the whole.
  • Do the good work that creates a more compelling, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future, that serves the common good.

The Landscape Has Changed and So Have the Solutions

As the fourth industrial revolution continues to implode, we need to zoom out and consider the bigger picture. Where a recent Harvard Review article What Will Management Look Like in the Next 100 Years?” states that we are entering an era, which is fundamentally transforming the way we operate. Which is defined by the disruptive growth in blockchain technology, robotics, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and other core digital capabilities.

All of which, in some way, is dependent on linking the key human touchpoints that increase people’s power and our connectedness.

  • An era of empathy

In the same article, management scholar Rita Gunther McGrath argued that management practices based on command and control, and expertise would ultimately make way for empathy.

Where work is centred around value creation conducted through networks and collaboration, that rely on increasing the connectedness between machines and humans rather than through rigid structures and relationships to thrive through increasing people-power in the fourth industrial revolution.

  • Capable of better

The Qualtrics 2022 Employee Experience Trends Report also states that the landscape has changed.  Where people are choosing to work flexibly, to work in the places that work best for them, and to take time for their own well-being, families, and friends.

Where people are demanding change because they care, about their leaders and their organizations, and want to be capable of developing better ideas; better innovations; and delivering better performances.

The report outlines the four things your people need you to know:

  1. There will be an exodus of leaders – and women will be the first out the door.
  2. People will demand better physical and digital workspaces.
  3. The lack of progress in diversity, inclusion, and belonging won’t be accepted.

People don’t want to become irrelevant, nor do they want their managers, leaders, and organizations to become irrelevant. People know that they can’t, and won’t go back to the old ways of doing things. People also know that they are already living in the new normal and that they need to start working there, too and to do that, we need to increase our connectedness.

Which is especially important for building people’s power and mitigating the challenges emerging in the fourth industrial revolution.

  • A transformative moment for employees and employers

Businessolver’s Eighth Annual Report on the State of Workplace Empathy describes how the pandemic has impacted on employees’ personal lives, the labor market, and the economy, and states that “we are living through a renegotiation of the social contract between employees and employers”.

Their data shows that amid the return to the office, fewer employees view their organizations as empathetic, and that workplace empathy has clear implications for employee well-being, talent retention, business results, and increases people-power:

  • About 70% of employees and HR professionals believe that empathetic organizations drive higher employee motivation.
  • While 94% of employees value flexible work hours as empathetic, the option is only offered in 38% of organizations.
  • 92% of CEOs say their response to returning to in-person work is satisfactory, compared to 78% of employees.
  • 82% of employees say their managers are empathetic, compared to 69% who say the same about their organization’s chief executive.

Yet, there seems to be a true lack of understanding, especially in the corporate sector, of what it means to be empathetic, and a shortage of time and energy to develop the mindsets, behaviors, and skills to practice it and make it a habit.

It is also a fundamental way of being to increase our connectedness and building peoples-power.

Make a Fundamental Choice to Increase our Connectedness

Even though each person is a distinct physical being, we are all connected to each other and to nature, not only through our language but also by having a deeper sense of being.

Human connectedness is a powerful human need that occurs when an individual is aware and actively engaged with another person, activity, object or environment, group, team, organization, or natural environment.

It results in a sense of well-being.

The concept is applied in psychology as a sensation or perception where a person does not operate as a single entity – we are all formed together to make another, individual unit, which is often described as wholeness.

Which is especially important for our well-being and people power in the face of the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution.

Strategies for Developing Quality Connections

  • Be grounded, mindful and conscious

Being grounded and mindful enables people to become fully present to both themselves and to others. It is a generous gift to unconditionally bestow on others. Especially at this moment in time, where the pandemic-induced social isolation, has caused many people to become unconsciously and unintentionally self-absorbed.

There is an opening to become aware of, and to cultivate our attending and observing skillsets, to sense and see the signals people are sending, at the moment they are sending them. To help people identify the source of their issues to re-establish a sense of influence and control that reduces their autonomic nervous system reactions and help them restore their calmness.

This is the basis to increase our connectedness, by attuning and becoming empathetic as to what thoughts and feelings lay behind their behaviours and actions, with detachment, allowing and acceptance.

  • Be open-hearted and open-minded 

Being curious about what others are feeling and thinking, without evaluating, judging, and opposing what they are saying. By knowing how to listen deeply for openings and doorways that allow possibilities and opportunities to emerge, to generate great questions that clarify and confirm what is being both said and unsaid.

To support people by creating a safe and collective holding space, that reduces their automatic unconscious defensive responses.  To defuse situations by being empathic and humble and increase our connectedness by asking how you might help or support them, and gaining their permission and trust to do so.

Increase our connectedness through being vulnerable in offering options so they make the best choice for themselves, to reduce their dependence, help them identify and activate their circles of influence and control and sustain their autonomy.

  • Help people regenerate

Now is the moment in time to focus on building workforce capabilities and shifting mindsets for generating a successful culture or digital transformation initiative by harnessing, igniting, and mobilizing people’s motivation and collective intelligence and building people power.

It is crucial to acknowledge and leverage the impact of technology through increasing people-power by developing new mindsets, behaviors, skills, and new roles, which are already emerging as fast as other roles change.

Be willing to invest in the deep learning challenges that build people’s readiness and receptivity to change, so they can embrace rather than resist it, and be willing to unlearn, and relearn, differently, by collaborating with other people, leaders, teams, and organizations across the world.

Ultimately, it all depends on being daring and willing to increase our connectedness, through adapting, innovating, and collectively co-creating strategies, systems, structures that serve the common good, and contribute to the well-being of people, deliver profits and nurture a sustainable planet.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

Find out about our collective, learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, a collaborative, intimate, and deeply personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, starting Tuesday, February 7, 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 increase people-power, upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique context. Find out more about our products and tools.

This is the final in a series of three blogs on the theme of reconnecting and resetting, to create, invent and innovate in an increasingly chaotic world.

You can also check out the recording of our 45-minute masterclass, to discover new ways of re-connecting through the complexity and chaos of dis-connection to create, invent and innovate in the future! Find out more.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Asking the Wrong Questions Gets You the Wrong Answers

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Asking the Wrong Questions Gets You the Wrong Answers

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

“Greed… is good,” declared Gordon Gekko, the legendary character from the 80s hit film Wall Street. “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.”

The line resonated because it answered a question that people cared deeply about at the time, “how can we become more efficient?” In the face of heightened competition from Japan’s doctrine of total quality management, American firms appeared too sclerotic to compete. Corporate raiders preaching shareholder capitalism offered an easy answer.

The results are clear. Since then, the stock market has crashed a number of times, the last one resulting in a Great Recession. Productivity growth has been depressed for half a century. The incidence of extreme weather events and pandemics like coronavirus is on the rise. Clearly, we’ve been getting the wrong answers. It’s time we started asking different questions.

How Can We Become More Resilient?

We’ve grown accustomed to a reasonably stable world in which disasters were relatively rare. In the 19th century, wars, epidemics and financial panics were relatively common. The 1930s and 40s saw a global depression and a world war that claimed 75 million lives. By 1945, almost all of Europe and large parts of Asia lay in ruins.

Yet out of the ashes, we built a new, more resilient world. Institutions like the United Nations, World Bank and the International Monetary Fund created platforms to solve problems on a global scale. Bretton Woods established a global financial system and the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe. An emerging welfare state permanently altered the role of the public sector in society.

That began to change in the Go-Go 80s when we shifted our focus from resilience to output maximization. As economists developed exciting new financial engineering techniques, business and governments increased their tolerance for risk and loaded up on debt. Staid chief executives gave way to corporate raiders and tech moguls.

The result is that we’ve become more vulnerable to shocks. In addition to worrying levels of financial debt, we also have considerable environmental debt and infrastructure debt, even as threats from terrorism, cyberattacks, extreme weather events and, of course, pandemics increase. We desperately need to figure out how to increase our resilience.

Clearly, a capitalism that focuses solely on financial capital and ignores other forms, such as social capital, human capital, natural capital, etc., is far too narrowly construed. We need to get better at integrating Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) metrics into how we evaluate organizational performance.

What is the Relationship Between Cause and Effect?

Even a young child understands that if she touches a hot stove, her burn was caused by the stove and that it is no coincidence that both happened at the same time. We would expect her to run to her mother crying, “the stove burnt my hand!,” not “the pain in my hand coincided with touching the hot stove.”

Yet our algorithms and equations have no way of making basic distinctions between correlation and causality, which makes it difficult to design interventions. For example, if you find a strong correlation between temperature readings and ice cream sales, you might conclude that moving the thermometer close to a heater will improve ice cream sales.

Now I admit that sounds a bit silly, but similar mistakes happen all the time. For example, if a correlation is found between certain zip codes, crime rates and recidivism, we will tend to design our systems to punish people from poor neighborhoods more harshly. In fact, there is abundant evidence that mistakes such as these are common.

Debates about correlation and causation may seem academic, but they have real world impacts. If we could incorporate causation into our machine learning algorithms, we would greatly increase the speed and likelihood of finding a cure to Covid-19. At this point, there is a nascent effort to build intelligent systems based on causal principles, but there haven’t been any practical breakthroughs yet.

What is the Right Thing to Do?

In modern times, acting ethically has been seen as a relatively simple matter. You try to be kind to people and don’t lie, cheat or steal. In a moral classical sense, however, the study of ethics has been less about adhering to moral principles and more about trying to understand what the right thing to do is when there isn’t any cut-and-dried answer.

Most important decisions, like those that involve Covid-19 policy, have tradeoffs. It’s not hard to get people to agree that we should do everything possible to save as many lives as we can. Yet it is also true that we need to think about people’s ability to earn a living as well. So coming up with a strategy that saves lives and minimizes economic impact is far from easy, especially when easing restrictions too early could lead to even greater economic and human costs.

As our technology becomes more powerful, more difficult questions emerge. Can we teach an algorithm to understand right from wrong? Who is accountable for decisions machines make? To what extent should artificial intelligence systems be auditable? Or consider the emerging field of synthetic biology. Clearly, it’s giving us a leg up in fighting the coronavirus, but too what extent is it okay to alter the genetic code?

Part of the reason we were so unprepared for the Covid-19 pandemic is that most people were completely unaware of how dire the danger was. Clearly, we need a more public dialogue about the technologies we are building to achieve some kind of consensus of what the risks are and what we as a society are willing to accept. As we have seen, the consequences, financial and otherwise, can be catastrophic. We no longer have the luxury of acting cavalierly.

What Will It Take to Make Change Happen?

It should be obvious by now that things need to change. What’s not so obvious is how to bring change about. Theoretically, in a democracy you drive change forward by convincing a majority of your fellow citizens that it’s a good idea. However, research suggests otherwise. In fact, one study found that “when a majority—even a very large majority—of the public favors change, it is not likely to get what it wants.”

We see this play out in the real world as well. It has become common for those calling for change to organize a “March on Washington.” They make some noise for a while and then sputter out. In 2011, the Occupy Movement organized protests in over 950 cities across 62 countries, with little or nothing to show for it.

Yet it’s also misleading to suggest that shadowy special interests dictate what happens. While it is true that there are a number of rich and powerful forces, ranging from the Koch Brothers and George Soros to the NRA and Planned Parenthood, these forces are often in opposition to each other. They are better at blocking change than bringing it about.

As I explain in Cascades, change is not top-down or bottom-up but moves side-to-side. You need to mobilize people to influence institutions that have the power to affect change. Or, as Martin Luther King Jr’s biographer put it, “A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.”

We’re where we’re at today because people convinced institutions that maximizing output was more important than stability and resilience, that correlation was more important than causation and that technology was ethically neutral. We know now that none of these things are true. If we are to come up with better answers, we need to start asking different questions.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Business Insider

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