Category Archives: Change

Shedding Old Habits for New Possibilities

Unlearning to Learn

Shedding Old Habits for New Possibilities

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In a world characterized by exponential change — where AI capabilities evolve every quarter and market demands shift before the quarterly report is filed — learning is often cited as the key to survival. Yet, leaders consistently overlook the prerequisite for true innovative learning: Unlearning. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I contend that the greatest obstacle to embracing new possibilities isn’t a lack of knowledge or resources; it’s the weight of what we already know. Our past successes, entrenched processes, and deeply held technical expertise act as cognitive anchors, preventing us from navigating uncharted waters.

Unlearning is the deliberate process of discarding obsolete information, mindsets, and behavioral routines that are no longer relevant to the current reality. It is not forgetting, but rather making room for new knowledge by consciously retiring outdated, suboptimal habits. This is a profound human and organizational challenge. We are biologically wired to favor efficiency and certainty, meaning our brains prefer to use existing cognitive pathways. For organizations, this manifests as organizational memory bias, where past triumphs dictate future strategy, causing us to learn a new tool but insist on applying it using the old, linear process. The key is shedding the old process.

The Three Strategic Imperatives of Unlearning

For organizations to transform unlearning from an abstract concept into a strategic advantage, they must focus on three core imperatives:

De-Crystallizing Core Assumptions (The ‘Why’): Challenge the sacred cows—the beliefs about customers, competitors, or processes that have been true for a decade but may be failing now. This includes unlearning technical assumptions, such as the belief that data must remain siloed, which prevents modern AI integration.
Creating Friction for Automation (The ‘How’): Old habits are dangerous when they become automated and unquestioned. We must introduce controlled friction points—such as mandatory cross-functional rotation or requiring new-hire perspectives in legacy project reviews—to force teams to pause, reflect, and consciously choose a new path over the default path. This is a deliberate intervention against autopilot thinking.
Decoupling Identity from Expertise (The ‘Who’): The most senior and successful employees often have the most to unlearn, as their identity is intrinsically linked to their obsolete expertise. Leaders must establish psychological safety where unlearning is framed not as an admission of individual failure, but as a continuous commitment to organizational relevance.

“Your past success is your organization’s greatest vulnerability. Don’t let yesterday’s win anchor you to tomorrow’s failure.” — Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: Netflix – Unlearning the Physical Asset Model

The Challenge:

In the early 2000s, Netflix achieved remarkable success by disrupting video rental with a superior mail-order, DVD-based model. Their core organizational competency was logistics — managing physical inventory, shipping, and returns. This success became a massive cognitive anchor when high-speed internet made streaming possible. Their deeply ingrained knowledge of the physical world actively worked against their digital future.

The Unlearning Solution:

Netflix’s leadership, led by Reed Hastings, made a conscious, painful decision to unlearn their core asset. They had to shed the identity of a logistics company and embrace the identity of a technology and content company. This meant separating the DVD business and the streaming business, forcing the streaming unit to build entirely new competencies and metrics focused on digital delivery and latency, rather than physical inventory and postal service efficiency. They had to unlearn the “perfect” physical delivery process.

The Innovation Impact:

This deliberate act of self-disruption and unlearning allowed Netflix to build the foundation for its streaming dominance. By voluntarily creating friction and letting go of the habits that made them successful, they freed capital, talent, and attention to master the new competencies required for the digital era, ultimately redefining an entire industry.

Case Study 2: Haier – Unlearning the Traditional Management Hierarchy

The Challenge:

Haier, a massive Chinese appliance manufacturer, faced the global challenge of becoming truly customer-centric in a bureaucratic, centrally managed corporate structure. Their organizational muscle was built on command-and-control and mass production efficiency—a model that stifled local innovation and responsiveness.

The Unlearning Solution:

Haier’s CEO, Zhang Ruimin, initiated the RenDanHeYi model, a radical exercise in organizational unlearning. They abolished nearly all traditional middle management and restructured the company into thousands of small, autonomous business units called Microenterprises (MEs). These MEs were forced to become self-governing, find their own customers, and manage their own P&L (profit and loss) against the market. They had to unlearn the security and structure of guaranteed corporate security and centralized decision-making.

The Innovation Impact:

This massive organizational unlearning forced responsiveness at the edge. By shedding the old habits of central planning and top-down control, Haier enabled its MEs to rapidly innovate and localize products (e.g., specialized washing machines for specific niche markets). The shift created an internal entrepreneurial ecosystem, proving that organizational structure itself is an outdated habit that must be unlearned to achieve true agility and customer-centricity.

Conclusion: The L&D Imperative and the Courage to Be Obsolete

Unlearning is the highest-leverage activity in a change-driven environment. It requires leaders to demonstrate courage to be obsolete — to admit that the ways that brought them success yesterday will likely be the source of their failure tomorrow.

The L&D function must pivot its focus from teaching new skills to facilitating the shedding of old, limiting beliefs and processes. This is done by actively building the three strategic imperatives—challenging core assumptions, creating friction for automated habits, and decoupling identity from expertise. Stop asking only, “What must we learn next?” and start by asking the harder, more critical question: “What must we willingly let go of first?” Only by creating empty cognitive and structural space can you truly plant the seeds of new, emerging possibilities.

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.

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Prototyping the Future

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Experimenting with Emerging Possibilities

Prototyping the Future

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the high-stakes game of organizational change, inertia is the silent killer. Leaders often talk about innovation, but they are terrified of the risk associated with committing millions to an unproven concept. This fear traps organizations in a cycle of incrementalism. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that the most powerful antidote to this paralysis is prototyping. Prototyping is not merely a step in a design process; it is a mindset — a strategic, disciplined commitment to experimenting with the future in the present. It is the art of making the unknown tangible, allowing us to fail safely, learn quickly, and dramatically increase our Return on Learning (ROL).

We must shift from an obsession with traditional ROI (Return on Investment), which punishes failure, to prioritizing ROL (Return on Learning), which rewards clarity and speed. Prototyping the future requires moving from a culture obsessed with detailed planning to one that values informed iteration. It means creating low-fidelity, high-impact simulations of emerging possibilities — be it a new product, a process, or an entirely new business model. This commitment to creating fast, disposable versions of the future dramatically lowers the psychological cost of failure, fostering the psychological safety necessary for true breakthrough innovation. Whether it’s a cardboard model, a basic wireframe, or an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) simulation, the goal is to maximize the learning extracted per dollar spent.

The Three Imperatives of Strategic Prototyping

To successfully prototype the future, organizations must focus on three core strategic imperatives that accelerate learning and reduce risk:

1. De-Risking the Unknown with Speed: The primary function of a prototype is to identify and test the riskiest assumption in an emerging idea. It must be fast, cheap, and disposable. We aim to fail quickly and often at the conceptual stage, saving significant time and capital that would otherwise be wasted on building a perfect solution for the wrong problem.
2. Generating Empathy Through Tangibility: Abstract ideas are difficult for stakeholders and customers to critique meaningfully. A prototype — whether physical or digital (e.g., an Augmented Reality model) —forces interaction. This human interaction generates deep empathy and reveals hidden needs, emotional reactions, and critical user friction points that no spreadsheet or survey can capture.
3. Creating a Shared Vision: The future is difficult to discuss because everyone imagines it differently. A prototype serves as a Shared Artifact — a concrete, singular point of reference around which a team, and the entire organization, can align their vision, critique constructively, and unify their efforts. This speeds up decision-making and aligns cross-functional silos.

“Don’t fall in love with your first idea. Fall in love with the clarity your first prototype creates.” — Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: The IDEO Shopping Cart – Prototyping the Experience

The Challenge:

The design firm IDEO was challenged by a major grocery chain to redesign the common supermarket shopping cart. The initial, narrow focus was on engineering and durability, which would have resulted in only incremental changes.

The Prototyping Solution:

IDEO’s human-centered approach started not with engineering, but with experiential prototypes. The team quickly built several low-fidelity models using rudimentary materials (duct tape, bins, children’s seats) to test radically different concepts — like a cart with a built-in calculator or one with better maneuverability. They took these rough models into the grocery store for real-time testing, observing customer and employee interaction and failure points.

The Innovation Impact:

By prototyping the user experience rather than the final product, IDEO discovered critical, unarticulated needs—like improved maneuverability and safer child seating—that led to fundamental design shifts. The process proved that fast, visual, and highly interactive prototyping is the most efficient way to unlock breakthrough innovation by placing the human at the center of the learning loop.

Case Study 2: Amazon’s “Working Backwards” – Prototyping the Document

The Challenge:

Amazon, known for its high-velocity innovation, needed a mechanism to ensure that product teams were building things customers actually wanted and that ideas were vetted quickly without expensive software development.

The Prototyping Solution:

Amazon formalized a process called “Working Backwards,” which uses a document-based prototype. Before a single line of code is written, a team must write a Press Release (PR) announcing the finished product to the world. The PR is a one-page, customer-centric narrative explaining the product’s benefit, the problem it solves, and its release date. Accompanying the PR is a detailed FAQ and mock Customer Reviews.

The Innovation Impact:

This simple, text-based prototype forces immediate clarity and user focus. Writing the press release first ensures the team can articulate the customer value proposition before spending any engineering time. If the PR isn’t compelling, the idea is instantly shelved or iterated upon. This low-fidelity, high-discipline prototyping method de-risks multi-million-dollar projects by ensuring the idea is sound and clearly focused on the human need before the execution even begins. It is the ultimate example of prototyping the communication and the value proposition.

Conclusion: Leading with Iteration and ROL

Prototyping the future is the most responsible way to lead change. It replaces the paralyzing certainty of the five-year plan with the agile confidence of constant, low-cost learning. Leaders must create the cultural conditions for this to thrive: namely, by celebrating fast learning and treating failed prototypes as valuable data points, thereby building an organization defined by high Psychological Safety and high ROL.

The innovation landscape moves too fast for slow, secretive, and large-scale commitments. By adopting the three imperatives—speed, empathy generation, and shared vision creation—through prototyping, you ensure that your organization remains perpetually adaptive.

“Stop trying to predict the future. Start building disposable versions of it.” — Braden Kelley

That is the definitive strategy for unlocking continuous, human-centered innovation.

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.

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Effective Facilitation for All

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How Leadership Fundamentals Benefit Everyone

Effective Facilitation for All

GUEST POST from Douglas Ferguson

Effective facilitation isn’t limited to the inner workings of staff meetings. True facilitation goes beyond simply setting an agenda: it’s a mindset, framework, and way of being.

Excellent facilitators know how to get the best out of their teams and design conversations that are innovative, exciting, and productive.

In this article, we explore how the fundamentals of facilitation affect an organization in the following topics:

Leading with Great Expectations
Effective Facilitation for Everyone
Facilitation with a Purpose

Leading with Great Expectations

At its core, great facilitation is an engaging conversation. In practicing effective facilitation, leaders make sure all communication is as clear and thoughtful as possible. Facilitators can begin this conversation by intentionally setting their expectations with all stakeholders in every conversation, meeting, and project.

Often, meetings end with attendees unaware of their colleagues’ and leaders’ expectations. By focusing on effective facilitation, leaders can identify and communicate their expectations as well as the expectations of everyone else in the room.

Consider the following facilitation fundamentals when identifying others’ expectations and needs ahead of a meeting:

Personal Preparation

Preparation is essential for any form of facilitation. Whether you’re leading a meeting or heading up a project, participants expect you to come prepared. Demonstrate proper facilitation techniques by preparing to be physically, emotionally, and mentally ready for your presentation.

Practice

Practice is the next step in proper facilitation. In practicing, you’ll be able to review your process and identify any areas needed for adjustment. Moreover, practicing will help you visualize your upcoming session, anticipate problems, and prepare alternative plans should something go wrong.

Process

Effortless facilitation follows a seamless process designed specifically for your audience. Facilitators have a variety of processes to choose from, including strategic planning, problem-solving, decision-making, and more.

Place

Your physical or virtual environment plays an important role in your facilitation ventures. It’s essential to be as intentional as possible in selecting the space for your next session. Consider the requirements for a space, such as the size of the room, what equipment is needed, and any other elements that may affect the flow of your meeting.

Purpose

The purpose may be the single most important component of effective facilitation. Your purpose will outline the end goal of a meeting and will communicate why the session is taking place.

Perspective

Perspective is as essential to effective facilitation as the purpose. Your perspective allows you to contextualize the goals, mission, vision, and purpose of your meeting.

Product

As effective facilitation hinges on meeting with a purpose, understanding what that purpose will produce is just as important. Consider what deliverables should be created by the end of a project, meeting, or conversation. Additionally, be sure to define the most important goals and actionable steps required to achieve them.

People

Facilitate with intention by identifying who should be in attendance. Learn more about each participant by researching the bias, potential barriers, and preconceived ideas that they may bring to each meeting. Likewise, be sure to highlight their strengths to further assess how they can be an asset in your conversation.

Effective Facilitation for Everyone

Integrating effective facilitation skills and techniques goes far beyond the walls of a meeting. A facilitative approach to leadership zeroes in on the positives of leading an active and engaged group. Facilitation techniques such as active listening and encouragement work to stimulate participative group conversation and collaboration.

Every member of an organization can benefit from the power of facilitative leadership. Leaders that demonstrate and embody proper facilitation skills can impart these practices to their employees.

Facilitation techniques benefit employees in the following ways:

1. Fostering Collaboration and Learning

Facilitation skills are essential in encouraging an environment of collaboration and learning. Encouraging team members to look at a situation from a different perspective, consider new solutions, and understand how to bring the best out of each other will result in the most productive experiences.

In creating a culture of learning, leaders should take the time to learn from their teams as well. Giving your employees a platform to offer their own insights is the best way to invite them into this collaborative process of co-creating learning.

2. Getting More From Meeting Attendees

As employees adopt the elements of effective facilitation, they’ll bring more of their skills, focus, and energy to each meeting. Equipped with the skills to act as influencers amongst their peers, each employee will become an active participant in the meeting, encouraging each other to make the most out of their time together.

3. Improving Productivity

As team members work together on various projects, effective facilitation skills allow them to move forward in the most productive, cost-effective, and timely manner. When employees incorporate their finely-honed facilitation skills, they work together efficiently, converse productively, and solve problems effectively. Ultimately, facilitation fundamentals allow everyone from team members to management to make the most of their time at work.

4. Boosting Group Dynamics

Incorporating effective facilitation skills helps improve group dynamics as well. All team members benefit from improved communication strategies, both in and out of the structured setting of meetings. These strategies allow all participants to better express their thoughts, opinions, and concerns as they work together to achieve a common goal.

Teams that invest in developing their communication skills are likely to retain the best employees. Statistics show that organizations that practice strong communication skills experience 50% less attrition overall.

5. Encouraging Active Participation

While effective facilitation is often considered from a leadership perspective, it is also an excellent catalyst in driving employee participation. Oftentimes, team members don’t feel comfortable enough to share their true opinions in a meeting. Moreover, they tend to bring the bare minimum to the workplace if they don’t feel as though their participation, efforts, and insights are valued.

Organizations that champion effective facilitation as part of their company culture are actively shaping an environment that makes employees feel as though they are truly part of their team. Feeling this sense of psychological safety allows all stakeholders to feel comfortable enough to put their all into their work.

6. Encouraging Team Competency

Leaders that excel in facilitation techniques are able to engender a sense of self-efficacy in their team. Oftentimes, leaders fail to go beyond methods of coaching to help their team members understand and internalize pertinent information. Effective facilitation helps to bridge the gap of competency in an organization.

Leaders must encourage team members on the path toward true competency. This approach to facilitation is essential to incorporate a culture where facilitation skills are easily transferable.

Lauren Green, Executive Director of Dancing with Markers, shares that the path to competency starts with meeting employees where they are:

“First, you’re unconsciously incompetent. You’re unconscious. And then you become aware [of] your incompetence, and then you’re consciously competent. And then you start to grow your skills. So then you’re consciously competent. And then when you don’t have to think about it anymore, then you’re unconsciously competent.”

Facilitation with a Purpose

Just as the purpose is a powerful tool in leading a meeting, it’s also essential in building effective facilitation skills in others. Intentionally investing in facilitation training allows organizations the opportunity to teach, practice, and embody the structured techniques of effective facilitation.

The nature of effective facilitation is that nothing can take place without purpose. From managing meetings to running projects, leading with the fundamentals of facilitation helps every facet of an organization run smoothly.

Lead with purpose by focusing on the following effective facilitation practices:

Listening first and speaking second
Leading with effective communication
Managing time and tracking deadlines
Asking intentional questions
Inviting others to engage
Creating a focused and psychologically safe environment
Providing unbiased objectivity
Acting as a decider in group discussions

Effective facilitation benefits everyone, whether you’re leading a meeting or encouraging employees to take their leadership skills to the next level. At Voltage Control, we help leaders and teams harness the power of facilitation. Contact us to learn how to apply these fundamentals to your organization.

Article originally published on VoltageControl.com

Image credit: Pexels

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Black Friday Cyber Deal on Charting Change

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Black Friday Cyber Deal on Charting Change

Wow! Exciting news!

From now until November 30, 2022 you can get a 55% discount on my latest best-selling book Charting Change – plus FREE shipping!

You must go to SpringerLink for this Cyber Sale:

The offer is valid until November 30, 2022
Please use CYB22 at check-out to get your discount on books & eBooks*
Free shipping

Click here and enter the code CYB22 before checkout

*This offer is valid for English-language Springer & Palgrave books and eBooks and is redeemable on link.springer.com only. Titles affected by fixed book price laws, forthcoming titles and titles temporarily not available on link.springer.com are excluded from this promotion, as are reference works, handbooks, encyclopedias, subscriptions, or bulk purchases. The currency in which your order will be invoiced depends on the billing address associated with the payment method used, not necessarily your home currency. Regional VAT/tax may apply. Promotional prices may change due to exchange rates. This offer is valid for individual customers only. Booksellers, book distributors, and institutions such as libraries and corporations please visit springernature.com/contact-us. This promotion does not work in combination with other discounts or gift cards.

Connecting Individual Contribution to Organizational Impact

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Purpose-Driven Work

Connecting Individual Contribution to Organizational Impact

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

In the modern economy, organizations are locked in a perpetual battle for talent, engagement, and sustainable growth. Yet, many leaders overlook the single most powerful, renewable resource at their disposal: the human desire for meaning. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I argue that the future of work is not defined by perks or paychecks alone, but by a deep, authentic connection between an individual’s daily tasks and the organization’s overarching impact. This is the essence of Purpose-Driven Work. When employees understand precisely how their efforts contribute to a mission bigger than the bottom line, their productivity transforms from mere labor into inspired contribution.

The challenge for innovation leaders is moving purpose from a glossy mission statement on the wall to a dynamic, daily operating principle on the shop floor. True purpose-driven work requires a transparent system that links a junior analyst’s spreadsheet update or a warehouse worker’s careful packing directly to the organization’s larger societal or customer value. When this connection is clear, the result is exponential: lower attrition, higher engagement, better customer service, and a powerful engine for organizational resilience and human-centered innovation.

The Three Levers of Purpose Alignment

To institutionalize purpose-driven work, organizations must strategically pull three key levers:

1. The “Why” Transparency: Every employee must not only know the company’s mission but also regularly see proof of that mission in action. This involves transparently sharing impact metrics, customer testimonials, and success stories that highlight the human outcome of the work.
2. Contribution Mapping: Leaders must create clear pathways—literally mapping the work—that show how each department, team, and individual role acts as a critical link in the chain of impact. This eliminates the feeling of being a “cog in the machine” and emphasizes individual ownership of the final result.
3. Amplifying Micro-Innovations: When purpose is clear, employees feel safe and motivated to innovate at the local level. Organizations must create structures to capture and celebrate these small, purpose-aligned improvements, reinforcing the idea that everyone is an innovation driver in the service of the mission.

“Purpose is not a destination; it’s the GPS for daily decision-making. If your people don’t know the destination, they can’t navigate the complex roads of innovation.” — Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: The Healthcare Tech Company – Connecting Code to Care

The Challenge:

A rapidly growing healthcare technology firm, specializing in electronic health records (EHR), found that its software developers were experiencing burnout and disconnection. They understood they built software, but the abstraction of code separated them from the mission of patient care. This led to quality dips and high turnover.

The Purpose-Driven Solution:

The company instituted a mandatory, recurring program called “Empathy Days.” Instead of simply reading bug reports, developers and testers were required to spend a dedicated day each quarter in a hospital or clinic setting, shadowing nurses and doctors who used their software. They witnessed firsthand how a one-second lag in loading patient data could impact a critical decision, or how a poorly designed interface created friction for an overwhelmed medical professional.

The Organizational Impact:

The impact was immediate and profound. The developers, now emotionally invested, returned to their desks with a renewed sense of urgency and accuracy. Bugs were fixed faster, and the quality of user-centered design skyrocketed because the team shifted its focus from meeting feature specifications to reducing friction for the user-in-crisis. Attrition among technical staff dropped by 15%, proving that connecting a technical task (coding) to a human outcome (saving time for a nurse) is a powerful driver of engagement and quality innovation.

Case Study 2: Global Retailer – The Sustainable Supply Chain Steward

The Challenge:

A global apparel retailer had a strong public commitment to sustainability and ethical sourcing, but this purpose felt remote to the logistics and distribution center teams, whose performance was measured almost exclusively by speed and volume (Output Metrics).

The Purpose-Driven Solution:

The retailer fundamentally altered its performance management system to incorporate Purpose-Driven Metrics. They introduced the role of the “Sustainable Supply Chain Steward” at every distribution hub. Employees were trained on the specific environmental impact of packaging choices, waste management, and shipping routes. Their contribution mapping was changed to show: “Your choice of pallet wrap today saved X amount of plastic from landfill, directly supporting the company’s 2030 goal.”

The Organizational Impact:

By empowering front-line employees with purpose and impact data, the organization unlocked a wave of decentralized, cost-saving innovation. Logistics teams began identifying new recycling partnerships and optimizing packaging designs, not because they were told to, but because they were measured and recognized for their contribution to the sustainability mission. The retailer not only saw a measurable reduction in waste and shipping costs but also achieved higher scores in employee satisfaction related to the company’s ethical practices, demonstrating a clear link between local purpose alignment and global brand equity.

The Leadership Imperative: Curating Meaning at Scale

Purpose-driven work is not a motivational poster; it is a systemic leadership commitment. The ultimate responsibility of the innovation leader is to be the chief curator of meaning, ensuring that the work environment constantly reflects the value being created for humanity. This requires intentional transparency regarding impact, courageous willingness to expose employees to the human beneficiaries of their work, and a commitment to measuring Outcome over mere Output.

When you transform a job description from a list of duties to a statement of impact, you stop hiring for compliance and start attracting talent driven by conviction. That conviction — the authentic belief that “my work matters” — is the non-replicable, human-centered competitive advantage that will define the most resilient and innovative organizations of the next decade.

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We Must Begin Investing in Resilience

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We Must Begin Investing in Resilience

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 1964, as the financial revolution was gathering steam, an MIT economist named Paul Cootner published a collection of essays called The Random Character of Stock Market Prices. Based largely on an obscure dissertation by a forgotten frenchman, it laid the foundations for a new era of financial engineering.

Yet among the papers included was one that told quite a different story. Written by Benoit Mandelbrot—a mathematician not an economist—it showed that the seemingly sophisticated models significantly underestimated volatility and risk. In effect, he was predicting that these models would massively blow up one day.

No one disputed Mandelbrot’s facts, because they were clear and indisputable. Nevertheless, reputations were invested and there was of money to be made. So Mandelbrot’s warnings, although not altogether forgotten, were put in the back seat and we paid an enormous price. Clearly, then as now, we failed to invest in resiliency. Will we ever learn our lesson?

The Path to Pandemic

The Coronavirus crisis, for all of its severity, shouldn’t have been a surprise. There was the SARS pandemic in 2003, the Swine Flu outbreak in 2009, MERS in 2012 and, of course, Ebola in 2014. Each of these had potential for global catastrophe that was, thanks to some decisive action and no small amount of luck, averted.

There were also no shortage of warnings. George W. Bush sounded the alarm back in 2005, saying, “If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.” RAND issued a report in 2012. Bill Gates was explicit about our lack of preparedness in his 2015 TED Talk.

To highlight the risk, before leaving office the Obama administration set up an exercise for the incoming Trump administration based on their earlier experience with pandemics.

Yet to say we dithered greatly understates the problem. From its very first year in office, the current administration proposed deep cuts to the NIH and CDC. Even in January 2020, when it was clear that the danger from the virus was growing, it was calling for cuts to those same agencies. Administration officials then doubled down on these cuts as late as March.

The lights had been blinking red. There had been 4 major outbreaks in the last 20 years. Experts and public officials had repeatedly called for preparations. Instead, we got tax cuts and deregulation. The pandemic’s path was cleared by public inattention and government inaction. While the ship was sinking, the crew was sleeping.

Unfortunately, our problems don’t end there.

Multiple Ticking Clocks

Clearly the Coronavirus crisis is a tragedy, yet it’s not the only light that has been blinking red for a while now. Just as Mandelbrot warned of the financial meltdown that came in 2008 and experts had been warning about the danger of pandemics for at least 20 years, there are a number of crises waiting to happen that we’re currently ignoring.

Take the climate crisis for example. A 2018 climate assessment published by the US government warned that we can expect climate change to “increasingly affect our trade and economy, including import and export prices and U.S. businesses with overseas operations and supply chains.” Another study found that the damages from climate related disasters since 1980 exceeds $1.7 trillion. That will only grow.

In the US our debt had already been a concern, especially considering that Medicare spending is set to explode. Now, with the Coronavirus crisis, we can expect to be adding trillions more to that, which doesn’t even include our massive environmental debt and infrastructure debt. Add it all up and our debts could easily exceed $30 trillion and possibly much more than that

It doesn’t end there either. Our electricity grid is insecure and vulnerable to cyberattack. As we increasingly delegate decisions to machines, we are realizing that we often do not understand how many of those decisions are made and we desperately need to make artificial intelligence explainable, auditable and transparent. We are also in the beginning of a genomics revolution, which will also create profound challenges.

A Proven Model

The challenges we face today, while profound and potentially catastrophic, are not at all unprecedented. In the 1950s, when we first began to understand the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell issued a manifesto highlighting the dangers of nuclear weapons, which was signed by 10 Nobel Laureates. Later, a petition signed by 11,000 scientists helped lead to the Partial Test Ban Treaty.

In the 1970s, when the dangers of gene editing became real, Paul Berg, one of the leading researchers, organized the Asilomar Conference to establish guidelines. The result, now known as the Berg Letter called for a moratorium on the riskiest experiments until the risks were better understood and instituted norms that were respected for decades.

Both efforts benefitted from a broad array of expertise. It was the partnership of Einstein, the world’s most famous physicist and the prominence of Bertrand Russell as a philosopher that jump-started the non-proliferation movement. The Asilomar conference included not only scientists, but also lawyers, politicians and members of the media.

In a similar vein, the Partnership on AI, which was formed to address ethical issues in artificial intelligence, includes not only leading tech companies, but also organizations like the ACLU, Human Rights Watch and Chatham House. CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna has called for a similar effort to establish guidelines for synthetic biology, especially as it relates to germ-line editing.

Either Way, We Pay the Price

In a response to Mandelbrot’s paper in 1964 about the dangers of financial models, Cootner wrote that it forced economists “to face up in a substantive way to those uncomfortable empirical observations that there is little doubt most of us have had to sweep under the carpet until now.” He then added, “but surely before consigning centuries of work to the ash pile, we should like to have some assurance that all of our work is truly useless.”

In other words, the concerns were real, but the costs of addressing them seemed too great to bear. The era of financial engineering had begun and, although there were some hiccups along the way, such as a major stock market crash in 1987, things went relatively smoothly until the bottom fell out in 2008. It was only then that concepts like kurtosis and fat-tailed models came into wide-use to create more resilience in the system.

It was that same line of thinking that led congress to underfund our emergency medical stockpile to save money. It’s easy to underinvest today for a future risk that may never come. To many, it can even seem like the prudent thing to do. At any given time, the needs of the present can seem overwhelming. Borrowing from the future can help address those needs.

Yet as we’ve seen, in 2008 and 2020, eventually we pay the price, one way or another. Just as we will pay the price for some future catastrophe, whether it is a financial crisis, a pandemic, a climate event, social unrest or some other calamity. We can choose to invest in greater resilience now and save untold suffering in the future. We have that power.

Unfortunately, if recent events are any indication, we still haven’t learned our lesson.

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

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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.

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:

2022-2023 King Crab fishing season will officially be closed in the Bering Sea for the second year in a row

Alaskan Snow Crab Season Canceled After 90% Of Population Disappears

Dungeness crab die-off underway along US West Coast

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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