Category Archives: Change

Cultural Change Goes Beyond Structures and Processes

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the realm of organizational transformation, many leaders focus predominantly on altering structures and processes. While these elements are critical, true cultural change transcends mere mechanics. It permeates the essence of human interactions and the underlying beliefs within an organization. To achieve sustainable cultural change, one must delve deeper into the nuances of human-centered design and leadership.

The Essence of Cultural Change

Structural and procedural changes often provide the framework for transformation, but the real challenge lies in reshaping the mindset and behaviors of individuals. Culture is not just “the way we do things around here”; it is a dynamic entity influenced by shared values and the collective identity of an organization.

Human-centered change emphasizes empathy, active listening, and ongoing engagement. Leaders must recognize that individuals need to feel seen, heard, and valued to embrace change genuinely. Building trust and facilitating open dialogues are essential steps toward this holistic approach.

Case Study 1: Zappos – Delivering Happiness Through Culture

Zappos, the renowned online retailer, offers a compelling example of cultural transformation beyond structures and processes. When CEO Tony Hsieh took the helm, he prioritized company culture as a driver of success. His philosophy was simple yet profound: happy employees lead to happy customers.

To embed this cultural philosophy, Zappos introduced a “cultural fit” interview during its hiring process, ensuring alignment with its core values. Hsieh also championed transparency and open communication between all levels of staff, fostering a family-like atmosphere. The company’s unique culture became its competitive edge, exemplifying that when employees are empowered and valued, they become passionate and innovative contributors.

Case Study 2: The Transformation of Microsoft

Under Satya Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft underwent a remarkable cultural shift from a know-it-all culture to a learn-it-all culture. Recognizing that innovation stems from curiosity and learning, Nadella inspired a move away from rigid hierarchies toward a culture that fosters collaboration and continuous learning.

Microsoft’s “Growth Mindset” initiative emphasized the importance of embracing challenges and valuing feedback as a tool for personal and professional growth. By cultivating a more inclusive and open environment, Microsoft saw increased innovation and revitalized its employee engagement and satisfaction, driving its resurgence as a tech leader.

Moving Forward: Steps for Leaders

For leaders striving to enact human-centered cultural change, it is vital to lead with empathy and clarity. Begin by identifying and articulating the core values you wish to see flourish in your organization. Model these values consistently and reward behaviors that align with them.

Encourage cross-functional collaboration and create opportunities for employees to connect on a personal level. These interactions build the social fabric that sustains a positive culture. Regularly gather feedback and be willing to pivot strategies based on the insights gained.

Ultimately, cultural change is a continuous journey rather than a destination. By focusing on the human experience beyond structures and processes, leaders can cultivate a resilient, innovative, and thriving organizational culture.

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

Image credit: 1 of 850+ FREE quote slides available at misterinnovation.com

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Creating Innovation with Hardcore Soft Skills

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Creating Innovation with Hardcore Soft Skills

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with Yadira Caro on the Hardcore Soft Skills Podcast.

In the episode I define what innovation really is, how people, process and technology come together to create innovation and where people go wrong.

The conversation includes a discussion of how to craft successful innovation teams because it’s such a crucial factor for successful innovation.

I also speak about the peril of idea fragments and the importance of respecting your employees by putting funding and execution capabilities in place BEFORE you ask your employees for even a single idea.

We talk about top-down innovation…

We talk about bottom-up or middle-out innovation…

And, we also speak about many different innovation misconceptions.

So, I encourage you to check out the episode!

You can listen to the embedded podcast above or click this link to go to the podcast page.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Taking Personal Responsibility – Back to Leadership Basics

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Taking Personal Responsibility – Back to Leadership Basics

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

I was first introduced to the principle of Taking Personal Responsibility when I attended a number of experiential workshops facilitated by Robert Kiyosaki who is now well known globally as the successful entrepreneurial author of the “Rich Dad Poor Dad” book series. At that time, in the late 1980s, the concept simply involved taking personal responsibility for your role in getting the results you get, in both challenging and problematic situations.

This principle has since evolved as the most crucial foundation for developing our emotionally intelligent, conscious, and transformational leadership capabilities. Largely through focusing on the development of self-awareness and self-regulation skillsets, which are especially important skills to cultivate in times of extreme uncertainty.

Blaming, Justifying, and Denying

Taking personal responsibility involves encouraging people to step up and out of blaming themselves or others, out of justifying their position or denying what is really going on to largely avoid the cognitive, emotional, and visceral results and consequences of their actions.

Which are essentially, largely unconscious defensive reactions to the problem or situation. So, it sounds quite simple, yet, even now, it’s still largely a countercultural principle, and a neurologically challenging one, because we are wired to survive (fight/flight/freeze) in the face of what we perceive as danger!

Especially when many of us are living in an oppositional blaming and shaming political environment, or within a passively or aggressively defensive organizational culture. Where a large section of the community, has been forced by the constraints of the pandemic, into fearing that their security and survival needs will not be met. Alternately, the great resignation and the nature of the virtual hybrid workplace have increased some people’s fears about even being able to get their jobs done!

All of this creates distorted thoughts and language that focus on “scarcity” where many people are fearing that they are not “enough” and do not have “enough” to deal with their current circumstances. Rather than leaning towards exploring and eliciting the possibilities and opportunities available in our abundant world. As there is no clear playbook about how people can effectively and responsibly lead and manage in this unique 21st-century context, many people are floundering, languishing into largely emotionally overwhelmed states.

Where it is easier, and sometimes safer, to be a victim, blame and shame others for their helpless or powerless situation, or to justify and deny any need to change their perspective about it, never mind their role in causing their own anxious and unresourceful emotional states.

Back to Leadership Basics

Yet, it is more important than ever, for leaders and managers to help people:

Take ownership of their consequences and be responsible for the emotional, cognitive, and visceral results of their actions,
Authentically connect, empower, and enable people and communities to flourish,
Provide safe, transparent, trusted environments and interdependence where people can dare to think differently and potentially thrive.

This means that the range of crises, uncertainty, and disruptions we are experiencing now is forcing us to go back to basic 101 management and leadership principles.

According to McKinsey & Co in a recent article “A Leaders Guide – communicating with teams, stakeholders and communities during Covid 19” – “Crises come in different intensities. As a “landscape-scale” event, the coronavirus has created great uncertainty, elevated stress and anxiety, and prompted tunnel vision, in which people focus only on the present rather than toward the future. During such a crisis, when information is unavailable or inconsistent, and when people feel unsure about what they know (or anyone knows), behavioral science points to an increased human desire for transparency, guidance, and making sense out of what has happened”.

The Maturity Continuum – Shifting to I and We

The principle of taking personal responsibility has evolved and been enhanced significantly through the work of Steve Covey, in the “Seven Habits of Effective People” and provides the core foundations for transformational and conscious leadership through the “Maturity Continuum”:

Dependence is the paradigm of you – you take care of me; you come through for me; you didn’t come through for me; I blame you for the results. Dependent and approval-seeking people need others to get what they want.
Independence is the paradigm of I – I can do it; I am responsible; I am self-reliant; I can choose. Independent people get what they want through their own efforts.
Interdependence is the paradigm of we – we can do it; we can cooperate; we can combine our talents and abilities and create something greater together. Interdependent people combine their efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.

Putting the Maturity Continuum to Work

In the early 2000s I was an associate of Corporate Vision, Australia’s first culture change and transformation consultancy, now the globally successful Walking the Talk organisation, for fourteen years.

Where every culture, leadership, team development, or change program we designed and presented, introduced taking personal responsibility, as a fundamental, core learning principle. Aligning it with the principle of – For things to change first I must change, which deeply challenged and disrupted people’s belief systems, habitual mindsets, thinking styles, and ways of acting.

As a seasoned coach of twenty years, these two core principles seem to still profoundly challenge the majority of my coaching clients across the world, no matter how senior their role or position is, or how knowledgeable, skilled, and experienced they are!

Where many managers and leaders have failed to self-regulate, lack self-awareness, and have unconsciously slipped into feeling victimized, powerless, helpless, and in some instances, even hopeless about their futures where some are:

Feeling frozen, inert, paralyzed, overwhelmed, and immobilized in their abilities to affect any kind of positive change in both their work and home environments.
Unconsciously slipping into blaming and shaming others for their situations,
Justifying their inertia through a range of “reasonable reasons” and “elaborate stories” about how it’s “not their fault” or it’s not “up to them” to make any change.
Simply denying their current consequences, or the importance of needing to take positive actions, and make changes.
Unmotivated, lack any desire for control, or have the personal power to affect change in their situation.

Initiating Taking Personal Responsibility

To accept and share responsibility starts with being bravely willing to courageously connect with our whole selves and consciously stepping back to hit our internal pause button, retreat into silence and stillness, and compassionately ask:

What happened?
What can I/we learn from it?
What can I/we then do to create it?

Taking personal responsibility becomes a compassionate, creative, and courageous exercise in continuous learning, self-awareness, and emotional self-regulation in ways that safely disrupt people’s defensiveness and awaken them to the possibility of being personally powerful in tough situations.

It is also the basis for taking intelligent actions catalyze and cause positive outcomes, that deliver real solutions to crises, complex situations, and difficult business problems.

This is the first in a series of three blogs on the theme of taking responsibility – going back to leadership basics.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

Find out about our 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, October 18, 2022. It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem focus, human-centric approach, and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation, and upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique context. Find out more about our products and tools.

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The Need for a Dignity Economy

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The Need for a Dignity Economy

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Every era has its own ideology that creates assumptions and drives actions. At the turn of the century, titans like J.P. Morgan believed that monopolized industries provided stability against the disruptive influence of competition. More recently, the end of the Cold War was supposed to usher in a new era of capitalism and democracy.

It didn’t work out that way. Instead we got oligarchy, authoritarian populism and we lost trust in the institutions that used to govern our society. In America, even competitive capitalism has been greatly weakened. We believed that we could leave everything up to market and technological forces, but they failed us.

Today, we are in the midst of a set of profound generational shifts that will rapidly transform our society over the next decade. As we have throughout history, we will need to own up to our past mistakes and chart a new course. That will mean focusing less on technocratic solutions and more on building a culture rooted in basic dignity and respect.

The Rise Of Merit

In 1940, James Conant, the President of Harvard, gave a talk at the University of California that was soon republished in The Atlantic magazine. Entitled, “Education for a Classless Society,” it advocated for the idea of social mobility based on merit, rather than privilege being handed down through inheritance.

To support this ambition, Conant championed the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) to help identify talented students for scholarships to Harvard. His hope, largely realized, was that other schools would follow suit and education in America would become a sorting mechanism, choosing men (at the time, it was largely white men) to receive advanced professional training.

Today, we have so thoroughly internalized Conant’s ideal that it’s hard to imagine that things could ever have been any different. College has largely become a prerequisite to a successful career and getting more kids to go to college is a top priority. The federal government spends about $80 billion on higher education programs, but less than $2 billion for vocational training.

As Michael Sandel points out in The Tyranny of Merit, this sorting system has had an insidious effect on our culture. Those who are deemed worthy get all the benefits that society has to offer. Those that are not, are not only left behind, but are seen as “takers” rather than “makers” and therefore undeserving of even basic things like access to health and child care.

Applying An Engineering Mindset

Once you accept the premise of meritocracy, the next logical step would be to optimize for meritocratic traits. We could, following the path James Conant established, develop a series of standardized tests to identify and reward our best students. And why stop there? Why not rate our teachers by their ability to produce students who get the best scores.

We can then extend that approach to all spheres of society. How should we best evaluate and manage the performance of an enterprise? Focus on shareholder value. How are we progressing as a society? Simply look at the GDP and job growth numbers and you should have a pretty good idea. What about countries that are falling behind? Well, just develop a standard reform package and then paint by numbers!

Eventually a clear doctrine emerged: A technocratic elite identifies a minimal number of key performance indicators and then, applying rigorous analytical techniques, devises a strategy to optimize based on those metrics. As the technocrats learn, they begin to build systems to increase efficiency and, eventually, those systems become encoded in algorithms.

This engineering mindset has prevailed for more than a generation and it has failed us. Except for a small slice of society, we’ve become poorer, sicker and more vulnerable. Our markets have weakened. We pay more and get less. We’re not only less happy, anxiety and depression have risen to epidemic levels.

Yet perhaps the most insidious effect of meritocracy and the engineering mindset is how we treat each other. If we believe that we have been anointed, through our talent and effort, for better things, we feel emboldened to consider our fellow citizens as something less than ourselves, which breeds not only inequality, but resentment and mistrust.

Holding Ourselves Accountable

In just one month in 1989, the world saw both the fall of the Berlin Wall and the emergence of the World Wide Web, both of which unleashed enormous enthusiasm and opportunity. We thought we were entering a new era in which democracy, free markets and technology would bring about a better world. We were wrong.

It wasn’t all a mirage. There were genuine accomplishments. I lived in post-communist countries in Eastern Europe for 15 years and the progress made was truly amazing. Miracle cures like cancer immunotherapy have saved millions of lives. The Internet has made it possible for an ordinary teenager today to have better access to information than a professional researcher at a major institution did a generation ago. Those are all great things.

Yet we are, in so many ways, worse off than we were 30 years ago. Productivity growth has been depressed, except for a short uptick from 1996-2004. Despite medical breakthroughs, life expectancy in the US has been declining. Markets are less free and less competitive. Poland and Hungary, previous models of democratic reform, have backslid. Even social mobility in the US, the entire aim or the meritocratic project, has been significantly diminished.

It’s time to hold ourselves accountable and chart a new course. Organizations are more than simple units of production. They are workplaces and members of communities. People are far more than economic inputs that can be reduced to resumes and statistics, but human beings worthy of dignity and respect.

People as Ends in Themselves

One of the things I learned managing companies is how much more effective you can be if you assume that everybody wants to do a good job. It makes it possible to waste less time engineering incentives or enforcing rules and focus more on helping everybody actualize their potential. When you encounter the occasional bad apple, it’s not hard to fire them.

In much the same way, we need to learn to focus less on quantifiable signs of merit and more on dignity by treating people as ends in themselves rather than means to an end. Once you do that, it becomes obvious that everybody needs access to health care, that every child should be educated and that everybody deserves to feel safe in their community and in their home.

After all, who says that an anesthesiologist is more worthy than a hospice worker. Or that someone who makes a million dollars a year selling enterprise software makes a greater contribution to society than someone who works in a grocery store during a pandemic. Remuneration simply cannot be the only measure of value.

In the final analysis, ideology should serve people, not the other way around. The success of a society needs to be measured by the well-being of those who live in it. If we increase GDP, but our air and water are more polluted, our children less educated, we live unhappy lives and die deaths of despair, what have we really gained?

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

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Leading Change in Times of Crisis and Uncertainty

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Leading Change in Times of Crisis and Uncertainty

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s rapidly shifting world, organizations face unprecedented levels of uncertainty. Whether due to global pandemics, economic fluctuations, technological disruptions, or geopolitical tensions, crises can emerge without warning and demand adaptive leadership. The key to navigating these turbulent times is a focus on human-centered change, placing the needs and wellbeing of people at the forefront of every decision. As a thought leader in change and innovation, I, Braden Kelley, share insights and strategies for leading effectively in such challenging environments.

Understanding Crisis Dynamics

Crisis periods often trigger reactions characterized by fear and anxiety, potentially leading to hasty decisions. However, understanding the dynamics at play enables leaders to make informed choices. During a crisis, communication becomes critical; people look for guidance and reassurance amid chaos. Therefore, clear, transparent, and empathetic communication should be a cornerstone of any crisis management strategy.

Case Study 1: Johnson & Johnson’s Tylenol Crisis

In 1982, Johnson & Johnson faced a significant crisis when reports emerged that several people had died after consuming cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules. The situation was dire, not just for affected families but also for the company’s reputation and financial health. Rather than hiding from the crisis, Johnson & Johnson’s leadership adhered to their values and focused on health and safety. They initiated a nationwide recall of Tylenol products, costing the company over $100 million.

This decisive and ethical action was coupled with strategic communication, including regular updates and cooperation with media channels. By placing consumer safety above profits, Johnson & Johnson gradually rebuilt trust and emerged from the crisis stronger, setting a gold standard for crisis management.

“Our actions dictated the preservation of our key value: put the wellbeing of customers first.” – Johnson & Johnson’s response team

Key Takeaways

Prioritize ethical decision-making, even at a financial cost.
Emphasize transparency and maintain open communication channels.
Align actions with core organizational values to rebuild trust.

Case Study 2: Airbnb’s Response to COVID-19

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, Airbnb was among the many companies that faced a staggering downturn as travel restrictions came into place worldwide. The crisis required immediate reevaluation of business operations and strategy. Airbnb’s leadership, led by CEO Brian Chesky, focused on transparent and empathetic communication, both internally and externally.

The company quickly outlined a revised mission and strategy that included supporting hosts and guests through flexible policies and assistance programs. They prioritized the community, even as they had to make difficult decisions such as workforce reductions. Their empathetic approach resonated with stakeholders, helping maintain a sense of solidarity despite the challenging circumstances.

“Our greatest strength lies in our community, and our response must reflect that collective power.” – Brian Chesky, Airbnb CEO

Key Takeaways

Adapt quickly to new realities without losing sight of fundamental values.
Implement flexible policies to accommodate stakeholders’ needs.
Communicate with empathy to maintain community trust.

Strategies for Leading Through Crisis

1. Prioritize People: During a crisis, the human aspect should always come first. Prioritizing the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of stakeholders ensures that the organization moves forward cohesively.

2. Foster Resilience: Encourage a culture of adaptability. By nurturing innovation and learning, organizations can better withstand shocks and adapt to new circumstances.

3. Communicate Transparently: Regular and honest communication fortifies trust and mitigates uncertainty. Use multiple channels to reach all parts of your organization and community.

4. Be Decisive and Ethical: Inaction and ambiguity can exacerbate a crisis. Leaders should make decisions confidently, rooted in core values, to guide the organization effectively.

5. Reflect and Learn: After managing a crisis, reflection helps uncover valuable lessons and opportunities for improvement. This continuous learning cycle prepares organizations to better handle future disruptions.

Conclusion

Leading change in times of crisis and uncertainty demands a steadfast commitment to people and principles. By learning from past experiences and adopting a human-centered approach, leaders can guide their organizations through the toughest challenges. As we continue to face unpredictable futures, embracing change with empathy and agility will be the ultimate differentiator in building resilient and thriving organizations.

Image credit: Pexels

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Strategies for Successfully Communicating Change

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Strategies for Successfully Communicating Change

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Change is a constant in today’s rapidly evolving world. Organizations that thrive are those that effectively communicate change initiatives, ensuring clarity, alignment, and engagement among their stakeholders. As a thought leader in human-centered change and innovation, I aim to equip you with actionable strategies that enhance communication during change initiatives.

Understanding the Importance of Communication in Change

Communication is the lifeline of any successful change initiative. Without it, uncertainty, resistance, and confusion can erode even the best-laid plans. Crafting a compelling narrative around why the change is happening, who it impacts, and what the benefits are is essential to gaining buy-in and reducing resistance.

Strategy 1: Building a Clear and Unified Message

A unified message serves as the foundation of any successful change communication strategy. It’s crucial that everyone from leadership to front-line employees shares the same understanding of the change.

“A unified message creates a clear vision, fosters trust, and drives engagement across all levels of an organization.”

Consider Case Study: Fortune 500 Tech Corporation. When the company decided to pivot its product line to include more cloud-based solutions, they knew a clear message was key. They developed a communication framework that outlined the “why,” “what,” and “how” – why the change was needed, what the new direction entailed, and how it would be implemented. This message was communicated consistently across all teams, through town halls, newsletters, and dedicated intranet hubs. This strategic communication plan ensured everyone was on the same page and minimized confusion and disruption.

Strategy 2: Leveraging Storytelling for Emotional Connection

Studies have shown that humans are hardwired to respond to stories. Communicating change through storytelling helps create a relatable context, making the change more personal and impactful.

In Case Study: Global Retail Chain, when the company began a digital transformation journey, they employed storytelling to connect with employees emotionally. Leaders shared personal stories about how digital tools positively impacted their work-life balance and productivity. By aligning the transformation with real-life benefits, employees became more receptive and enthusiastic about embracing new technologies.

Strategy 3: Engaging Stakeholders Early and Often

Engagement isn’t a one-time activity. Successful change communication thrives on continuous dialogue. Invite feedback, address concerns, and provide regular updates to maintain momentum and build trust.

For instance, the retail chain from our case study conducted monthly feedback sessions, allowing employees to voice concerns and suggest improvements. This continuous engagement built a sense of community and ownership, further smoothing the change process.

Strategy 4: Utilizing Multiple Communication Channels

Diversifying communication methods ensures that messages reach everyone, respecting different preferences and schedules. Use a mix of emails, face-to-face meetings, video updates, and social media to cater to diverse audiences.

In the tech corporation case study, by employing various channels, the company ensured no one was left out. Employees could access information at their convenience, an approach that was particularly beneficial given remote work dynamics.

Strategy 5: Training and Support

Change can be intimidating. Providing adequate training and support empowers employees to adapt more readily and performing effectively in the new environment.

The retail chain implemented comprehensive training sessions focusing on new digital tools, pairing them with ongoing support and mentorship programs. This not only eased the transition but also equipped employees with new skill sets, transforming apprehension into opportunity.

Conclusion

Effective communication isn’t about what you say, but how you make others feel during a change. It’s about creating understanding, reducing fear, and fostering inspiration. By building clear messages, employing storytelling, engaging stakeholders, utilizing diverse channels, and offering support, organizations can transform change from a challenge into an opportunity.

As we’ve seen in the case studies of the Fortune 500 Tech Corporation and the Global Retail Chain, tailored strategies can lead to successful change communications, ultimately leading to sustained growth and innovation.

Let us embrace change not as a disruption, but as an avenue for growth. Stay innovative, stay connected, and continue to propel forward.

Image credit: Pexels

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Ten Transformational Change Principles

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Ten Transformational Change Principles

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

It’s been clear to me for some time that 2020 would be a pivotal year. Globalization and digitalization, the two major forces of the last generation, have disappointed. The corporate mantra of shareholder value has proven to be bankrupt. The end of the Cold War has led not to a democratic utopia, but a rise in populist authoritarianism.

Much of what we believed turned out to not be true. At the same time, there is great cause for optimism. We are undergoing profound shifts in technology, resources, migration and demographics that will give us the opportunity to drive enormous transformation over the next decade. We are likely entering a new era of innovation.

We need to learn from history. Positive change never happens by itself. We can’t just assume that we can just set up some basic “rules of the road” and technological and market forces will do the rest for us. Any significant change always inspires fierce resistance and we need to overcome that resistance to bring change about. Here are 10 principles that can guide us:

Revolutions don’t begin with a slogan. They begin with a cause. The vision always needs to be rooted in solving problems people genuinely care about. That’s why you can’t bribe or coerce change. Once you start trying to engineer change through incentives, you are signaling that this is a change that people don’t really want to make.

Transformation fails because people oppose it, not because people don’t understand it. For any significant change, there are going to be some people who aren’t going to like it and they are going to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded, and deceptive. That is your primary design constraint. Change of any kind threatens the status quo, which never yields its power gracefully.

To be effective, change efforts need to be rooted in values. Values represent constraints and constraints bring meaning and credibility. A movement without values is nothing more than a mob.

Resist the urge to engage those who attack and undermine you. In fact, as a general rule, you should avoid them until you have gained significant momentum.

Focus on building local majorities. You want to be continually expanding your majorities within communities and clusters. When you go outside your majority, however, you get pushback. Stay on the inside pushing out.

Shift from differentiating values to shared values. Differentiating values are what make people passionate about an idea, but shared values create entry points for people to join your cause. You overcome your opposition by listening and identifying shared values in what they say that can be leveraged to attract others to your cause.

You design effective tactics by mobilizing people to influence institutions. Every action has a purpose. You are always mobilizing someone to influence something. For everything you do, you ask who are we mobilizing and to influence what?

Scale change and weave the network through cooptable resources. Instead of trying to get people to do what you want, find people who want what you want and give them tools to help them take action. It is through taking action, not taking orders, that people take ownership of the movement and make it their own.

Survive Victory. The victory phase is the most dangerous phase. You need to think about how to “survive victory” from the start. It’s not enough to make a point, you have to want to make a difference.

Transformation is always a journey, never a particular destination. The most important thing you can do to bring change about is simply to get started. If not now, when? If not you, who?

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

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Remote Work Revolution is Rethinking Employee Experience

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Remote Work Revolution is Rethinking Employee Experience

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the not-so-distant past, remote work was often seen as an occasional luxury. Fast forward to today, and it has become a significant, often preferable, reality for millions of employees worldwide. This shift—accelerated by global events and technological advancement—has brought about a remote work revolution that demands a fresh perspective on the employee experience. As organizations rethink their strategies, it’s crucial to center human needs in the design and implementation of remote work policies.

The New Paradigm

The traditional work environment has been significantly disrupted, leading to newfound flexibility and autonomy. But as appealing as remote work is, it also introduces challenges that can impact an employee’s sense of belonging, job satisfaction, and productivity. To address these, companies must foster transparent communication, promote work-life balance, and create spaces for social interaction—physically or virtually.

“Remote work is not just about working from a different location, but rather creating a dynamic ecosystem that can adapt to an employee’s personal and professional needs.”
Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: TechVision

Background

TechVision, a rapidly-growing software firm, recognized early the potential drawbacks of remote work. It understood that despite the liberating nature of flexible work schedules, employees might feel isolated and overlooked in a virtual environment.

Initiatives and Outcomes

To combat these challenges, TechVision introduced several initiatives:

Virtual Lounges: These digital meeting rooms are always open, encouraging employees to drop in for casual chats. This fosters a sense of community and reduces feelings of isolation.
Flexible Working Hours: Acknowledging diverse personal schedules, TechVision allows employees to define their own working hours, provided they meet deliverable deadlines.
Monthly Home Office Stipend: Understanding that an efficient home workspace is crucial, the company provides a stipend for employees to enhance their home office setup.

As a result, TechVision noticed a 20% increase in employee satisfaction and a 15% boost in productivity, proving that a thoughtful approach to remote work could yield significant benefits.

Case Study 2: GlobalInnovate

Background

GlobalInnovate, a multinational design firm, faced the challenge of maintaining creativity and collaboration in a remote setup. Vital brainstorming sessions had to transition from the boardroom to the online space, sometimes losing the dynamic energy critical to innovation.

Initiatives and Outcomes

GlobalInnovate employed the following strategies:

Virtual Reality Collaboration Tools: By adopting VR meeting platforms, the firm recreated the spatial dynamics of an in-person meeting, fostering more natural interactions.
Regular Creative Jams: These unstructured sessions are dedicated purely to creative exploration, allowing teams to ideate freely without the pressure of immediate deliverables.
Global Work Sprints: Employees from different time zones collaborate intensively on projects for a week, followed by a comprehensive review and reflection process.

These approaches have sustained GlobalInnovate’s creative output, with the firm reporting a 30% rise in innovative solutions proposed by their teams over a six-month period.

Conclusion

The remote work revolution isn’t merely a shift in location; it’s a transformation in how we perceive and execute work itself. Organizations, by re-imagining the employee experience to ensure connectivity, flexibility, and creativity, can turn the challenges of remote work into opportunities for growth and innovation. As we move forward, it’s imperative that we continue to pioneer strategies that place human experience at the forefront of the remote work landscape.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Rethinking Agility for the Post-Digital Age

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Rethinking Agility for the Post-Digital Age

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

For the past 50 years, innovation has largely been driven by our ability to cram more transistors onto a silicon wafer. That’s what’s allowed us to double the power of our technology every two years or so and led to the continuous flow of new products and services streaming out of innovative organizations.

Perhaps not surprisingly, over the past few decades agility has become a defining competitive attribute. Because the fundamentals of digital technology have been so well understood, much of the value has shifted to applications and things like design and user experience. Yet that will change in the years ahead.

Over the next few decades we will struggle to adapt to a post-digital age and we will need to rethink old notions about agility. To win in this new era of innovation we will have to do far more than just move fast and break things. Rather, we will have to manage four profound shifts in the basis of competition that will challenge some of our most deeply held notions.

Shift 1: From Transistor-Based Computers to New Computing Architectures

In 1965, Intel’s Gordon Moore published a paper that established predicted Moore’s Law, the continuous doubling of transistors that can fit on an integrated circuit. With a constant stream of chips that were not only more powerful, but cheaper, successful firms would rapidly prototype and iterate to speed new applications to market.

Yet now Moore’s Law is ending. Despite the amazing ingenuity of engineers, the simple reality is that every technology eventually hits theoretical limits. The undeniable fact is that atoms are only so small and the speed of light is only so fast and that limits what we can do with transistors. To advance further, we will simply have to find a different way to compute things.

The two most promising candidates are quantum computing and neuromorphic chips, both of which are vastly different from digital computing, utilizing different logic and require different computer languages and algorithmic approaches than classical computers. The transition to these architectures won’t be seamless.

We will also use these architectures in much different ways. Quantum computers will be able to handle almost incomprehensible complexity, generating computing spaces larger than the number of atoms in the known universe. Neuromorphic chips are potentially millions of times more efficient than conventional chips and are much more effective with continuous streams of data, so may be well suited for edge computing and tasks like machine vision.

Shift 2: From Bits to Atoms

The 20th century saw two major waves of innovation. The first, dominated by electricity and internal combustion, revolutionized how we could manipulate the physical world. The second, driven by quantum physics, microbial science and computing, transformed how we could work with the microscopic and the virtual.

The past few decades have been dominated by the digital revolution and it seems like things have been moving very fast, but looks can be deceiving. If you walked into an average 1950s era household, you would see much that you would recognize, including home appliances, a TV and an automobile. On the other hand, if you had to live in a 1900’s era home, with no running water or electricity, you would struggle to survive.

The next era will combine aspects of both waves, essentially using bits to drive atoms. We’re building vast databases of genes and materials, cataloging highly specific aspects of the physical world. We are also using powerful machine learning algorithms to analyze these vast droves of data and derive insights. The revolution underway is so profound that it’s reshaping the scientific method.

In the years to come, new computing architectures are likely to accelerate this process. Simulating chemistry is one of the first applications being explored for quantum computers, which will help us build larger and more detailed databases. Neuromorphic technology will allow us to shift from the cloud to the edge, enabling factories to get much smarter.

The way we interface with the physical world is changing as well. New techniques such as CRISPR helps us edit genes at will. There is also an emerging revolution in materials science that will transform areas like energy and manufacturing. These trends are still somewhat nascent, but have truly transformative potential.

Shift 3: From Rapid Iteration to Exploration

Over the past 30 years, we’ve had the luxury of working with technologies we understand extremely well. Every generation of microchips opened vast new possibilities, but worked exactly the same way as the last generation, creating minimal switching costs. The main challenge was to design applications.

So it shouldn’t be surprising that rapid iteration emerged as a key strategy. When you understand the fundamental technology that underlies a product or service, you can move quickly, trying out nearly endless permutations until you arrive at an optimized solution. That’s often far more effective than a planned, deliberate approach.

Over the next decade or two, however, the challenge will be to advance technology that we don’t understand well at all. As noted above, quantum and neuromorphic computing are still in their nascent stages. Improvements in genomics and materials science are redefining the boundaries of those fields. There are also ethical issues involved with artificial intelligence and genomics that will require us to tread carefully.

So in the future, we will need to put greater emphasis on exploration to understand these new technologies and how they relate to our businesses. Instead of looking to disrupt markets, we will need to pursue grand challenges to solve fundamental problems. Most of all, it’s imperative to start early. By the time many of these technologies hit their stride, it will be too late to catch up.

Shift 4. From Hyper Competition to Mass Collaboration

The competitive environment we’ve become used to has been relatively simple. For each particular industry, there have been distinct ecosystems based on established fields of expertise. Competing firms raced to transform fairly undifferentiated inputs into highly differentiated products and services. You needed to move fast to get an edge.

This new era, on the other hand, will be one of mass collaboration in which government partners with academia and industry to explore new technologies in the pre competitive phase. For example, the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research combines the work of five national labs, a dozen or so academic institutions and hundreds of companies to develop advance batteries. Covid has redefined how scientists collaborate across institutional barriers.

Or consider the Manufacturing Institutes set up under the Obama administration. Focusing on everything from advanced fabrics to biopharmaceuticals, these allow companies to collaborate with government labs and top academics to develop the next generation of technologies. They also operate dozens of testing facilities to help bring new products to market faster.

I’ve visited some of these facilities and have had the opportunity to talk with executives from participating companies. What struck me was how palpable the excitement about the possibilities of this new era was. Agility for them didn’t mean learning to run faster down a chosen course, but to widen and deepen connections throughout a technological ecosystem.

Over the past few decades, we have largely been moving faster and faster down a predetermined path. Over the next few decades, however, we’ll increasingly need to explore multiple domains at once and combine them into something that produces value. We’ll need to learn how to go slower to deliver much larger impacts.

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

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The Role of Leadership in Driving Organizational Change

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The Role of Leadership in Driving Organizational Change

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s rapidly evolving business environment, the need for organizational change is unavoidable. Organizations must adapt, innovate, and evolve to survive and thrive. At the heart of this transformation lies leadership. Effective leadership is pivotal in orchestrating change and guiding organizations through periods of transition. In this article, we will explore the essential roles that leaders play in driving organizational change, supported by two compelling case studies.

The Leadership Advantage in Change Management

Leadership is more than just setting the direction; it is about inspiring and engaging people to willingly pursue a new path. Successful leaders champion change, communicate a clear vision, and foster a culture that is open to new ideas. They also play a critical role in aligning resources, managing risks, and ensuring that the organizational structure supports the desired change.

1. Creating a Compelling Vision

A compelling vision acts as a North Star for organizational change. It is the leader’s responsibility to develop and articulate a vision that resonates with employees, customers, and stakeholders. This vision must be clear, inspirational, and aligned with the organization’s core values and objectives.

2. Communication and Engagement

Change initiatives often fail due to insufficient communication. Leaders must ensure that communication is ongoing, transparent, and two-way. Engaging with employees at all levels to gather feedback and address concerns is crucial for minimizing resistance and building trust.

3. Building a Change-Ready Culture

Leaders play a key role in creating and nurturing an organizational culture that embraces change. By encouraging innovation and rewarding flexibility, leaders reinforce behaviors conducive to change.

Case Study 1: Transforming a Traditional Retailer

A well-established retail company faced declining sales as consumer preferences shifted towards online shopping. Under the leadership of a forward-thinking CEO, the company embarked on a transformational journey. The CEO communicated a vision of becoming a customer-centric omnichannel retailer. Multiple initiatives were launched, including enhancing the online shopping experience and integrating digital touchpoints in physical stores.

Throughout the process, leadership played a crucial role. The CEO encouraged open communication forums where employees could voice concerns and ideas. Leadership training programs were implemented to equip managers with change management skills. As a result, the company successfully repositioned itself in the market, achieving a renewed competitive edge.

Case Study 2: Digital Transformation in Healthcare

A large healthcare provider recognized the need for digital transformation to improve patient care and operational efficiency. The initiative was championed by the CIO, who set forth a bold vision for leveraging technology to enhance service delivery.

Leadership was instrumental in this change journey. The CIO established cross-functional teams to break down silos and encourage collaboration. Regular updates and successes were communicated to all staff, with feedback loops to address challenges. By fostering an environment of continuous learning and adaptation, the healthcare provider successfully implemented electronic health records and telehealth services, significantly improving patient satisfaction.

Conclusion

Effective leadership is indispensable in navigating organizational change. By crafting a compelling vision, promoting transparent communication, and fostering a culture that welcomes change, leaders can drive successful transformations. As demonstrated in the case studies, the journey is fraught with challenges, but with the right leadership approach, organizations can emerge stronger and more resilient.

Image credit: Unsplash

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