Category Archives: Change

Outsmarting Those Who Want to Kill Change

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Look at anyone who has truly changed the world and they encountered significant resistance. In fact, while researching my book Cascades, I found that every major change effort, whether it was a political revolution, a social movement or an organizational transformation, had people who worked to undermine it in ways that were dishonest, underhanded and deceptive.

Unfortunately, we often don’t realize that there is an opposition campaign underway until it’s too late. People rarely voice open hostility to change. Opponents might even profess some excitement at our idea conceptually, but once there is a possibility of real action moving forward, they dig in their heels.

None of this means that change can’t happen. What it does mean is that, if you expect to bring about meaningful change, planning to overcome resistance has to be a primary design constraint and an organizing principle. Once you understand that, you can begin to move forward, identify shared values, design effective tactics and, ultimately, create lasting change.

Start With a Local Majority

Consider a famous set of conformity studies performed by the psychologist Solomon Asch in the 1950s. The design was simple, but ingenuous. He merely showed people pairs of cards, asking them to match the length of a single line on one card with one of three on an adjacent card. The correct answer was meant to be obvious.

However, as the experimenter went around the room, one person after another gave the same wrong answer. When it reached the final person in the group (in truth, the only real subject, the rest were confederates), the vast majority of the time that person conformed to the majority opinion, even if it was obviously wrong!

Majorities don’t just rule, they also influence, especially local majorities. The effect is even more powerful when the issue at hand is not as clear-cut as the length of a line on a card. Also, more recent research suggests that the effect applies not only to people we know well, but that we are also influenced even by second and third-degree relationships.

The key point here is that we get to choose who we expose an idea to. If you start with five people in a room, for example, you only need three advocates to start with a majority. That may not seem consequential, but consider that the movement that overthrew Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević started with five kids in a cafe, and you can see how even the most inauspicious beginnings can lead to revolutionary outcomes.

You can always expand a majority out, but once you’re in the minority you are likely to get immediate pushback and will have to retrench. That’s why the best place to start is with those who are already enthusiastic about your idea. Then you can empower them to be successful and bring in others who can bring in others still.

Listen to Your Opposition, But Don’t Engage Them

People who are passionate about change often see themselves as evangelists. Much like Saint Paul in the bible, they thrive on winning converts and seek out those who most adamantly oppose their idea in an attempt to change their minds. This is almost always a mistake. Directly engaging with staunch opposition is unlikely to achieve anything other than exhausting and frustrating you.

However, while you shouldn’t directly engage your fiercest critics, you obviously can’t act like they don’t exist. On the contrary, you need to pay close attention to them. In fact by listening to people who hate your idea you can identify early flaws, which gives you the opportunity to fix them before they can be used against you in any serious way.

One of the most challenging things about managing change effort is balancing the need to focus on a small circle of dedicated enthusiasts while still keeping your eyes and ears open. Once you become too insular, you will quickly find yourself out of touch. It’s not enough to sing to the choir, you also need to get out of the church and mix with the heathens.

Perhaps the most important reason to listen to your critics is that they will help you identify shared values. After all, they are trying to convince the same people in the middle that you are. Very often you’ll find that, by deconstructing their arguments, you can use their objections to help you make your case.

Shift From Differentiating Values to Shared Values

Many revolutionaries, corporate and otherwise, are frustrated marketers. They want to differentiate themselves in the marketplace of ideas through catchy slogans that “cut through.” It is by emphasizing difference that they seek to gin-up enthusiasm among their most loyal supporters.

That was certainly true of LGBTQ activists, who marched through city streets shouting slogans like “We’re here, we’re queer and we’d like to say hello.” They led a different lifestyle and wanted to demand that their dignity be recognized. More recently, Black Lives Matter activists made calls to “defund the police,” which many found to be shocking and anarchistic.

Corporate change agents tend to fall into a similar trap. They rant on about “radical” innovation and “disruption,” ignoring the fact that few like to be radicalized or disrupted. Proponents of agile development methods often tout their manifesto, oblivious to the reality that many outside the agile community find the whole thing a bit weird and unsettling.

While emphasizing difference may excite people who are already on board, it is through shared values that you bring people in. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that the fight for LGBTQ rights began to gain traction when activists started focusing on family values. Innovation doesn’t succeed because it’s “radical,” but when it solves a meaningful problem. The value of Agile methods isn’t a manifesto, but the fact that they can improve performance.

Create and Build On Success

Starting with a small group of enthusiastic apostles may seem insignificant. In fact, look at almost any popular approach to change management and the first thing on the to-do-list is “create a sense of urgency around change” or “create an awareness of the need for change.” But if that really worked, the vast majority of organizational transformations wouldn’t fail, and we know that they do.

Once you accept that resistance to change needs to be your primary design constraint, it becomes clear that starting out with a massive communication campaign will only serve to alert your opponents that they better get started undermining you quickly or you might actually be successful in bringing change about.

That’s why we always advise organizations to focus on a small, but meaningful keystone change that can demonstrate success. For example, one initiative at Procter & Gamble started out with just three mid-level executives focused on improving one process. That kicked off a movement that grew to over 2500 employees in 18 months. Every successful large enterprise transformation we looked at had a similar pattern.

That, in truth, is the best way to outsmart the opponents of change. Find a way to make it successful, no matter how small that initial victory may be, then empower others to succeed as well. It’s easy to argue against an idea, you merely need to smother it in its cradle. Yet a concept that’s been proven to work and has inspired people to believe in it is an idea whose time has come.

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

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All Leadership is Change Leadership

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All Leadership is Change Leadership

GUEST POST from Randy Pennington

Taxi companies could have created a ride scheduling and payment app. They didn’t.

There are a number of reasons why it didn’t happen, but the biggest reason was reluctance to challenge the status quo.

The same goes for a host of other companies. Blockbuster’s failure to proactively innovate—or even take the opportunity to purchase Netflix—is one of the most notable. We can’t forget, however, Nokia, IBM, Kodak, BlackBerry, MySpace, and RadioShack.

We don’t know the exact conversations about change in any of these companies, but it is a very safe bet to assume that no one stood up and said, “Let’s do nothing because we want the company to fail.”

We all want our organizations to continually be better. If they are going to be better, we must do at least some things different. If things are going to be different, they have to change.

That makes all leadership, especially in today’s world, change leadership.

Change Leadership not Change Management

Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper famously said: “You manage things. You lead people.”

Unfortunately, the remainder of her statement is often omitted: “We went overboard on management and forgot about leadership.”

That happened with our approach to change, too.

We have gone overboard managing the immense amount of data, projects, and things to be coordinated and corralled in our attempts to “manage” change. It stems from our desire to remove the messiness and bring order to the process of change.

It is a worthwhile objective, but as historian Henry Adams reminded us, “Chaos was the law of nature. Order was the dream of man.”

Change—especially the transformational growth we need today—is always messy. Most important, it is more likely to fail because of faulty leadership rather than faulty management.

Leadership is about influence. Nothing more and nothing less. For our organizations and institutions to flourish in the future, we need more leaders who can influence others to disrupt the status quo.

Disrupting the Status Quo

We come by our desire for order honestly. The human brain appears is hard-wired to value certainty and view uncertainty as a potential threat.

The human application of Newton’s First Law also has an impact. We learned in high school physics that objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to remain in motion until they are acted upon by a greater force in the opposing direction.

That explains the why inertia of the status quo exists. It doesn’t actually help you overcome it. Here are four actions you can take right now.

1. Create Emotional Readiness to Counteract Fear

People, organizations, and industries change for one of two basic reasons: crisis pushes them to change, or opportunity pulls them to do so. You occasionally see a combination of both, but there is usually one primary diver. Most of us wait on crisis. If you find yourself there, don’t sugar coat or waste it. Just realize that you are likely to be playing from behind in the marketplace. It’s not that all of those failed and disrupted companies didn’t try anything. It is that they waited for crisis to generate emotional readiness. The best organizations seize opportunities. Netflix jumped from distributing DVDs to delivering its services through a streaming platform even though the company was not in crisis. It wasn’t an easy change, but Reed Hastings created a compelling vision of the future that focused on proactively creating value for the customer rather than playing catch up to survive.

While many people are hesitant to change, everyone wants to get better. The only way to maintain momentum and ensure long-term success in today’s marketplace is a relentless focus on making yourself indispensable to your customers.

2. Provide Involvement and Support

Sending a positive message about seizing the future does not ensure that people will embrace or pursue it. You cannot rely solely on a change communication plan if the goal is to inspire people to take new action. Get everyone involved early and often. People support what they help create, and no one ever argues with their own ideas. Likewise, your team will need training and support. Becoming proficient and comfortable with new ways of thinking and working take time even when there is complete support. Knowing that coaching, training, and support are available helps overcome the fear of incompetence.

3. Tell Positive Stories Early and Often

Facts impart knowledge. Stories create connections and feeling, and feelings inspire people to stick with a change even when doing so is uncomfortable. The elements of a great storyare the same if you are making a successful movie or leading organizational transformation. You need a character with which everyone can identify, a believable plot with a conflict to overcome, struggle, and resolution. Sharing positive stories about real people achieving results helps overcome resistance. More important, it provides a respected counterbalance to naysayers that might try to sabotage your change efforts.

4. Go First

Ross Perot, founder of EDS and Perot Systems, once told me that Leaders eat last, but they go first.His meaning was more than a pithy play on words. Your team is watching. It is more difficult for them to get excited about where the organization is going if they sense reticence from you. Your influence is highest when you model the willingness to pursue change that you want from others.

Change is hard. Resistance, risk, and fear are real. The important decisions and strategies on which you need to execute can be scary. If, on the other hand, there is no resistance, there is no substantial change.

Change no longer influences the environment. It is the environment. Your job is to inspire and influence a culture that continuously challenges the status quo to remain relevant to your customers and stakeholders. That means all leadership is change leadership.

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You Must Play and Experiment to Create and Innovate

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You Must Play and Experiment to Create and Innovate

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

Growing up in the fashion industry, in 1980’s Paris, I forged an exciting global career and experienced, first hand, a diverse range of the most amazingly innovative fashion presentations ever. It was the dawn of an explosive era where fashion really mattered and wonderful events became really fantastic happenings featuring a lot of playful and experimental theatrical performances and fabulous guest stars on the catwalk. “From Claude Montana to Thierry Mugler, from Giorgio Armani to Franco Moschino, from Jean Charles de Castelbajac to Christian Lacroix, there were many designers who shaped the aesthetics of the era with their creations and shows” – whose creativity, still impact us across the arts and other key industries today.

Being playful and experimental

Reinforcing that in the arts and other industries, and in our professional and personal lives, newness, creativity, and innovation only happen through people being willing to be both playful and experimental.

This is useful to know, especially with the range of constraints and restrictions occurring globally as a result of fierce governmental reactive response to managing the Covid-19 pandemic. Coupling these with the challenges and limitations of a remote and hybrid workplace, are combining to cause many of us to achingly long for more freedom, fun, play, and adventure. Yet, many of us, are feeling bound to our laptops, TV’s and kitchens, and are locked within the boundaries of our homes and local neighbourhoods.

It is possible to shift the range of negative feelings that lockdowns produce by exploring possibilities and opportunities for expanding our knowledge and learning, by knowing how to be more playful and experimental, and especially by taking up a set of regular reflective practices.

A unique moment in time

Using this unique moment in time to take up a set of reflective practices to ignite our creative juices and expand our appetite and capacity for creativity.

At the same time, use this moment to explore opportunities to learn and expand our knowledge, because, knowledge plays an important role in the productivity and prosperity of economies, organisations, and individuals and the post-Covid-19 world is going to need a lot of new knowledge in the coming decade of both disruption and transformation.

Expanding our knowledge

Most of us are aware that, our desire to create, and actually be playful and experiential usually involves learning from some kind of direct experience. Like painting, where our hands are likely to get dirty, where we may produce a number of poor efforts (which we often hide) before we eventually create one, we can accept and live with.

Learning from a direct experience is more effective if coupled with reflection – that is, the intentional attempt to synthesize, abstract, and articulate the key lessons taught by experience.

Where research reveals that the effect of reflection on learning is mediated by a greater perceived ability to achieve a goal in that it improves your confidence, self-belief, and conviction that you can achieve it.

Learning from reflecting on experience

Making the learning experience a playful and experimental one allows us to have fun, in ways that engage our multiple intelligences – our cognitive brains, and heart and gut brains in ways that create meta-shifts that challenge our mental maps.

This also helps us develop our learning agility – “learning what to do when you don’t know what to do” especially important in a world of constant and disruptive change.

Which will especially be a very vital and critical skill set to cultivate in the post-Covid-19 world, where there is no playbook, or reliable template for long-term planning the results we might want, in a disruptive and uncertain future.

Starting with elastic thinking

It starts with developing our elastic thinking skills, where according to Leonard Mlodinow – it is now prime time for people to harness the power of “elastic thinking” to navigate an unstable world and underpins our ability to adapt and be creative.

And involves “developing the capacity to let go of comfortable ideas and become accustomed to ambiguity and contradiction; the capability to rise above conventional mindsets and to reframe the questions we ask; the ability to abandon our ingrained assumptions and open ourselves to new paradigms; the propensity to rely on imagination as much as on logic and to generate and integrate a wide variety of ideas; and the willingness to experiment and be tolerant of failure.”

At ImagineNation™ we developed a four-step cognitive process to help people stretch their mental maps, feelings, thinking, behaviours, and actions, enabling them to be playful and experimental by focussing on these key elements that enable reflective practice:

Discovering
Sensemaking
Internalising
Applying

Exploring the role of failing fast

Getting to the creative and innovative outcomes, when playing and experimenting with thinking or acting differently, usually involves some kind of failure, where we fail flat on our faces!

Yet when being brave playful and courageous, and experimenting, you have to be willing to make mistakes and fail. The key is to try out things, and experiment, like children, do, and not worry about what others think and say about you, when you make a mistake or fail.

At the same time, adopting a reflective practice supports our willingness to let go and come from a beginners mind, to unlearn what may have worked previously, whilst being vulnerable and open-hearted, minded and willed to deeply reflect on what happened and what knowledge you may gain and what you might learn from it.

Continuously learning from reflective practice

This means that “work must become more learningful” where an organisations’ or teams’ collective aspiration is set free and people have permission, safety, and trust to be playful and experimental.

To “learn by doing and reflecting” through being:

Encouraged to continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire,
Re-educated to elasticize their thinking and develop new mental maps and where expansive patterns of feeling and thinking are nurtured,
Committed to continuously learning how to learn together, at a speed faster than the competition.

Resulting in the intelligence of the organisation or team exceeding the intelligence of individuals in the team and in the organisation, and by harnessing the collective’s capacity to create, invent and innovate through enacting a set of habitual reflective practices.

CCS Cards for play and critical reflection:

As a side note, it’s worth mentioning a tool we like to use that can provide both a sense of play and an opportunity for critical reflection. As many of you may know, CCS Cards are image cards containing a special set of photos, illustrations, and words. Just holding them, sorting them, and talking about what particular cards might mean for you, is an enjoyable, playful activity that often leads to fresh, creative responses.

Furthermore, as a tool for reflective practice, CCS Cards give people a powerful way to recall and recreate their lived experiences by incorporating their feelings and emotions. The cards provide participants with self-selected representations that they can link to all the associated concepts, feelings, words, and actions that were part of the lived experience. Armed with this clearer picture, they are better able to reflect upon and learn from their experience. The cards also provide an easy way to share and compare their reflections with others, which is vital for effective collaboration.

Bringing together theory and practice

Enacting a set of reflective practices helps us effectively bring together and integrate theory and practice, where through reflection, people are able to:

Discover new mental maps, feelings, thoughts, and ideas,
Make sense of these in their own context or situation,
Internalize and assimilate the impact of these mental maps, thoughts, feelings, and actions by introducing options and choices for being, thinking, and acting differently,
Apply that information to add to their existing knowledge base and reach a higher level of understanding,
Adapt how they feel, think and act as resources in new, unknown, unexpected, and disruptive situations, as well as in how they plan, implement, and review their actions.

Surely, these might comprise a helpful set of strategies to embrace to help you thrive in these challenging times?

Isn’t there an inherent opportunity for all of us to discover and explore new ways of having more fun, by being playful and experimental?

Perhaps we might discover new ways of adapting and thriving individually and collectively co-create more individual freedom, wonderful fun, and exciting adventures that we are all craving, and become future-fit, in our constantly changing, uncertain, and unstable world.

Find out more about our work at ImagineNation™

Find out about our learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators Certified Program, a collaborative, intimate, and deep personalized innovation coaching and learning program, supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks, starting Tuesday, February 1, 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, to upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness, within your unique context.

Join our next free “Making Innovation a Habit” masterclass to re-engage 2022!

Our 90-minute masterclass and creative conversation will help you develop your post-Covid-19 re-engagement strategy. It’s on Thursday, 10th February at 6.30 pm Sydney and Melbourne, 8.30 pm Auckland, 3.30 pm Singapore, 11.30 am Abu Dhabi and 8.30 am Berlin. Find out more.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Preparing for Organizational Transformation in a Post-COVID World

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Preparing Your Organization for Transformation in a Post-COVID World

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

The Covid-19 pandemic demanded we transform across multiple planes. Businesses had to abruptly shift to empower remote work. Professionals were suddenly trading commutes and in-person meetings for home schooling and “Zoom fatigue.” Leaders needed to reimagine every system, from storefronts to supply chains to educational institutions.

It was a brutal awakening, but we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, a recent McKinsey Global Survey found that 73% of executives believed that conditions will be moderately or substantially better in the next year. Globally, the World Bank predicts 4% growth in 2021, a marked improvement over 2020’s 4.3% drop.

Still, while the crisis may be ending, the need for fundamental change has not. Today leaders must reinvent their organizations on multiple fronts, including technological, environmental, social and skills-based transformations. These pose challenges for any organization and research suggests that traditional approaches are unlikely to succeed. Here’s what will:

Empowering Small Groups

In 1998 five friends met in a cafe in Belgrade and formed a revolutionary movement. Two years later the brutal Serbian dictator, Slobodan Milošević, was overthrown. In 2007, a lean manufacturing initiative at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals began with a single team in one plant. In 18 months it spread to more than 17,000 employees across 25 sites worldwide and resulted in a more than 25% reduction in costs across the company.

More recently, in 2017, three mid-level employees at Procter & Gamble decided to take it upon themselves, with no budget and no significant executive sponsorship, to transform a single process. It took them months, but they were able to streamline it from a matter of weeks to mere hours. Today, their PxG initiative for process improvement has become a movement for reinvention that encompasses thousands of their colleagues worldwide.

Traditionally, managers launching a new initiative have aimed to start with a bang. They work to gain approval for a sizable budget as a sign of institutional commitment, recruit high-profile executives, arrange a big “kick-off” meeting and look to move fast, gain scale and generate some quick wins. All of this is designed to create a sense of urgency and inevitability.

Yet that approach can backfire. Many change leaders who start with a “shock and awe” approach find that, while they have rallied some to their cause, they have also inspired an insurgency that bogs things down. For any significant change, there will always be some who will oppose the idea and they will resist it in ways that are often insidious and not immediately obvious.

The dangers of resistance are especially acute when, as is often the case today, you need to drive transformation on multiple fronts. That’s why it’s best to start with small groups of enthusiasts that you can empower to succeed, rather than try to push an initiative on the masses that you’ll struggle to convince.

Weaving A Network Of Loose Connections

The sociologist Mark Granovetter envisioned collective action as a series of resistance thresholds. For any idea or initiative, some will be naturally enthusiastic and have minimal or no resistance, some will have some level of skepticism and others will be dead set against it.

It’s not hard to see why focusing initial efforts on small groups with low resistance thresholds can be effective. In the examples above, the Serbian activists, the lean manufacturing pilot team at Wyeth and the three mid-level executives at Procter & Gamble were all highly motivated and willing to put in the hard work to overcome initial challenges and setbacks.

To scale, however, transformation efforts must be able to connect to those who have at least some level of reluctance. One highly effective strategy to scale change is to create “cooptable” resources in the form of workshops, training materials and other assets. For example, to scale a cloud transformation initiative at Experian, change leaders set up an “API Center of Excellence” to make it as easy as possible for product managers to try cloud-based offerings.

Another helpful practice is to update stakeholders about recent events and share best practices. In One Mission, Chris Fussell describes in detail the O&I forum he and General Stanley McChrystal used in Iraq. The Serbian activists held regular “network meetings,” that served a similar purpose. More recently, Yammer groups, Zoom calls and other digital media have proven effective in this regard.

What’s most important is that people are allowed to take ownership of a change initiative and be able to define it for themselves, rather than being bribed or coerced with incentive schemes or mandates. You can’t force authentic change. Unless people see genuine value in it, it will never gain any real traction.

Indoctrinate Shared Values And Shared Purpose

One of the biggest misconceptions about transformation efforts is that success begets more success. In practice, the opposite is often true. An initial success—especially a visible one—is likely to be met with a groundswell of opposition. We’ve seen this writ large with respect to political revolutions in which initial victories in places like Egypt, Maldives and Burma experienced reversals, but it is no less common in a corporate or organizational context.

In fact, we are often called into an engagement 6-12 months after an initiative starts because change leaders are bewildered that their efforts, which seemed so successful at first, have suddenly and mysteriously run aground. In actuality, it was those initial victories that activated latent opposition because it made what seemed unlikely change a real possibility.

The truth is that lasting change can never be built on any particular technology, program or policy, but rather must focus on shared values and a shared sense of mission. The Serbian activists focused not on any particular ideology, but on patriotism. At Wyeth, the change leaders made sure not to champion any specific technique, but tangible results. The leaders of the PXG initiative at Procter & Gamble highlighted the effect clunky and inefficient processes have on morale.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, who was one of Lou Gerstner’s key lieutenants in IBM’s historic turnaround in the 90s made a similar point to me. “Because the transformation was about values first and technology second, we were able to continue to embrace those values as the technology and marketplace continued to evolve,” he said.

Redefining Agility

In Built to Last, management guru Jim Collins suggested that leaders should develop a “big hairy audacious goal” (BHAG) to serve as a unifying vision for their enterprise. He pointed to examples such as Boeing’s development of the 707 commercial jet liner and Jack Welch’s vision that every GE business should be #1 or #2 in its category as inspiring “moonshots.”

Yet the truth is that we no longer have the luxury of focusing transformation in a single direction, but must bring about change along multiple axes simultaneously. Leaders today can’t choose whether to leverage cutting-edge technologies or become more sustainable, nor can we choose between a highly skilled workforce and one that is diverse and inclusive.

The kind of sustained, multifaceted brand of change we need today cannot be mandated from a mountaintop but must be inspired to take root throughout an enterprise. We need to learn how to empower small loosely connected groups with a shared sense of mission and purpose. To truly take hold, people need to embrace change and they do that for their own reasons, not for ours.

That’s what will be key to making the transformations ahead successful. The answer doesn’t lie in any specific strategy or initiative, but in how people are able to internalize the need for change and transfer ideas through social bonds. A leader’s role is no longer to plan and direct action, but to inspire and empower belief.

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

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Nominations Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021

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

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

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

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

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

Human-Centered Change and Innovation is now looking for the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021.

The deadline for submitting nominations is December 24, 2021 at midnight GMT.

You can submit a nomination either of these two ways:

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

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

So, think about who you like to read and let us know by midnight GMT on December 24, 2021.

We will then compile a voting list of all the nominations, and publish it on December 25, 2021.

Voting will then be open from December 25, 2021 – January 1, 2022 via comments and twitter @replies to @innovate.

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

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

The official Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021 will then be announced on here in early January 2022.

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

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Design Thinking and Change Planning

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How to Combine Forces for Innovation

Design Thinking and Change Planning: How to Combine Forces for Innovation

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, organizations face the dual challenge of staying competitive and adapting to change. Design thinking and change planning are powerful tools that, when combined, can drive innovation, foster creativity, and lead to transformative outcomes. In this article, we explore how these two methodologies can work in harmony to create a culture of innovation.

1. Understanding Design Thinking

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving. It emphasizes empathy, collaboration, and iterative processes. Here are the key stages of design thinking:

Empathize: Understand the needs, pain points, and aspirations of your users or stakeholders.
Define: Clearly define the problem you aim to solve.
Ideate: Generate creative solutions through brainstorming and ideation sessions.
Prototype: Build low-fidelity prototypes to test and refine ideas.
Test: Gather feedback from users and iterate based on insights.

The Guardian: A Design Thinking Success Story

The Guardian, a renowned newspaper and publishing group, leveraged design thinking to transform its funding model, boost revenue, and engage emotionally with readers ¹. By empathizing with their audience, they identified pain points and creatively addressed them. The result? A sustainable business model and a deeper connection with readers.

2. Integrating Change Planning

What is Change Planning?

Change planning involves systematically preparing an organization for transitions. It ensures that people, processes, and systems adapt smoothly to new realities. Here are the essential steps:

Assess the Landscape: Understand the context, identify stakeholders, and assess readiness for change.
Create a Vision: Define the desired future state and communicate it effectively.
Plan and Execute: Develop a detailed roadmap, allocate resources, and execute the plan.
Monitor and Adjust: Continuously evaluate progress, make necessary adjustments, and celebrate wins.

Tackling the Opioid Crisis: A Dual Approach

The Lummi Tribal clinic faced the opioid crisis head-on using both design thinking and change planning. They empathized with patients, staff, and the community to understand the complexities. Simultaneously, they planned for system-wide changes, including better protocols, training, and community outreach. The result? A holistic approach that saved lives and improved overall well-being ¹.

3. Synergy in Action

When design thinking and change planning converge, magic happens:

User-Centric Innovation: Design thinking ensures solutions resonate with users, while change planning ensures smooth implementation.
Iterative Adaptation: Design thinking’s iterative nature aligns with change planning’s continuous improvement mindset.
Culture Transformation: Together, they foster a culture of innovation, agility, and resilience.

The Value of Braden Kelley’s Change Planning Toolkit™

To supercharge this synergy, consider integrating Braden Kelley’s Change Planning Toolkit™. This toolkit provides a comprehensive set of frameworks, worksheets, and tools designed to accelerate change efforts. Here’s why it’s invaluable:

Beat the 70% Failure Rate: The toolkit equips you to navigate change successfully, minimizing the risk of failure.
Visualize, Plan, and Execute: Use the toolkit to create visual roadmaps, ensuring alignment across teams.
On-Time Delivery: Deliver projects and change efforts promptly with the toolkit’s practical resources.
Human-Centered Approach: Like design thinking, the toolkit prioritizes people, fostering engagement and adoption.

The Change Planning Toolkit™ Basic License grants you access to 26 essential tools, including the Change Planning Canvas™¹. For more extensive options, explore the Individual Bronze License or the Commercial License (Annual)². Remember, innovation isn’t a solo endeavor—it’s a symphony of empathy, strategy, and execution. Let’s play our part in this transformative orchestra.

In conclusion, organizations that embrace both design thinking and change planning position themselves for sustained success. By combining forces, they create a dynamic ecosystem where creativity thrives, problems are solved, and innovation becomes a way of life.

Remember, innovation isn’t a solo endeavor—it’s a symphony of empathy, strategy, and execution. Let’s play our part in this transformative orchestra.

Note: The case studies mentioned here are illustrative. Organizations should tailor their approach based on their unique context and challenges.

References:

The Guardian: Benefits of Design Thinking
Tackling the Opioid Crisis at the Human and Systems Levels

Bottom line: 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: Pixabay

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Transformational Leadership

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Inspiring Change from the Top

Transformational Leadership

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s rapidly changing world, organizations must adapt to new challenges and opportunities to remain competitive. Transformational leadership is a powerful approach that enables organizations to inspire change from the top. This leadership style focuses on inspiring and motivating employees, encouraging innovation, and fostering a culture of continuous improvement. Let’s delve into the essence of transformational leadership and how it can drive success, illuminated by two compelling case studies.

The Essence of Transformational Leadership

Transformational leadership is characterized by the ability to inspire and motivate followers to exceed their own self-interests for the sake of the organization. A transformational leader is visionary, charismatic, and empowers team members to unleash their full potential. The four components that define transformational leadership are:

Idealized Influence: Acting as a role model that followers admire and trust.
Inspirational Motivation: Inspiring employees with enthusiasm and a shared vision.
Intellectual Stimulation: Encouraging innovation and creativity by challenging beliefs and assumptions.
Individualized Consideration: Providing personalized coaching and mentorship to address individual needs.

Case Study 1: Satya Nadella at Microsoft

Revitalizing a Tech Giant

When Satya Nadella took the helm as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, the company was facing challenges with stagnant growth and a rigid organizational culture. Nadella embraced transformational leadership, prioritizing a growth mindset and collaboration across divisions. He shifted the company towards cloud computing and artificial intelligence, driving cultural and strategic transformation.

Nadella’s leadership style emphasized empathy, innovation, and learning. He encouraged employees to take risks, learn from failures, and strive for continuous improvement. Under his leadership, Microsoft experienced a remarkable turnaround, becoming a trillion-dollar company and a leader in cloud technology, with a renewed focus on products that empower individuals and organizations.

Case Study 2: Indra Nooyi at PepsiCo

Transforming with Purpose

Indra Nooyi’s tenure as CEO of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2018 serves as another exemplary instance of transformational leadership. Facing a market demanding more health-conscious products, Nooyi embarked on a strategy dubbed “Performance with Purpose.”

She drove the company’s focus towards sustainability and health by reshaping the product portfolio to include healthier options, reducing environmental impact, and enhancing resource efficiencies. Nooyi’s visionary approach and capacity to inspire her teams helped PepsiCo adapt to evolving consumer preferences while continuing to grow its core business. This transformational vision solidified PepsiCo’s position as a leader in the global food and beverage industry.

The Path Forward

Through the lens of these case studies, we see transformational leadership as a catalyst for change. It showcases how leaders with a strategic vision can not only adapt to the changing world but also inspire others to join them on the journey of innovation and progress. Leaders who embrace this style cultivate a work environment where creativity flourishes, individuals are uplifted, and collective goals are achieved.

As organizations continue to face unprecedented challenges, transformational leaders will play a pivotal role in steering them towards a resilient and prosperous future. Are you ready to become a transformational leader?

Image credit: Pexels

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Building a Better Change Communication Plan

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ACMP Standard Visualization

by Braden Kelley

In the ACMP Standard for Change Management the second phase is to “Formulate the Change Management Strategy” and its first step is to “Develop the Communication Strategy.”

The quality of your communication strategy and its execution is one of the most important determinants of success for your change or transformation initiative. But let’s be honest, most of us studied something other than communications in our university education and as a result don’t know the keys to successful communications. Because we have all learned how to write and speak in high school we make the mistake of thinking that we are expert communicators, but we’re not – at least without work and a conscious focus on the key principles of effective communications.

The most important of these is to know your audience and to speak to them as individuals. When it comes to change, there are many different motivations for people to choose change.

When crafting your communication strategy for your change or transformation initiative it is incredibly important for people to refer to the best practices of marketing communications. Chief among these is the recognition of the importance of segmenting your audience so you can send relevant communications to the different segments of your audience.

One of the best ways to segment your audience for change communications is to leverage The Eight Change Mindsets:

1. Mover ’n’ Shaker

give these people the chance to be first

2. Thrill Seeker

these people like to try new things and experiment

3. Mission-Driven

these people need reasons to believe

4. Action-Oriented

these people just want to know what needs to be done

5. Expert-Minded

teach these people how to do it, and they will seek mastery

6. Reward-Hungry

these people want recognition for adopting the change

7. Team Player

these people are happy to help if you show them why the change will be helpful

8. Teacher

show these people how to get others to choose change

You can download The Eight Change Mindsets as a PDF from Slideshare here:

Leveraging The Eight Change Mindsets in your change communication strategy will enable you to focus on creating the messaging, symbols and artifacts that will help each mindset choose change.

But many change managers either aren’t familiar with the basic principles of marketing communications or choose to take shortcuts and treat the entire organization as a single audience and craft a single set of communications. This is a mistake.

It’s actually a bit ironic because ProSci’s ADKAR methodology is clearly a re-purposing of marketing’s AIDA view of customer progressions:

Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action

As a quick refresher, ADKAR as a comparison is:

Awareness of the Need for Change
Desire to Support the Change
Knowledge of How to Change
Ability to Demonstrate Skills & Behaviors
Reinforcement to Make the Change Stick

If you really want to build a better change communication plan, then crash these two things together:

The Eight Change Mindsets for the segmentation of your audience
ADKAR for the creation of a communications sequence

Download the PDF of The Eight Change Mindsets above or go here to get the infographic if that’s easier for you.

If you need a little more guidance or just want to save time, then I’ve added a worksheet to v13 of the Change Planning Toolkit that I introduced in my latest book Charting Change.

The “Eight Change Mindsets Communication Strategy” worksheet is but one of the 70+ tools and frameworks that you’ll get when you purchase an annual license or a lifetime license of the Change Planning Toolkit developed as part of the Human-Centered Change methodology.

I’ve designed it as an 11″x17″ work mat to use with sticky notes. But this tool, and the others in the Change Planning Toolkit, can also be provided as 35″x56″ posters to licensees on an as needed basis. In addition, these tools are also designed to be used with virtual collaboration tools like Miro, Mural, Lucidspark, Microsoft Whiteboard and others.

So, start building a better change communication strategy today!

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Balancing Profit, People, and Planet

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The Triple Bottom Line

The Triple Bottom Line - Balancing Profit, People, and Planet

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The concept of the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) pivots on the idea that the success of a business should be measured not only by the traditional financial bottom line but also by its impact on the broader social and environmental systems. In today’s rapidly evolving world, businesses face unprecedented scrutiny and new societal expectations. Stakeholders now demand that companies consider a broader array of metrics, leading to the consideration of the Triple Bottom Line: Profit, People, and Planet.

Understanding the Triple Bottom Line

John Elkington introduced the TBL framework in 1994, revolutionizing how organizations perceive their role in society. The TBL framework suggests that companies should commit to focusing equally on:

Profit: Traditional financial performance and value creation for shareholders.
People: Social responsibility, including fair labor practices, community engagement, and equitable growth.
Planet: Environmental sustainability, such as reducing carbon footprints, sustainable resource management, and mitigating climate change.

Case Study 1: Patagonia

Patagonia – A Commitment to Environmental Stewardship

Patagonia, an outdoor apparel company, is a stellar example of an organization successfully balancing the Triple Bottom Line. The company’s commitment to environmental sustainability is woven into its core mission. Patagonia donates 1% of its sales to environmental causes through their self-imposed Earth Tax. They also spearhead initiatives like the Worn Wear program, encouraging customers to repair, share, and recycle products rather than buying new ones.

Socially, Patagonia champions workers’ rights and strives for fair labor practices across its supply chain. Its Fair Trade certification program has benefited thousands of workers by ensuring fair wages and better working conditions.

Financially, Patagonia remains profitable and continues to expand while staying true to its mission of environmental and social responsibility. By embracing the TBL, Patagonia has cultivated a robust and loyal customer base that values the company’s transparency and ethical stance.

Case Study 2: Unilever

Unilever – Integrating Sustainability into Corporate Strategy

Unilever, a giant in the fast-moving consumer goods sector, has made significant strides in embedding sustainability into its corporate strategy. The company’s Sustainable Living Plan sets ambitious goals to improve health and well-being, reduce environmental impact, and enhance livelihoods.

On the environmental front, Unilever commits to halving the environmental footprint of its products across the value chain. Initiatives such as reducing greenhouse gases, using renewable energy, and promoting sustainable agriculture are key components of their strategy.

From a social perspective, Unilever focuses on enhancing livelihoods by supporting smallholder farmers and committing to fair labor practices. They have reached over a billion people with their health and hygiene programs, improving public health outcomes and education.

Financial performance remains strong, with Unilever showing that it is possible to grow the business while prioritizing sustainability. Investors increasingly look to companies like Unilever as they have proven that integrating the Triple Bottom Line can lead to long-term profitability and shareholder value.

Moving Forward

The Triple Bottom Line represents a paradigm shift in how businesses operate in the 21st century. Organizations that successfully integrate profit, people, and planet into their core strategies stand to benefit from enhanced reputation, reduced risk, and sustainable growth. To thrive in the future, businesses must embrace the principles of TBL, fostering innovation that addresses global challenges and creates value for all stakeholders.

As leaders and change-makers, we must continue to push the envelope, encouraging businesses of all sizes and industries to adopt and implement the Triple Bottom Line framework. The path forward is clear: balance profit with social and environmental responsibility to create a sustainable and equitable future for all.

SPECIAL BONUS: The very best change planners use a visual, collaborative approach to create their deliverables. A methodology and tools like those in Change Planning Toolkit™ can empower anyone to become great change planners themselves.

Image credit: misterinnovation.com

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To Change the World You Must First Learn Something About It

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To Change the World You Must First Learn Something About It

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Anybody who has waited for a traffic light to change, in the middle of the night at an empty intersection, knows the urge to rebel. There is always a tension between order and freedom. While we intuitively understand the need for order to constrain others, we yearn for the freedom to do what we want and to seek out a vision and sense of meaning in our lives.

Yet as we have seen over the past decade, attempts to overturn the existing order usually fail. The Tea Party erupted in 2009, but had mostly sputtered out by 2014. #Occupy protests and Black Lives Matter sent people into the streets, but achieved little, if anything. Silicon Valley “unicorns” like WeWork routinely go up in flames.

Not all revolutions flop, though. In fact, some succeed marvelously. What has struck me after researching transformational change over nearly two decades is how similar successful efforts are. They all experience failures along the way. What makes the difference is their ability to learn, adapt and change along the way. That’s what allows them to prevail.

Five Kids Meet In A Cafe

One day in 1998, a group of five friends met in a cafe in Belgrade. Although still in their 20s, they were already experienced activists and most of what they experienced was failure. They had taken part in student protests against the war in Bosnia in 1992, as well in the larger uprisings in response to election fraud in 1996. Neither had achieved much.

Having had time to reflect on their successes and failures, they hatched a new plan. They knew from their earlier efforts that they could mobilize people and get them to the polls for the presidential election in 2000. They also knew that Slobodan Milošević, who ruled the country with an iron hand, would try and steal the election, just as he did in 2006.

So that’s what they planned for.

The next day, six friends joined the five from the previous day and, together, they formed the original 11 members of Otpor, the movement that would topple the Milošević regime. They began slowly at first, performing pranks and street theater. But within two years it grew to over 70,000 members, with chapters all over Serbia. Milošević was ousted in the Bulldozer revolution in 2000. He would die in his prison cell at The Hague in 2006.

What Otpor came to understand is that it takes small groups, loosely connected, but united by a shared purpose to drive transformational change. The organization was almost totally decentralized, with just a basic “network meeting” to share best practices every two weeks. Nevertheless, by empowering those smaller groups and giving them a shared sense of mission, they were able to prevail over seemingly impossible odds.

Three Mid-Level executives See A Problem That Needs Fixing

In 2017, John Gadsby and two colleagues in Procter & Gamble’s research organization saw that there was a problem. Although cutting-edge products were being developed all around them, the processes at the 180 year-old firm were often antiquated, making it sometimes difficult to get even simple things done.

So they decided to do something about it. They chose a single process, which involved setting up experiments to test new product technologies. It usually took weeks and was generally considered a bottleneck. Utilizing digital tools, however, they were able to hone it down to just a few hours. It was a serious accomplishment and the three were recognized with a “Pathfinder” award by the company CTO.

Every change starts out with a grievance, such as the annoyance of being bogged down by inefficient processes. The first step forward is to come up with a vision for how you would like things to be different. However, you can never get there in a single step, which is why you need to identify a single keystone change to show others that change is really possible.

That’s exactly what the team at P&G did. Once they showed that one process could be dramatically improved, they were able to get the resources to start improving others. Today, more than 2,500 of their colleagues have joined their movement for process improvement, called PxG, and more than 10,000 have used their applications platform.

As PxG has grown it has also been able to effectively partner with other likeminded initiatives within the company, reinforcing not only its own vision, but those of others that share its values as well.

The One Engineer Who Simply Refused To Take “No” For An Answer

In the late 1960’s, Gary Starkweather was in trouble with his boss. As an engineer in Xerox’s long-range xerography unit, he saw that laser printing could be a huge business opportunity. Unfortunately, his manager at the company’s research facility in upstate New York was focused on improving the current product line, not looking to start a new one.

The argument got so heated that Starkweather’s job came to be in jeopardy. Fortunately, his rabble-rousing caught the attention of another division within the company, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), which was less interested in operational efficiency than inventing an entirely new future. They eagerly welcomed Starkweather into their ranks with open arms.

Unlike his old lab, PARC’s entire mission was to create the future. One of the technologies it had developed, bitmapping, would revolutionize computer graphics, but there was no way to print the images out. Starkweather’s work was exactly what they were looking for and, with the Xerox’s copier business in decline, would eventually save the company.

The truth is that good ideas fail all the time and it often has little to do with the quality of the idea, the passion of those who hold it or its potential impact, but rather who you choose to start with. In the New York lab, few people bought into Starkweather’s idea, but in Palo Alto, almost everyone did. In that fertile ground, it was able to grow, mature and triumph.

When trying to get traction for an idea, you always want to be in the majority, even if it is only a local majority comprising a handful of people. You can always expand a small majority out, but once you are in the minority you will get immediate pushback and will need to retrench.

The Secret to Subversion

Through my work, I’ve gotten to know truly revolutionary people. My friend Srdja Popović was one of the original founders of Otpor and has gone on to train activists in more than 50 countries. Jim Allison won a Nobel Prize for discovering Cancer Immunotherapy. Yassmin Abdel-Magied has become an important voice for diversity, equity and inclusion. Many others I profiled in my books, Mapping Innovation and Cascades.

What has always struck me is how different real revolutionaries are from the mercurial, ego-driven stereotypes Hollywood loves to sell us. The truth is that all of those mentioned above are warm, friendly and genuinely nice people who are a pleasure to be around (or were, Gary Starkweather recently passed).

What I’ve found over the years is that sense of openness helped them succeed where others failed. In fact, evidence suggests that generosity is often a competitive advantage for very practical reasons. People who are friendly and generous tend to build up strong networks of collaborators, who provide crucial support for getting an idea off the ground.

But most of all it was that sense of openness that allowed them to learn, adapt and identify a path to victory. Changing the world is hard, often frustrating work. Nobody comes to the game with all the answers. In the final analysis, it’s what you learn along the way—and your ability to change yourself in response to what you learn—that makes the difference between triumph and bitter, agonizing failure.

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

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