Category Archives: Change

Speed of Change

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Speed of Change

Are You Innovating at the Speed of Change?

The world is changing all around us at an increasing rate, and individuals (and yes organizations too) are struggling to cope with this ever increasing pace of change.

In fact, over the last 50 years the average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 has dropped from 61 years to 18 years (and is forecast to shrink further in the future).1

Innosight Average Company Lifespan

Nobody of course wants to be one of those organizations that goes out of business, but the fact is that if your organization can’t innovate and change at the speed of change of its customers’ wants and needs, and the pace of geopolitical, social, and economic change in the world around it, then it will likely have to change its sign from open to CLOSED, permanently.

Your organization may indeed be doomed to fail if it develops on or more of the following change gaps:

  1. Your speed of hiring is slower than the speed of your growth
  2. Your speed of market understanding is slower than the pace of market change
  3. Your speed of insight dissemination and acceptance is slower than the pace of market change
  4. Your speed of idea commercialization is slower than the pace of market change
  5. Your speed of innovation is slower than the competition’s speed of innovation
  6. Your speed of internal change is slower than the rate of external change

The last one is of course the largest and the most important, and the most complex, being composed of your speed of:

  • Market Analysis (gathering of insights and inspiration)
  • Invention (creation of innovation source material)
  • Design (building a potential solution around an invention)
  • Development (taking the design and creating a scalable, launch ready solution)
  • Test (Evaluating with customers whether the solution works as designed and scales as intended)
  • Evolution (Launching the solution into the marketplace with open eyes and ears, pivoting/improving as necessary)

While it is possible to enter a market too early, you can survive this tactical error if you enter in a small way instead of committing to a global launch with grand customer promises. However, much more damage comes to organizations that enter too late. So, as an organization we must be constantly striving to get faster at discovering new market insights and adapting and aligning our organization to fulfill newly discovered market needs more quickly than our competition, otherwise we might find ourselves locked out of our customers’ top consideration set tier.

Consumption Spreads Faster

What other change gaps do you see as you look at your business or that of your competition?

This is the first of many articles that I will be writing in the run up to my second book (to be published by Palgrave Macmillan), in which I will explore the importance and implications of change in the ongoing success of organizations, along with building up a concise set of best practices and next practices for change.

To help kick off this journey I will be conducting a FREE webinar with my friends over at CoDev, focusing on how Innovation is All About Change. This exclusive sneak peek and Live Q&A will take place from 12:00-1:00pm ET on January 15, 2015, and will feature a quick introduction to a new visual, collaborative change planning toolkit that I’ve developed and am ready to share with the world. Click here to register (link expired).

I hope you’ll come join me on this journey to improve the pace of change in our organizations!

UPDATE to banner: You can now access a free recording of this webinar using PASSCODE 1515 here (link expired)

1. Innosight/Richard N. Foster/Standard & Poor’s
2. Image Source: Wikipedia


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FREE Webinar – Innovation is All About Change

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FREE Webinar - Innovation is All About Change

The hardest part of making any change is taking that first step. We may point our shoulders in the direction we want to travel, but planning our change journey and mapping the steps to get there can still feel overwhelming. This is true for co-creation and open innovation projects, change programs — even personal change.

Often it helps to be with others who are on a similar path. It also helps to have tools that simplify steps and offer motivation. I’m delighted to invite you to an exclusive conversation/webinar with me and my friends at CoDev (including host Cheryl Perkins of Innovationedge) on Thursday, January 15, 2015 at 12 pm ET.

Click here and use PASSCODE 1515 to access the FREE recording of this webinar (link expired)

In this interactive 60-minute session, I will share key tools and guidelines from my new, not-yet-published book from Palgrave Macmillan and give you some insights into what is in my new collaborative, visual change planning toolkit.

I will discuss:

  • How organizational change and project/ portfolio management tie together
  • Useful frameworks to move from the ‘what’ to the ‘how’
  • Best (and next) Innovation practices
  • Roles and responsibilities based on the Nine Innovation Roles (from his last book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire.)
  • How innovation is all about change

I encourage your questions and look forward to dialogue with you, other members of your senior management team, and anyone else you think might have interest in the intersection of change initiatives, project management, and innovation.

Click here and use PASSCODE 1515 to access the FREE recording of this webinar (link expired)


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What Change Roles Are Missing?

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What Change Roles Are Missing?

I’m gearing up to write a new app and book on organizational change to complement a powerful new visual change toolkit that will be incredibly useful for use in change programs, project and portfolio management, and even innovation, and so I’m canvasing the organizational change literature space (including change leadership, change management, and business transformation) and looking to identify:

  1. The best organizational change thought leaders
  2. The most powerful organizational change frameworks
  3. The most useful organizational change tools
  4. The best organizational change books (including change leadership, change management, and business transformation)

Please contact me to tell me your favorites or add below in the comments.

I will be launching a new community and information site soon to launch this visual change toolkit free to the world, in an extremely collaborative way. Which is why I’m looking for your thoughts on the four items above. Once the skeleton site is up in the next week or so, people will also be able to submit their suggestions on the site.

But in the meantime, based on the success of the Nine Innovation Roles from my last book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire and some ideas that have been triggered by the work I’ve done in various workshops with organizations around the world with the Nine Innovation Roles, I’ve decided to identify a similar set of roles that people should make sure are occupied on their guiding coalitions.

And as I look at the Nine Innovation Roles there are a few that are still applicable in a broader change context (after all, Innovation Is All About Change). Here are the ones that I believe still are necessary in an organizational change program:

1. Revolutionary

The Revolutionary is the person who is always eager to change things, to shake them up, and to share his or her opinion. These people are uncomfortable standing still and not shy about sharing their opinions. Often they see the status quo as not good enough, so the Revolutionary wants to change it.

2. Architect

Change doesn’t emerge from a vacuum. Someone has to see the bigger picture, bring the idea fragments together and create a cohesive change program, a new business architecture, and guide people to create a collection of project artifacts to help guide the change effort. This is the role of the Architect.

3. Artist

The Artist doesn’t seek change like the Revolutionary or see the big picture like the Architect, but Artists are really good at evolving the seeds of change, shaping them, watering them, and ultimately making the impetus for change more clear, the benefits more compelling, and the change plan more complete.

4. Barrier Buster

Every change effort should identify several potential barriers to change, and the team must identify ways to overcome them before the change program is ready to be communicated to the masses. This is where the Barrier Buster comes in. Barrier Busters love solving tough problems and often have the deep domain knowledge or the deep insight into the change target’s mindset necessary to move minds and resources to support the change program.

5. Connector

The Connector does just that. These people hear a Revolutionary say something interesting and put him together with an Architect and an Evangelist; The Connector listens to the Artist and knows exactly where to find the Barrier Buster that the change effort needs.

6. Lion Tamer

The Lion Tamer is really good at identifying risks, potential negative outcomes, and the steps necessary to implement a change. Lion Tamers take the unwieldy beast that any change program can easily become, tame it, help break it down into digestible chunks, and make it real. These are the people who can picture how the change is going to be made and line up the right resources to make it happen.

7. Evangelist

The Evangelists know how to educate people on what the change is and help them understand it. Evangelists are great people to help attract guiding coalition members and to build support for a change effort among leadership. Evangelists also are great at both evangelizing on behalf of customers, employees and partners, but also in helping to educate customers, employees, and partners on the value of the change effort.

8. INSERT YOUR SUGGESTION HERE

9. INSERT YOUR SUGGESTION HERE

So, that’s only a first cut at a set of Change Roles that must be filled on the guiding coalition or the change program team.

What roles are missing?

Are there any there that are not needed or redundant?

Please sound off in the comments below.


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