Category Archives: Change

Focus your Emotional Energy Purposefully

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

When I exited my corporate career more than thirty-five years ago, I was privileged to be regarded and respected as the Fashion Direction Manager for the Grace Bros Department Store group, one of Australia’s most senior women in retail management. This launched my global reputation as a fashion and lifestyle marketing innovator. In this exciting role, I was responsible for designing and implementing a company-wide fashion information system for apparel, accessories, homeware, merchandising, and advertising. This required me to focus my emotional energy on researching, analyzing, and conceptualizing global fashion and lifestyle trends and adapting them to suit the Australian consumer lifestyle.

It was a dream role before the invention of the Internet, the implosion of the mass media, and the dominance of fast fashion. It required our team to focus their emotional energy on intensively researching different global and diverse media sources, including yarn, textile, couture, designer, ready-to-wear shows, trade journals, magazines, and seasonal sales data.

Generating creative thinking

Creativity is about connecting things, and in the fashion world, the best designers make the most unlikely connections to produce novel and wondrous creations. As my professional background included graphic and fashion design and marketing, I could further hone my associative (lateral and connective) thinking skills to think creatively and critically in this role. To focus my emotional energy and attention on guiding my intuition, values, and decisions on the needs and wants of buyers, merchandisers, marketers, and customers. To emerge, diverge and converge the key connections and patterns occurring globally in the fashion world and external complex fashion systems. I also learned the importance of being customer-focused and the value and role of being empathic with customers, manufacturers’ value chains and fashion information system users.

It was an incredibly emotional, physical, and stressful role, which required me to travel overseas four times a year to stay current on the different global fashion streams.

This caused my life to melt into being at work, the gym, or the airport.

Stress-induced exhaustion and burnout

This resulted in my first profound encounter with stress-induced exhaustion and burnout, which hit me right in the face one morning when my body refused to move, and I was unable to get out of bed.

I have also noticed that many of my global coaching clients have faced a similar challenge: stress-induced exhaustion and burnout. Fortunately, they can use the coaching partnership to unearth their particular pattern and unresourceful ways of being and learn how to focus their emotional energy to disrupt, dispute, and deviate from it into a more resourceful way of being and acting. However, it has shifted the coach’s role as a healer, making it even more critical in our current environment.

Focusing emotional energy on pursuing mattering, meaning and purposeful work

This ultimately manifests as a crisis and becomes a defining moment. In my case, I made a fundamental choice to focus emotional energy on pursuing meaning, mattering, and purposeful work, which still focuses my full attention and drives me today.

It created a “crack, “or an opening and threshold for making two fundamental choices: to embark on a healing journey to become the kind of person I wanted to be and to find a way to focus my emotional energy on making the difference I wanted to make in the world.

This enabled me to use my knowledge, experience, and skills to establish Australia’s first design management consultancy.

What is emotional energy?

Emotional energy is the catalyst that fuels creativity, invention, and innovation.

Understanding and harnessing this energy inspires and motivates individuals to explore and embrace creative and critical thinking strategies, now in partnership with AI.

When a person’s emotional energy has contracted, it results in constrained, negative, pessimistic, and even catastrophic thinking habits, which have a toxic impact on the person’s identity and emotional and physical well-being.

This means there is no space, doorway, or threshold to take on anything new, novel, or different. Nor can they imagine what might be possible to evolve, advance, or transform their personal or professional lives in an uncertain future.

Emotional energy catalyses and directs your intrinsic motivation, conviction, hope, positivity, and optimism to approach your world purposefully, meaningfully, and differently.

When you are true to your calling or purpose, you will make extra efforts to be healthier, positively impact your well-being, and improve your resilience.

How does this apply to leadership in uncertain times?

“I think leaders need to remember that they are in the energy management business,” says Halsey. “Their role is to keep people focused, energized, and positive about themselves and their work. They may be unable to change external circumstances, but they can create a safe, nurturing, and empowering work environment. By setting clear goals, diagnosing individual needs, and providing the right leadership style, leaders can help their teams thrive—even in uncertain times.”

People want work to be less of a job and more of a calling.

According to Martin Seligman and Gabriella Rosen Kellerman in their book Tomorrowmind, a US-based research study that included two thousand employees of all ages, industries, tenures, and incomes, revealed that people craved more meaning at work regardless of sector or position. Everyone wanted work to be less of a job and more of a calling and gave their current jobs a rating of 49, which suggests that their “meaning cups” are only half full.

This search for meaning, mattering, and being of service to humanity in a different and value-adding way enables innovators, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs to cultivate the emotional energy and develop the agility required to drive their creativity, invention and innovation endeavors.

It is the most critical ingredient that motivates, empowers, enables, fuels and sustains innovators, entrepreneurs, and intrapreneurs to adapt, survive and thrive on the innovation roller coaster.

Channeling emotional energy meaningfully and purposefully

From my leadership training and coaching experience, I have learned that most people desperately want their lives to make sense and be meaningful and to know that who they are and what they do matters. It is possible to link meaning and mattering to being intentionally motivated and directed by your core values to make a difference and a contribution that provides value and significance to someone, a community, or society.

Being purposeful

Being purposeful focuses your emotional energy, guides your life decisions influences your behaviors, shapes your goals, offers a sense of direction, and creates meaning. Rather than engaging in shallow, empty, or pointless activities, it gives you agency.

In our uncertain, volatile and disruptive world, it is crucial to think about your “purpose in life.” Be like an Entrepreneur and link your purpose as a guidepost to help you deal with uncertainty, navigate it better, mitigate the damaging effects of long-term stress, and become psychologically resilient.

People with a strong sense of purpose direct and focus their emotional energy on what really matters to them. They tend to be more agile and adaptive, hardier and resilient, and more able to refocus and recover quickly from adverse and catastrophic events.

According to McKinsey & Co.’s article “Igniting individual purpose in times of crisis,” purposeful people also live longer and healthier lives and are essential to employee experience. This results in higher levels of employee engagement, more substantial organizational commitment, and increased feelings of well-being. Like many entrepreneurs, people who find their purpose congruent with their jobs tend to get more meaning from their roles, making them more productive and more likely to outperform their peers.

How can you add more meaning, mattering and purpose?

Meaning is an outcome of purpose, and many people, due to their experience of the pandemic and hybrid workplace in a chaotic and uncertain world, are seeking to re-engage with their work and workplaces by focusing their emotional energy on improving their well-being and creating more purposeful, balanced, and meaningful lives.

This is a short section from our new book, “Conscious Innovation – Activating the Heart, Mind and Soul of Innovation”, which will be published in 2025.

Please find out more about our work at ImagineNation™.

Please find out about our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack. It is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalized innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over 9-weeks. It can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning program.

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-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also up-skill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Unsplash

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of February 2025

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Top 10 Human-Centered Change & Innovation Articles of February 2025 Drum roll please…

At the beginning of each month, we will profile the ten articles from the previous month that generated the most traffic to Human-Centered Change & Innovation. Did your favorite make the cut?

But enough delay, here are February’s ten most popular innovation posts:

Innovation is Dead. Now What? — by Robyn Bolton
When Best Practices Become Old Practices — by Mike Shipulski
3 Keys to Improving Leadership Skills — by David Burkus
Audacious – How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World — Exclusive Interview with Mark Schaefer
Which Go to Market Playbook Should You Choose? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
Turns Out the Tin Foil Hat People Were Right — by Braden Kelley
Are You a Leader? — by Mike Shipulski
Time to Stop These Ten Bad Customer Experience Habits — by Shep Hyken
Beyond the AI Customer Experience Hype — by Shep Hyken
A Tumultuous Decade of Generational Strife — by Greg Satell

BONUS – Here are five more strong articles published in January that continue to resonate with people:

A Toolbox for High-Performance Teams — by Stefan Lindegaard
Lean is the Enemy of Learning — by Robyn Bolton
Is it Time to ReLearn to Work? — by Geoffrey A. Moore
Why CIOs Should Co-Lead Customer Experience — by Howard Tiersky
There is Nothing Without Trust — by Mike Shipulski

If you’re not familiar with Human-Centered Change & Innovation, we publish 4-7 new articles every week built around innovation and transformation insights from our roster of contributing authors and ad hoc submissions from community members. Get the articles right in your Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin feeds too!

SPECIAL BONUS: While supplies last, you can get the hardcover version of my first bestselling book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire for 44% OFF until Amazon runs out of stock or changes the price. This deal won’t last long, so grab your copy while it lasts!

Have something to contribute?

Human-Centered Change & Innovation is open to contributions from any and all innovation and transformation professionals out there (practitioners, professors, researchers, consultants, authors, etc.) who have valuable human-centered change and innovation insights to share with everyone for the greater good. If you’d like to contribute, please contact me.

P.S. Here are our Top 40 Innovation Bloggers lists from the last four years:

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Are You Preaching the Wrong Change Gospel?

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Are You Preaching the Wrong Change Gospel?

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Today it’s become an article of faith that we live in a VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). Business pundits tell us that we must “innovate or die.” These are taken as basic truths that are beyond questioning or reproach. Those who doubt the need for change risk being dismissed as out of touch.

This is the change gospel and it is worshiped with almost religious fervor. Yet the evidence suggests exactly the opposite. An even relatively casual examination of relevant data would reveal that, for incumbent businesses at least, the era we live in now is far more stable, less innovative and less productive.

In a nutshell, we are talking about change more, but doing it less. That’s a problem. Managers who want to be seen as change leaders launch too many initiatives. Employees, for their part, get jaded and wait for the newest idea to fail, just as the others before. The result is inevitably innovation theater, rather than meaningful change. We desperately need to fix this.

A VUCA World?

Let’s start with the basic premise that the business world has somehow become more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. The term first arose in the aftermath of the Cold War, when a relatively stable conflict between two global superpowers fragmented into a multi-polar, multi-ethnic clash of civilizations.

In this new era of conflict, cultural, religious and ethnic identities replaced ideologies as previously subjugated groups sought to be recognized. The Soviet Union broke up, the Balkans disintegrated into war and strife. Despots around the world, now suddenly cut off from their superpower backers, had to confront internal rifts.

In stark contrast to the world of geopolitics, however, the sphere of business and economics moved solidly toward a new orthodoxy known as the Washington Consensus, which preached market fundamentalism and deregulation. Many of these reforms were sorely needed in many places, but policy soon became dogma decoupled from reality.

Today, in part because of lax antitrust enforcement over the past few decades, businesses have become less disruptive, less competitive and less dynamic, while our economy has become less innovative and less productive. The fact that the reality is in such stark contrast to the rhetoric, is more than worrying, it should be a flashing red light.

Disrupting People, Not Industries

Go to just about any industry conference these days and you will likely hear a version of the same story: Traditional firms are under siege. The forces of disruptive innovation, agile startups and technological advancement mean that organizations need to be in a state of perpetual transformation in order to keep up.

The data, however, tell a different story. A report from the OECD found that markets, especially in the United States, have become more concentrated and less competitive, with less churn among industry leaders. The number of young firms have decreased markedly as well, falling from roughly half of the total number of companies in 1982 to one third in 2013.

A comprehensive 2019 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found two correlated, but countervailing trends: the rise of “superstar” firms and the fall of labor’s share of GDP. Essentially, the typical industry has fewer, but larger players. Their increased bargaining power leads to more profits, but lower wages.

The truth is that we don’t really disrupt industries anymore. We disrupt people. Economic data shows that for most Americans, real wages have hardly budged since 1964. Income and wealth inequality remain at historic highs. Anxiety and depression, already at epidemic levels, worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Change Fatigue And The Great Resignation

It is through this prism of increasingly powerful companies and vulnerable employees that every change initiative should be viewed. While leaders often see change initiatives as energizing and exciting, to employees they can seem like just one more burden on top of many others from both inside and outside of the workplace.

Research undertaken by PwC before the pandemic bears this out. In a survey of more than 2,200 executives, managers, and employees located across the globe, it found that 65% of respondents cited change fatigue, and only about half felt their organization had the capabilities to deliver change successfully.

It gets worse. 44% of employees say they don’t understand the change they’re being asked to make, and 38% say they don’t agree with it. Perhaps not surprisingly, employees view new transformation initiatives suspiciously, taking a “wait and see” attitude undermining the momentum and leading to a”boomerang effect” in which early progress is reversed when leadership moves on to focus other priorities.

Covid has exacerbated these underlying pressures. Since February 2020, millions of Americans over the age of 55 have left the workforce, driving a major labor shortage. For the first time in decades, workers are seeing a significant increase in their bargaining power and they are leaving in droves. Should anyone be surprised?

Focusing On The Meaningful Problems That Matter

Clearly, every organization needs to drive meaningful change. However, too many initiatives can undermine genuine transformation, leading to change fatigue and innovation theater. We need to make better choices about the projects we pursue. We can’t evaluate each program in a vacuum, but must take into account employee and organizational health.

In Mapping Innovation, I made the point that innovation isn’t about coming with ideas, but solving problems and I think that’s a good place to start when evaluating a transformation project. If successful, would this project solve an important problem? Is there a general consensus that it’s a problem we need to solve? How would solving it impact our business?

One of the things I’ve noticed in helping organizations pursue transformation is that questions like these are rarely considered. In fact, executives are usually surprised when we bring them up at the very beginning of the process. All too often, change is seen as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end.

We need to rethink the change gospel. There’s far too much talk and not nearly enough impact. Change should be an inspiration, not one more burden in an otherwise exhausted workplace. It’s time to refocus our efforts on change that matters. In most organizations, that will mean committing to fewer initiatives, but seeing them through.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Unsplash

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Be Better or Be Different?

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Be Better or Be Different?

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Do you want to be better or different? That’s the question that Sally Hogshead, an amazing professional speaker who specializes in being fascinating, shared in a recent speech I had the pleasure of experiencing. While most of her work is about how to be fascinating, this speech came from a different place. She talked about the power of being different versus better than others.

Sally shared research that found 73% would rather be better versus 27% who would choose to be different.

It’s one thing to be better than your competition. What makes you better? Is it your product? Is it the customer service or experience you provide? Is there something tangible that your customer could describe that proves you are better?

And then there is being different. As I listened to Sally share her wisdom, I realized that as much as we would like to be better than a competitor – and we should strive to do so – being different is more obvious.

I have a crazy idea. Why not both – especially as this idea applies to customer service and experience?

First, let’s talk about being better. It’s likely that you sell what others also sell. It’s a similar product. It may or may not be better, and it could be exactly the same, as in a commodity. So, how can you be better? Provide a better customer experience (CX). Yes, it’s always better to be better, but maybe you don’t have to be better than your competition. Maybe you just have to be better than what is expected.

Shep Hyken Different Better Cartoon

And here’s the interesting thing about your customer’s expectations – at least as it applies to CX. As important as customer service and CX are, the bar is fairly low. There are rockstar companies that have taught customers what a good CX looks like, but many companies struggle to create a similar experience. So, consider this idea: Delivering a better customer experience is as simple as consistently meeting customers’ expectations – with an emphasis on the word consistently. By the way, I used the word simple. That does not necessarily mean it’s easy, but if you meet expectations, you’re already better than most.

Being different will make a difference – no pun intended. Being different allows you to stand out. Yes, it could be your service and CX that makes you different – think Chick-fil-A. Whatever it is, it needs to be something that customers notice and care about. That gives customers a reason to choose you over your competition.

Sally’s short speech made me think. If there’s a way to be both better and different, you’ve got a winning combination that is hard to beat. However, even if all you do is meet the customers’ service and experience expectations, which already makes you better, continue to find a way – or ways – to stand out with something that makes you different.

Image Credits: Pixabay

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Unlocking Trapped Value with AI

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Unlocking Trapped Value with AI

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Anyone who has used Chat GPT or any of its cousins will testify to its astonishing ability to provide valuable responses to virtually any query. This is hardly a threat—indeed, it is a boon. So, what are we worrying about?

Well, there is the issue of veracity, of course, and it is true, GPT-enabled assistants can indeed make mistakes. But, come on—humans don’t? We are not looking for gospel truth here. We want highly probable, highly informed answers to questions where we need guidance, and it is clear that GPT-enabled applications are outstanding at meeting this need, for at least three reasons. They are remarkably well-informed. They are available 24/7 on demand with no hold time. And they have infinite patience. So, let’s not kid ourselves. We are massively better off for their emergence on the scene.

What we should be worrying about, on the other hand, is their impact on jobs to be done, employment, and career development. A simple way to think about this is that for any of us to earn money, we have to release some form of trapped value. A bank clerk helps a customer get access to the trapped value in their savings account. A bus driver helps a passenger cope with their trapped value by transporting them to the location where they need to be. A lawyer helps a client get access to trapped value by constructing a contract that meets their needs while protecting against risk. A teacher helps a student access trapped value by helping her solve problems she couldn’t handle before. The principle applies to every job. All systems have points of trapped value, and all jobs are organized around releasing and capturing that value.

Now, let’s introduce generative AI. All of a sudden, a whole lot of trapped value that funded a whole lot of jobs can now be released for free (or virtually for free). Those jobs can be protected in the short term but not forever. In other words, the environment really has changed, and we must assess our new circumstances or fall behind. This is Darwinism at work. Evolution never stops. It can’t. As long as there is change, there will be dislocation, which in turn will stimulate innovation. That’s life.

But here’s the good news. The universe can never eliminate trapped value, it can only move it from place to place. That is, there are always emergent problems to solve, always new opportunities to capitalize on, because every system always traps value somewhere. What Darwinism requires is that we detect the new value traps and redirect our activity to engage with them.

Publicly funded agencies sometimes interpret this as a mandate for training programs, but we have to be careful here. Training works well for disseminating established skills that address known problems. It does not work well, however, where the problems are still being determined and the skills are as yet undeveloped. Novelty, in other words, demands creativity. It is simply not negotiable.

Getting back to the impact of generative AI, we should understand that it is an advisory technology. It is not automation. That is, it is not eliminating the need for human beings to make judgment calls. Rather, it is accelerating the preparation for so doing and framing the options in ways that make decision-making more straightforward. By solving for the old value traps, it is giving us the opportunity to up our game. It’s our job to step up to add net new value to the equation.

The best way to do this is to ferret out the emerging new value traps. Who is the customer now? What is the bottleneck that is holding them back? How could that bottleneck be broken open? What is the reward for so doing? These are the fundamental questions that drive any business model. We know how to do this. It’s just that we have been riding on the inertia of the past set of solutions for so long we may have atrophied in some of the muscles we need now. One thing we need not worry about is the universe running out of trapped value. If you are ever in doubt, just read the day’s headlines and be reassured. The world needs our help. Any tool that helps us do our part better is a blessing.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Pexels

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Motivate Innovation with These Three Frames

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Motivate Innovation with These Three Frames

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

You want to innovate, to drive change in your organization. New products, new processes, new markets, new technologies, new ways of working together.

People in any organization have a tendency to resist change. This is for many reasons including fear of the unknown, fear about how it might impact their role or their empire, or their job security, and the natural tendency that people get comfortable with and attached to the way things are.

More often than not, change requires buy-in from others in your organization, and you will need to be able to communicate a strong reason to change. It’s important to identify the outcome you are seeking, of course. Let’s say you want to improve customer satisfaction. Great! In order for people to really be ready to change, they have to see that outcome as important. Ideally, as essential. If we want people to focus on getting from Point A to Point B, we need to help them understand why that change is so important that it overcomes their natural resistance. Just improving the share price or reducing turnover might not be enough to get someone to be willing to embrace what they may perceive as the personal pain of change.

The question is, “Why is making this change absolutely essential?” Of course, there are an unlimited number of reasons, but in our experience they fall into three primary strategies. The individual details are going to vary situationally, but these are the three basic strategies for igniting that burning platform for change.

If you’ve driven change before or been part of an organization going through change, most likely the change was communicated using one of these three frames. We present them here to make you aware of these three diverse approaches and to give you the opportunity before you communicate your next change to step back and decide deliberately which frame you will choose because each one had its own power and its own drawbacks. Let’s introduce the three frames, and then we’ll explain them. The three frames are number one, we suck. Number two, constant improvement. Number three, environmental change. Let’s review these.

1. The “We Suck” Frame

Let’s start with we suck. That’s a fun one. A company is at the bottom of its industry in sales or share price or both. Customer satisfaction scores are through the floor. The new product which will change the game in the marketplace is three years late. Who am I talking about? Doesn’t matter. When things are bleak, sometimes it seems necessary to just tell the truth and admit that the results you’re getting are bad, unacceptable, and must change. Holding up an honest mirror and pointing out the reality of the situation can create a strong motivation for some kind of change. As I said, everyone wants to get out of a situation where they’re failing. It’s highly motivating to get away from suckiness. It doesn’t have to be the entire company that’s going down the tubes like in my example. It might just be one capability, one product, one process, one geography.

If the facts are on your side, using the frame that, “We have to improve customer satisfaction because right now our customers hate us,” will probably get people’s attention. Often, the pain of failure is enough to overcome resistance to change. The problem with the we suck approach, however, is not hard to guess. It can be highly demotivating, even depressing. It can drive people away from your company. It can be hard to get excited about change when building on a belief that we suck. If we suck so much, how will we be able to improve? How will we make this change successful?

In order for the we suck frame not to backfire, you have to combine it with a strong hope of victory. The team needs to have faith that they can correct the situation. A few tactics. First, highlight the problem in a measurable way and set clear goals. “Our satisfaction scores are at a 6 and they should be at least an 8.” That gives people a clear sense of where the line of victory is. Second, if things used to be better and then they got worse, be sure to highlight that. It creates hope that the organization is capable of better.

A third tactic, highlight the areas the organization is doing well as part of the message. If we’re doing great in four out of five areas, but we suck in the fifth area, be sure to make that point. Not just to be positive, to give sugar with the medicine, but to put the problem in context. “We’re a high-quality organization. We excel in many areas, but in this one respect, we aren’t operating at our own standard.” The key is to show the gap, but also to create confidence that it can be solved.

A fourth tactic, highlight recent changes in circumstance that can also increase confidence. Especially if the problem has existed for a long time. It’s easy for people to feel it’s unsolvable, so make sure part of the message conveys what is change that makes it solvable now? Whether it’s new leadership, a new technology, increased budget, or something else.

2. The “Constant Improvement” Frame

The second frame is constant improvement, an alternative to the we suck frame. This frame emphasizes the need to constantly strive to be better as a value in and of itself. It says, “We’re already at X level, but we can do more. We can drive even more value for our customers. We can lower our costs even more.” This is, of course, a much more positive message than the we suck frame. It doesn’t really on any admission that the current state is any form of failure. However, in order to be motivating, it relies on a certain alignment with the values of your audience.

In some corporate cultures, the value of constant improvement is embodied into the psyche. Places like Apple and Amazon hire people who love to constantly improve, but if your organization does not have this value in its DNA, it’s tough to create it overnight. The downside of the constant improvement frame, therefore, is that it might not be sufficiently powerful in many cultures. People might think, “Yeah, it’s nice to improve, but I kind of like my organization the way it is now.” If the change is not seen as a must, just a nice to have, and if it requires some pain or a scary change, people might not be sufficiently motivated. They’ll tend to embrace small-scale change that doesn’t upset the apple cart, but may still have significant resistance to significant change.

3. The “Environmental Change” Frame

The third and last frame is environmental change. This is my personal favorite frame. The environmental frame says, “Something major in our business environment has changed and we must respond and change in order to survive or thrive. Our customers have all gone mobile. Competitive pricing has dropped our price in half. The population is aging. The Asian market is opening up.” What’s great about this frame is that it excuses the past. We can say, “Hey, what we did in the past was great for the circumstances that existed then, but now we need to change to what will work now and in the future.” In this frame, we don’t suck, we’re just becoming a bit out-of-date and need to adjust to the external change, but the changes are truly a must. Not just to meet the standard of constant improvement as in frame two, but in order to survive. This sort of example is, of course, where the phrase “burning platform” comes from. Your house is all of a sudden on fire. The environment has changed. You have to move.

As I mentioned, I like this third one the best since it can be a positive message and still have urgency, but it may at first appear that this really only relevant in certain circumstances. Those where there really has obviously been a significant environmental change, but you can really leverage this frame or, in fact, any of these frames in almost any situation. The key to using this frame is to do one or both of two things. Either find an environmental change that you can focus on to justify the change, and usually there is almost always some form of environmental change or forecasted change that you can use to create change based on an environmental frame, or create an environmental change.

For example, a new boss coming in can be an environmental change. The new boss has new expectations. We as a department need to deliver in a different way than we have before. There are many other ways to create environmental change. A new brand promise, a new performance management protocol, even a new goal or initiative that the company has that must be met.

Here at FROM, we work with clients all the time to make change successful and part of the work we do is about developing the frame for and communication about the change. I can assure you that there are lots of ways to apply creativity, to utilize the best frame in just about any circumstance with all your digital innovation, for change, for innovation.

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog

Image Credits: Pexels

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Change Marketing versus Change Communications

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Change Marketing versus Change Communications

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the ever-evolving landscapes of business and organizational growth, the paradigms of change management play a crucial role in steering the ship towards success. Within this realm, two concepts frequently emerge as tools to navigate turbulent waters: Change Marketing and Change Communications. At first glance, they may appear synonymous, but understanding their distinct roles and synergies is essential for orchestrating impactful transformations. As a human-centered change and innovation thought leader, I aim to dissect these terms and provide clarity on how they can be leveraged to drive meaningful change.

Understanding the Concepts

Change Communications

Change Communications is the strategic dissemination of information related to a specific change initiative within an organization. It aims to inform, educate, and engage the stakeholders by providing them with accurate, consistent, and timely information. The primary objective of Change Communications is to reduce uncertainty, clarify doubts, and streamline the transition process. A well-executed communication plan addresses the who, what, where, when, and why of the change initiative. It takes into account the different perspectives of stakeholders and ensures that messages resonate with their specific concerns and expectations.

Change Marketing

On the other hand, Change Marketing borrows principles from traditional marketing but adapts them to promulgate change initiatives within an organization. It applies marketing techniques such as segmenting, targeting, positioning, and promotion to make the change appeal to the organization’s internal audience. At its core, Change Marketing is about building buy-in, excitement, and advocacy for change among employees. It focuses on raising awareness about the benefits of the change, cultivating a positive perception, and driving behavioral commitment. By framing the change as a product or service, Change Marketing positions the change initiative into a more relatable and consumable format.

Exploring the Differences

While both Change Marketing and Change Communications aim to facilitate change, their methodologies and focus areas differ in several key ways:

1. Objective

Change Communications is largely informative. Its purpose is to keep stakeholders informed and aligned throughout the change process. Change Marketing, meanwhile, takes a sales-oriented approach, persuading stakeholders to not only understand but also actively embrace and champion the change initiative.

2. Approach

Change Communications focuses on transparency and clarity, ensuring that the message is communicated consistently and accurately. Change Marketing employs creative and emotional appeals. It seeks to create a narrative or brand around the change, appealing to the emotional and psychological drivers of the stakeholders.

3. Tools and Channels

The tools and channels used in Change Communications typically include newsletters, emails, intranet updates, and formal meetings. These are factual and structured to ensure clarity. In contrast, Change Marketing may employ more dynamic and engaging tools such as storytelling, testimonials, videos, events, and interactive workshops, often leveraged through multiple platforms to create touchpoints.

4. Stakeholder Engagement

Change Communications tends to be more authoritative, with information flowing top-down from leadership to the employees. Change Marketing, however, is more collaborative. It encourages two-way communication and feedback loops, empowering stakeholders to be co-creators of the change narrative.

Synergizing Both Approaches

Leveraging Change Marketing and Change Communications together can create a more cohesive and comprehensive change strategy, enhancing the likelihood of successful transformation. Here’s how they can be integrated:

Create a Strong Narrative

Weave a compelling narrative that not only communicates the facts but also makes the change relatable and engaging. Use Change Communications to set the foundation and establish baseline understanding, and then layer on Change Marketing to breathe life into the story, making it resonate on a personal level.

Segment and Personalize

Different stakeholders have varying needs, concerns, and levels of influence. Change Marketing enables you to segment your audience and customize messages, while Change Communications ensures that these tailored messages are coherent and aligned with overall objectives.

Foster Participation and Ownership

Encourage a participatory culture where stakeholders feel they have a voice in the change process. Use Change Communications to set up structured feedback mechanisms, and leverage Change Marketing to create invitations and spaces for dialogue and co-creation.

Measure and Adapt

Both approaches require measurement to understand effectiveness and areas for improvement. Use analytics from communications channels to evaluate engagement levels and adjust strategies; similarly, use marketing metrics to assess buy-in and adapt campaigns to enhance impact.

Conclusion

Change Marketing and Change Communications are both pivotal elements of successful change management, each offering unique contributions towards achieving a transformative vision. By understanding the distinct roles they play and harnessing their complementary strengths, organizations can navigate change with agility and finesse. This dual-approach not only smooths the transition process but also builds a resilient and engaged workforce ready to face the future.

In embracing both pathways, leaders can foster a culture of empathy, insight, and innovation, where change is not merely communicated but sold as an exciting journey toward a better tomorrow.

In closing, I encourage all change leaders and enthusiasts to continuously pursue learning and adaptation. Engage with new methodologies, share your stories, and remain open to experimentation. The future of change management rests in our ability to be both innovative and empathetic facilitators of transformation. One great place to start is to get a copy of Braden’s best-selling book Charting Change, which is now in its Second Edition with several new chapters!

And, if you need help marketing your change, please let me know.

Image credit: Pixabay

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We Need a New Language for Change

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We Need a New Language for Change

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

If innovation (the term) is dead and we will continue to engage in innovation (the activity), how do we talk about creating meaningful change without falling back on meaningless buzzwords? The answer isn’t finding a single replacement word – it’s building a new innovation language that actually describes what we’re trying to achieve. Think of it as upgrading from a crayon to a full set of oil paints – suddenly you can create much more nuanced pictures of progress.

The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All

We’ve spent decades trying to cram every type of progress, change, and improvement into the word “innovation.” It’s like trying to describe all forms of movement with just the word “moving.” Sure, you’re moving but without the specificity of words like walking, running, jumping, bounding, and dancing, you don’t know what or how you’re moving or why.

That’s why using “innovation” to describe everything different from today doesn’t work.

Use More Precise Language for What and How

Before we throw everything out, let’s keep what actually works: Innovation means “something new that creates value.” That last bit is crucial – it’s what separates meaningful change from just doing new stuff for novelty’s sake. (Looking at you, QR code on toothpaste tutorials.)

But, just like “dancing” is a specific form of movement, we need more precise language to describe what the new value-creating thing is that we’re doing:

Core IMPROVEMENTS: Making existing things better. It’s the unglamorous but essential work of continuous refinement. Think better batteries, faster processors, smoother processes.
Adjacent EXPANSIONS: Venturing into new territory – new customers, new offerings, new revenue models, OR new processes. It’s like a restaurant adding delivery service: same food, new way of reaching customers.
Radical REINVENTION: Going all in, changing multiple dimensions at once. Think Netflix killing its own DVD business to stream content they now produce themselves. (And yes, that sound you hear is Blockbuster crying in the corner.)

Adopt More Sophisticated Words to Describe Why

Innovation collapsed because innovation became an end in and of itself. Companies invested in it to get good PR, check a shareholder box, or entertain employees with events.

We forgot that innovation is a means to an end and, as a result, got lazy about specifying what the expected end is. We need to get back to setting these expectations with words that are both clear and inspiring

Growth means ongoing evolution
Transformation means fundamental system change (not just putting QR codes on things)
Invention means creating something new without regard to its immediate usefulness
Problem Solving means finding, creating, and implementing practical solutions
Value Creation means demonstrating measurable and meaningful impact

Why This Matters

This isn’t just semantic nitpicking. Using more precise language sets better expectations, helps people choose the most appropriate tools, and enables you to measure success accurately. It’s the difference between saying “I want to move more during the day” and “I want to build enough endurance to run a 5K by June.”

What’s Next?

As we emerge from innovation’s chrysalis, maybe what we’re becoming isn’t simpler – it’s more sophisticated. And maybe that’s exactly what we need to move forward.

Drop a comment: What words do you use to describe different types of change and innovation in your organization? How do you differentiate between what you’re doing and why you’re doing it?

Image credit: Pexels

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The Changemaker Mindset

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The Changemaker Mindset

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

Every time I speak to a group of executives, they complain that their organizations desperately need to change, but that the bosses are hostile to it. And every time I speak to a group of leaders, they say that change is their highest priority, but can’t seem to align the rank-and-file behind transformational initiatives.

The truth is that everybody loves their own brand of change, it’s other people’s ideas and initiatives that they don’t like. We all have things that we want to be different. But the status quo has inertia on its side and never yields its power gracefully. To want change is one thing, but to change ourselves, well… that’s another story.

What I’ve found in both my research and my practice is that people who bring about transformational, even historic, change start out no differently than anyone else. In fact, early versions of them are often decidedly unimpressive. The difference between them and everyone else is that somewhere along the way they learn to adopt a changemaker mindset.

A Problem They Couldn’t Look Away From

As a young man, Mohandis Gandhi wasn’t the type of person anyone would notice. Impulsive and undisciplined, he was also so shy as a young lawyer that he could hardly bring himself to speak in open court. With his law career failing, he accepted an offer to represent the cousin of a wealthy muslim merchant in South Africa.

Upon his arrival, Gandhi was subjected to humiliation on a train and it changed him. His sense of dignity offended, he decided to fight back. He found his voice, built the almost superhuman discipline he became famous for and successfully campaigned for the rights of Indians in South Africa. He returned to India 21 years later as the “Mahatma,” or “holy man.”

The truth is that revolutions don’t begin with a slogan, they begin with a cause. Martin Luther King Jr., as eloquent as he was, didn’t start with words. It was his personal experiences with racism that helped him find his words. It was his devotion to the cause that gave those words meaning, not the other way around.

Steve Jobs didn’t look for ideas, he looked for products that sucked. Computers sucked. Music players sucked. Mobile phones sucked. His passion was to make them “insanely great.” Every breakthrough product or invention, a laser printer, a quantum computer or even a life-saving cure like cancer immunotherapy, always starts out with a problem someone couldn’t look away from.

Identifying A Keystone Change

Every change effort, if it is to be successful, needs to identify a Keystone Change to bridge the gap between the initial grievance about the world as it is and the vision for how the world could be. You can’t get there in a single step. This is a lesson that even a legendary changemaker like Gandhi had to learn the hard way.

In 1919, five years after his return to India, Gandhi called for a nationwide series of strikes and boycotts in response to the Rowlatt Acts, which restricted Indian rights. These protests were successful at first, but soon spun wildly out of control and eventually led to the massacre at Amritsar, in which British soldiers left hundreds dead and more than a thousand wounded.

A decade later, when the Indian National Congress asked Gandhi to design a campaign of civil disobedience in support of independence, he proceeded more cautiously. Rather than rashly calling for national action, he set out with 70 or 80 of his closest disciples to protest unjust salt laws. Their nonviolent discipline inspired the nation and the world.

Today, the Salt March is known as Gandhi’s greatest triumph. It was the first time that the British was forced to negotiate with the Indians and, because it demonstrated that the Raj could be defied, helped lead to Indian independence in 1947. Yet without that earlier failure, which Gandhi would call his Himalayan miscalculation, it would not have been possible.

Gandhi is, of course, a legendary historical figure. But other, more pedestrian, changemakers learned the same thing. A lean manufacturing transformation at Wyeth Pharmaceutical started with a single change with a single team, but quickly spread to 17,000 employees. A healthcare revolution began with just six quality practices. When the CIO of Experian set out to move his organization to the cloud, he began with internal API’s and just a few teams.

To make change real, you need to get out of the business of selling an idea and into the business of selling a success. You do that with a Keystone Change.

Empowering A Movement

We revere legendary change leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela and others not just for their ideas, but because of how they empowered others to take ownership of their cause. Those who followed them did so not in their names, but for themselves. The struggle was collective, not one of subservience.

That’s what makes building a movement different from traditional change models they often teach in business schools. A snazzy internal communication program and a training regimen may help an organization adopt new software or gear up to support a new product line, but it won’t change how people fundamentally think or act.

Movement leaders focus on empowerment, not persuasion. Gandhi didn’t need to convince his countrymen about the daily humiliations and injustices suffered under the British Raj. King did not have to explain to black Americans that racism was wrong. Mandela did not have to persuade black South Africans about the evils of Apartheid. They empowered them to make a difference. That’s what makes movements so compelling and effective.

Changemakers of all kinds can do the same. At Experian, the CIO set up an “API Center of Excellence” to help product managers who wanted to build out cloud-based features. To power the quality movement in healthcare, activists created “change kits” to guide hospital staff who were on board and wanted to bring their colleagues along. Change can only succeed if you equip those who believe in it to drive it forward.

Building Empathy, Even For Your Enemies

People who believe in change want to believe that if everyone understood it, they’d want it to happen. That’s why “change management” gurus focus on communication and persuasion. They think that if you explain your idea for change in just the right way, others will see the light. For many change consultants, transformation is primarily a messaging problem.

Yet anyone who has ever been married or had kids knows how hard it can be to convince even a single person of something. Persuading hundreds, if not thousands—or even an entire society—that they should drop what they’re thinking and doing to adopt your idea and help drive it forward is a tall order. The simple truth is that no one is really that charming.

Make no mistake. If your idea is important, if it has real potential to affect how people think and how they act, there will always be those who will hate it and they will work to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded and deceptive. That’s just a simple fact of life that every potential changemaker needs to learn to internalize and accept.

Yet adopting a changemaker mindset means that you understand that change is always built on common ground and that you need to build empathy, even for your most ardent adversaries, because that is how you identify shared values and move things forward. It is by listening to your opposition and internalizing its logic that you can learn how to discredit it, or even better, inspire those hostile to change to discredit themselves.

That is the changemaker mindset: To understand that change is hard, even unlikely, but to remain clear-eyed, hard-nosed and opportunity focused. To know that through shared values and shared purpose, radical, transformational change is not only possible, but ultimately inevitable.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Unsplash

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Rise of the Change Marketing Agency

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Rise of the Change Marketing Agency

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In today’s fast-paced business landscape, where technological innovation and rapidly evolving consumer expectations are the norm, organizations need to manage change more adeptly than ever before. Introducing unique products or transforming internal processes is not just about logistics anymore; it’s also about aligning emotional, perceptual, and experiential shifts among stakeholders. This is where the nascent concept of a “Change Marketing Agency” comes into play — a specialized entity that bridges the gap between traditional change management and strategic marketing.

Understanding Change Marketing

Traditionally, change management has focused on the frameworks and toolsets that help an organization steer through the tumultuous waters of transformation. However, the human-centered aspect of change often takes a back seat. Enter change marketing — a philosophy and practice that utilizes marketing principles to enable effective change by addressing the emotional and behavioral aspects of the transformation journey.

Change marketing is not about selling a product, but about securing buy-in and engagement for transformative initiatives from stakeholders. It’s about narrating a compelling story that aligns vision, communicates benefits, and inspires action. As such, a Change Marketing Agency can play a decisive role in ensuring that change resonates with the inherent values and expectations of both internal and external stakeholders.

Difference Between Change Marketing and Change Communications

While change marketing and change communications are related, they serve different purposes and utilize different strategies. Here’s a breakdown of the key differences:

Objective:
- Change Communications focuses on the dissemination of information necessary for awareness and understanding.
- Change Marketing aims to build desire, alignment, and engagement, often by tapping into emotional and psychological triggers.
Approach:
- Change Communications typically involves one-way communication to inform and instruct stakeholders.
- Change Marketing uses a multi-channel, interactive strategy designed to engage stakeholders through storytelling and experiential campaigns.
Key Tools:
- Change Communications may employ memos, emails, FAQs, and newsletters to share updates.
- Change Marketing leverages branding, narrative development, workshops, multimedia content, and feedback loops.
End Goal:
- Change Communications strives for clarity and understanding among stakeholders.
- Change Marketing is focused on creating advocates and fostering a shared sense of purpose around the change initiative.

The Emerging Role of Change Marketing Agencies

The necessity for such agencies is increasingly clear as organizations recognize the limits of traditional change management methodologies. With new demands to personalize and humanize change, companies need partners adept in storytelling, audience segmentation, and behavioral psychology.

Change Marketing Agencies deliver services that range from crafting narrative-driven communication plans, creating engaging content that aligns with company culture, to analyzing stakeholder response and refining strategies dynamically. By integrating these services, they help organizations facilitate smoother transitions during times of change.

Case Study 1: The Digital Shift of a Legacy Publishing House

Imagine a traditional publishing house, steeped in decades of heritage, transitioning to a digital-first model. The challenge was not only technological but also cultural. Employees accustomed to paper-based processes were resistant, stakeholders questioned the shift’s efficacy, and long-time readers were apprehensive about abandoning the tactile experience of a physical book.

Enter the Change Marketing Agency. They embarked on a campaign that highlighted the richness of digital storytelling. Through a series of engaging multimedia experiences showcasing enhanced storytelling possible with digital tools, they shifted the narrative from a departure from tradition to an evolution of it. Internally, workshops and storytelling sessions were organized to visualize the new possibilities for employees, turning apprehension into curiosity and eventually enthusiasm.

Externally, the agency crafted a series of customer stories showcasing individuals enjoying enriched reading experiences in the digital ecosystem—aligning the change with customer lifestyles. This multi-layered narrative approach not only facilitated the transition but redefined the brand’s image, leading to a spike in digital subscriptions and an embrace of digital-first culture by resistant employees.

Case Study 2: Retail Giant’s Sustainability Transformation

Another compelling example is a major retail company, whose goal was to rebrand its image around sustainability and eco-friendliness. Despite comprehensive internal policies and sustainability initiatives, both employees and consumers were skeptical about the company’s genuine commitment to these values.

The Change Marketing Agency did not simply broadcast the changes; they nurtured a movement. They launched a transparent campaign sharing stories from every level of the company, emphasizing transparency and genuine impact. By spotlighting employee-led green initiatives and community collaborations, they personalized the brand’s sustainability narrative.

For the consumer base, they designed interactive experiences that allowed customers to see the environmental impact of their purchase decisions, fostering a sense of participation in the larger sustainability mission. As a result, the company observed not just an enhancement in public perception but tangible employee engagement, manifesting in innovative, ground-up sustainability projects internally.

Conclusion

The rise of Change Marketing Agencies highlights an evolving recognition of the power of integrated human-centered narratives in managing change. By marrying the art of marketing with the science of change management, they do not just manage transitions—they animate them. For organizations, this means deeper engagement, less friction, and transformative change that resonates on a personal level.

As we forge into an era marked by continuous change, the role of such agencies will likely expand. Their ability to humanize, narrate, and communicate complex transformations stands poised to redefine how organizations and individuals embrace the evolving future.

And, if you need help marketing your change, please let me know.

Image credit: Pixabay

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